Do you dare to search for pressure cooker now?

An employee may be able to stop the sexual advances of a superior by saying "no." However, the imbalance of power "encourages" the employee to accede.Consent is only really possible when the balance of power in a situation is equal.If I ask you to give me a dollar, you'll be able to make your choice without influence from fear of any sort of retaliation. If an armed man in a position of authority over you with the power to easily make your life unpleasant (or short) asks you for a dollar, the influences over your decision are different - even if the armed authority figure is not intending to offer threat, even if a simple "no" would be acceptable and resolve the matter in both cases. The "threat of violence" doesn't need to be intentional. It's implied by the mere presence of armed police officers asking to search property, people who are trained specifically to respond with violence in some circumstances.This is the ethical theory behind a myriad of harassment laws and ethics guidelines.Sometimes the imbalance of power is necessary - you can't have an unarmed non-cop knock on a known violent felon's door to ask if you can look around. Even in this specific case, if a person is actually suspected of being a bomb-making terrorist, it would absolutely be necessary for those investigating to be armed legal authority figures just as a matter of safety.But it's completely understandable that, when putting yourself in the homeowner's shoes, you might feel more than a little intimidated and unduly influenced to acquiesce to an unwarranted search.For me the issue isn;t the behavior of the officers sent to the home. If you're going to investigate a terror suspect who might be building bombs, sending a large number of armed officers is definitely a good idea.For me the issue is twofold: First, searching through an private citizen's search history when he/she is not already a suspect in a pre-existing investigation is a violation of the right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure - such a thing should require a warrant. Second, if you don't have enough probable cause to get a search warrant, then I don't think you have enough justification for wasting taxpayer money or causing discomfort in what you have every reason to actually believe are law-abiding citizens by sending out a bunch of armed officers just to ask if they can "look around."

That's not actually strong evidence that the homeowner was not intimidated. It's merely evidence that the homeowner was not sufficiently intimidated to force compliance. They may have felt intimidated, they may not have; the events are insufficient to determine what they felt.Personally, if one or more cops showed up at my door, my heart rate would rise, and I would feel nervous, right from the start. I'd still refuse them entry unless they had a warrant, but I'd feel uncomfortable. Uniformed, armed cops don't generally just show up at my door to say "hi." While I haven't done anything illegal, I've heard more than enough stories about cops who sting a wrong address, or cops who are just assholes; even if those anecdotes are statistical outliers, so is a visit from the cops unrelated to a crime. And I think they were wrong. I think the evidence that brought this family to their attention, the unwarranted gathering of internet search history, was illegal at the start, and everything following would merely have been fruit of the poisoned tree. I think that separate searches including the words "pressure cooker" and "backpack" are insufficient to warrant any sort of attention anyway - by that low standard for interest, every one of us in this thread should receive visits from officers. As that would be a ridiculous overreaching of authority as well as an absurd waste of time and resources, I think the same can be said about the specific incident in question, as well. And I don't have a problem with that policy. As I said in my previous post, if you are investigating a bomb-making terror suspect, armed officers are absolutely a reasonable response.I just don't think there was a legal or sufficient cause for an investigation in the first place. Did the business register the search history and report it to the police? If so, then we can discount the issue of warrants and search histories - you're right, on a business computer the business does not need a warrant to search its own property or to monitor the usage of its own internet connection by employees, with very few exceptions.I would still consider the existence of the terms "backpack" and "pressure cooker" in a search history to be insufficient for the police to act in any way. If the issue of the warrant-less searching through search history is discarded because the history was searched by an employer and only employer-owned equipment and information was searched, then we are in agreement. I'd just believe that the response was overkill, a waste of resources that unduly inconvenienced law-abiding citizens.

See later in my response. If the search terms were captured by a corporate entity on corporate assets and logged on the corporate connection to the internet, and the business simply chose to inform the police of what they found on their own property, then no warrant was required and nothing was illegal. If that's actually the case then my remaining issue is merely that those particular search terms are not adequate to by themselves justify the expense or inconvenience of sending cops to ask if they can look around.

You're looking at the wrong amendment. The right to privacy is covered under Amendment IV, not VI:

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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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"Privacy" is defined as the security of your person, your papers, houses, and effects, and the freedom from any kind of unreasonable search or seizure. Warrants to invade this privacy can only be granted with probable cause, must be supported by an individual swearing that this probable cause actually exists (making them guilty of perjury if they lie to falsely obtain the warrant), and must be specific in what will be searched and what will be seized.Also, for lawyer-specific privacy, I'd bet that relies on the Fifth: Specifically the phrase prohibiting compulsion for self-incrimination. Talking to your lawyer about strategy could very, very easily fall under that umbrella.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Kinda. The law is a few decades behind on email.The spirit of the same law that guarantees privacy in regular snail-mail through the postal service would seem to apply to email - at least to a reasonable person.Electronic privacy rules have often relied on older wiretapping laws - to tap someone's internet communication has been equated in the past to tapping someone's phone. This was particularly easy when the internet connection was the phone line. (It's somewhat ironic that we've come full-circle, and where the phone line used to be the internet connection, now we're seeing more and more the internet connection being used as the phone line).Encryption makes it blatantly obvious that there is an expectation of privacy. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 has been used to prosecute hackers who gain "unauthorized access" to computers and networks. You absolutely have an expectation of privacy against me reading your encrypted emails.Whether you have that same expectation against the government...well, that's why we're hopefully about to have a national debate of some sort surrounding the recent NSA leaks, because the NSA seems to think that their access is always authorized (which seems to me to violate laws against unreasonable search and seizure; certainly email passing through electronic networks is not particularly different from either a phone call or sending a letter in the mail, both of which are protected without a specific warrant).

What is your definition of a "right," and how is it differentiated from a "privilege?"

Most of your response detailed what is or is not a right, but very little specified how I can tell the difference between a right and a privilege, according to jar. I'm not sure what you mean here. How is a right "spelled out" as such? For example, looking over the Bill of Rights in the Constitution:

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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The only "right" literally spelled out as such seems to be the "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Common knowledge classifies the freedoms of speech, the press, and religion to be "rights," but the word "right" is reserved specifically only for the last bit, excluding the first. Does this mean that the freedoms of speech, the press, and religion are actually just privileges? That would seem to contradict both common knowledge and the interpretation used by the Supreme Court. I'm still not certain what you mean when you say "an exception to some general position." Do you mean that privacy is a "privilege" because I usually have no privacy, except under specific circumstances?So is the difference then that I always have a "right," with possible specific exceptions, and that I in general do not have a "privilege," except in specific circumstances?Is that how you see it?

The determining factor in whether an explanation is sufficiently clear is whether the reader understands that explanation, not how the explainer feels about it. No.I'm not asking for an argument or a debate at this specific moment. I'm only and exclusively trying to achieve an accurate understanding of the terms "privilege" and "right" as you use them, because without a common understanding of those terms, I cannot accurately understand your actual arguments.I don;t need you to give examples of what you think is a "right" and what you think is a "privilege."What I need is the deterministic criteria that distinguishes A from B in any circumstance. I need a sufficiently accurate understanding of your definition that I should be able to look at any relevant subject and ascertain whether jar would apply either the "right" or "privilege" label, and why.So far my best guess is that you consider a "right" to be a guarantee that is always present, barring specific limitations, while a "privilege" is itself limited grant of a specific guarantee, while that guarantee is not generally available. A right is a rule with possible negative exceptions, and a privilege is a positive exception to a negative general rule, to put it more simply.Have I understood you accurately, or can you correct me? This may not be directly relevant to the topic, but no debate can really continue if we're using different definitions for words.

And indeed the specific wording of the ruling is what is supposed to protect all other electronic communication. Email is "conversation." The government may not search such a conversation without a warrant, regardless of physical intrusion.But there's a difference between an email or a google search query being intercepted and read by the government, and your employer intercepting your activity on employer-owned equipment, and then reporting what it sees to the government.You have a reasonable expectation to privacy when you send me a letter, in that you can reasonably expect that I and only I will legally be able to open the letter; the government might legally be able to tell that you sent me a letter, but they cannot look at its contents without a warrant.However, you have no reasonable expectation (with specific exceptions, such as if I were your lawyer or your priest) that I cannot, after reading your letter, just tell anyone else what you said, including the government.If I were to try to more accurately describe the right to privacy, it would be that you have the right to privacy for specific point-to-point communication, where others cannot overhear simply by their mere legal presence.You have no reasonable expectation of control over the communicated information (with very few specific exceptions) once it's in the hands of the person you gave it to.

If you voluntarily communicate with another person, that communication may be protected by privacy...but if the recipient is secretly James Bond, he's under no legal obligation to keep the content of that communication secret.As I said, you have no control over the information after the point of communication. And if it's just overheard...well, as long as the person who overheard the communication was in that space legally (ie, a cop cannot sneak into your house to listen to your private conversations without a warrant, but he can listen if you speak while he's legally present), they can repeat that information with whoever they want.Privacy is only point-to-point. If I tell X to Bob and Tom, quietly in my home with nobody else legally present, that specific communication is private - nobody is legally allowed to eavesdrop.But only he specific singular communication is private. The information conveyed, X, has no protection, and Bob and Tom can repeat it to whomsoever they wish, so long as they aren't my lawyers or priests. So if Tom was an undercover agent, or if Bob decided I was doing something wrong, either one could go and report X to the government.I can send you a letter, and the government cannot look inside the letter. You can call the cops after you read it, or post the entire contents of the letter on a billboard. "Privacy" is granted only in the specific one-time communication between the speaker (or writer) and whoever could hear (or read) the communication without interference - overhearing due to proximity is fine, being the intended recipient is fine, opening the letter when you are not the intended recipient or trespassing without a warrant specifically to overhear what cannot be heard from a public location are all not fine.Is that all making sense?

No. If he was invited in, even under false pretenses, he is not "sneaking in." Trespassing has nothing to do with falsification or identity - if I tell lies to get you to let me in your house, you still let me in your house. If I invite Tom into my house and he's an undercover cop, he's not breaking any laws by not telling me he's a cop, and anything I say to him can be repeated.Trespassing or other unlawful entry requires entry without consent. If a cop enters my home through the back door without my consent so that he can listen to my private conversation with another person without my knowledge, he's making a "search" and his actions would require a warrant. Without a warrant what he overhears as a result of his illegal search would be inadmissible.