‘Big Brother’-esque bill violates 4th amendment
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.” —Amendment IV, U.S. Constitution
Because of this amendment, the government needs to obtain a warrant before it does anything that infringes upon citizens’ expectation of privacy, such as searching homes, opening and reading mail or even wiretapping phones. But according to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), the government needs no such warrant to access online communications, like Facebook messages and emails.
The 1967 Supreme Court Case Katz v. United States is the most well-known and often cited case in regards to modern applications of the Fourth Amendment. It set the precedent that the government must have a warrant before conducting searches in situations where people have “a reasonable expectation of privacy.” In this specific case, an electronic recording device in a public phone both (wiretaps and the like count as searches) was found unconstitutional because, even though the booth itself is open to public use, people have a reasonable expectation that their conversations in it will remain private.
In a phone booth, if you can still find one, the content of your conversation is kept private by a thin pane of glass. In an email or other online account, the content of your conversation is kept private by a login identification, a password and in some cases a PIN or even an encryption code. If you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when protected by a sheet of glass, surely that reasonable expectation of privacy should extend to your online accounts with all of the electronic locks and safeguards.
If CISPA passes, all of that security will be for naught. The government could easily bypass all of it by requiring service providers such as Verizon, AT&T and Facebook to give them any information they want, anytime they want, without a warrant.
Ironically, the supposedly “small government” Republicans are the ones pushing this legislation. Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers introduced the last week, where it passed in the House with 196 approving votes from Republicans and 29 opposing (compared to 92 yeas and 98 nays from Democrats). The bill is currently being debated in the Senate. Should it pass there, President Barack Obama has promised a veto.
We probably don’t have to worry about this particular version of CISPA going into effect, but this already marks the second time it’s come back from the dead, having been originally proposed and passed the House in the 2012 session. This zombie monstrosity of a bill and others like it will continue to be a problem as long as Republicans fail to realize that “small government” and “Big Brother” can’t coexist.