This year, Congress will attempt to address the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The Act supposedly lays out ‘procedures for when the government can obtain your private electronic messages, like email or Facebook messages, from service providers.’
The ECPA specifically states, ‘the government doesn’t need a warrant for emails when they are older than 180 days—even though the Sixth Circuit held that this “180-day rule” violates the Fourth Amendment.’
The criminal enterprise called the Justice Department, who will beg to differ with anything the courts comes up and are under the impression, their department ‘does not have to obtain a warrant.'
Apparently, Texas’ Montgomery Country District Attorney’s Office shares that sentiment when it comes to Internet privacy. When they add the reasoning of attacking ‘child pornography,’ most people are in their corner when it comes to hunting ‘down those who hunt for child porn on the Internet.’ These people who agree, trust the government, way too much.
Andrew Lyon Robinson was arrested in October last year for ‘having the pornographic images on his home computer and iPad.' There’s also a ‘former youth counselor, along with a former Harris County deputy and a former city manager, all arrested in Montgomery County in the last two months for allegedly possessing child pornography.'
Note the term, ‘possessing,’ which would suggest for personal use, which should be considered personal and private. When the Montgomery Country DA’s office say they are ‘hunting’ down those who hunt for child porn on the Internet, that would highly suggest the perpetrators didn’t know they were targeted, which would lead to the question of 'probable cause,’ which is a level of reasonable belief, based on facts that can be articulated, that is required to sue a person in civil court or to arrest and prosecute a person in criminal court.
When you’re hunting, if you do bag the game, it’s called luck, or skill. When you’re actively searching the wed for violators, there is enough probable cause based on suspicion, but if you bag a perpetrator, that’s pure luck and not a lot skill involved. But now, if the perpetrator wasn’t the initial target, but a stroke of luck, shouldn’t that be consider a violation of privacy?
This is not to protect child predators, but to protect the right to privacy.
Comments