Are we really losing our 4th amendment? I have been hearing a lot about this lately, mainly from social media websites about losing our 4th amendment so I decided to do some research on it. Based off of this article, the 4th amendment does not apply to anybody living within 100 miles of the United States border, in which 10 of those states are now completely affected by it. That sounds a little extreme and since there are a limited number of sources on this issue I am not sure if this is true. I think it would have caused much more of an uproar if this was true.
In case you do not know what it is, according to Wikipedia : “the 4th amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause." It sounds like this is being set up to help the Department of Homeland Security stop illegal immigrants and terrorist, etc.
Another source from a yahoo search I did brought up an article published on April 19th, 2013 by Scott Bomboy called “CISPA, the Fourth Amendment and you” which tells you all about the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act that is being voted on right now. As Bomboy describes it, “CISPA is designed to let the federal government work with private companies to fight hackers and cybercriminals in and outside of the United States.” I am all for fighting against terrorism, so if that means the government can search for certain phrases that I’m typing in my computer etc. I don’t really care because I have nothing to hide. Now if it were being abused by the government then I would be against it, but if CISPA is only to be used to protect our country then I think it is a good idea.
In conclusion, I understand the efforts to try and keep America a safe place, but to a certain extent. America stands for freedom and if we slowly start taking away our rights overtime we will end up just like all of the other countries that America looks down upon. There does need to be a stopping point to this if the government does decide to make some minor exceptions to our rights, so long as their powers are not being abused and their actions are for our best interest as a country.
I agree with some of the points Tyler makes in his post however, there are a few thing overlooked. For instance, the 4th amendment right is not going to be taken away but when the citizens of the United States willfully allow government officials to overstep their 4th Amendment right it is the same as citizens relenquishing that right. Also, CISPA may seem like a great idea to fight terrorism but why is it at the costs of internet users privacy? Terrorism has claimed less victims than cigarettes and alcohol related deaths, so why is our privacy being taken away for something that is not as deadly as others things that are more common and readily available to citizens such as cigarettes and alcohol. If CISPA was such a great idea, why is there so much opposition from major internet companies like Mozilla and other politcal activist? It seems this is more freedom being traded in for protection and every bit of privacy we once had will be gone.
ReplyDelete