First Amendment: Protection of Privacy

As a private citizen, my privacy is very important, especially when in this new digital age; governmental agencies will use that information against you if they have a probable cause to. However, we are protected under the First and Fourth amendment, which gives us rights to speech, to drink or smoke in our homes without governmental intrusion. But when those rights are violated, we have the options to dispute those actions and if not satisfied with the results we can take it to the courts. But in order to do this we must limit what we say or do, in order to prevent these agencies from trying to impinge on our rights of liberty. What this does is give the agencies the right to look into our lives, but are we actually giving them the right or are we opening ourselves and allowing them to “eavesdrop into our conversations, lives, homes and vehicles.

In what may be the first court ruling on the subject, a U.S. District Court in Minnesota earlier this month held that school officials who required a student to provide access to social media accounts violated the student’s First and Fourth Amendment protections. (Court: Student’s Facebook Messages Are Protected Speech, 2012)

The case concerns a 12-year-old student in Minnesota who wrote a comment on her Facebook wall while in her home, expressing her dislike of a school employee, which was followed by another posting of a similar nature. The student was questioned by school officials about what she wrote, and was disciplined for each incident. The school officials compelled her to give them access to her Facebook and personal email accounts, which they searched. Citing precedents such as Tinker v. Des Moines, the District Court held that out-of-school statements “are protected u...

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...fordable. But at the time this form of surveillance wasn’t readily available to the public. (Kyllo v. U.S.)

Even though it wasn’t readily available to the public, it still doesn’t justify law enforcement illegally searching a person’s home without a warrant. This is getting really scary, to think that someone feels as though I am living a better life than they are, and assume I am selling drugs, can inform law enforcement and they will use a thermal imager to look into my home. Our government has truly loss its mind. Whatever I do in my own home is my business, and it doesn’t require anyone to look into it to see why I am living like I do.

Greed and corruption has taken over our society and if the people don’t start paying attention we could be living in a society completely controlled by government and law enforcement, so much for our Constitutional Rights.