The 21st century is also known as the technology age. This provides all people endless possibilities to access surveillance. Technology has changed the way we connect with each other. Today we find that any time someone uses Google, Facebook, or Amazon, those websites collect everything we do every time we access them. Due to technology advancing, big corporations and our government have been able to collect, save searches, and analyze what we had browsed. In a world like today, we find ourselves to be surrounded by inescapable surveillance. Because technology is being rooted in everything we do, it can be argued that electronic surveillance violates our Fourth Amendment and how The Patriot Act violates the Constitution.
In 2011, The Supreme Court had to reflect on what the United State’s citizens consider ethical under the Fourth Amendments searches and seizures. “The Fourth Amendment is a rare part of the Constitution that explicitly requires judges to adjust standards to reflect changes in society. What was unreasonable before may be reasonable now (Gordon Crovitz, L. 2011).”
There were many cases that involve Americans with the Fourth Amendment, which include Katz V.United States. This court case occurred in 1967, when Charles Katz used a public telephone in L.A, California to call-in unlawful gambling bets. While he’s using the public phone, Mr. Katz, unknowingly was being phone tapped by The United States Federal authorities. They had been listening and Katz was arrested right away. Charles Katz had told the court that the authorities had violated his rights as an American citizen; he stated that the FBI and the L.A. Police Department interceded his actions. In Katz v. United States, the Court preferred Katz. They addressed that the L.A.P.D. and the FBI violated his right to privatization. This property is expressed in the 4th Amendment to the U.S. charter.
The U.S. Supreme Court states that use of a public telephone is personal in nature. When someone uses a telephone, no authorities are authorized to listen to the call except they have gathered and secured a reason or evidence that factors to illegal activity. This amendment blatantly states the right to one’s privacy. The Fourth Amendment is, “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 (U.S Constitution).”The government has conflicted with the Fourth Amendment through National Security. National Security was propelled amid George Bush’s organization and each communication device in the country was under observation. Cell phones, internet traffic, emails and instant messages are all monitored by the Department of Homeland Security (Stefoff, 2011).
The Fourth Amendment constructs a wall towards this form of surveillance. Before looking into Americans’ personal communications, the Fourth Amendment demands for authorities to display all likelihood cause or individualized suspicion. The NSA surveillance applications undermine these protections, threatening to render them a useless letter for all “overseas intelligence records”—a category widely defined to consist of records now not only approximately terrorism, but also about intelligence sports, countrywide defense, and even the “overseas affairs” of America.
Collecting conversations of citizens undermines basic concepts of privacy. The NSA’s massive, suspicionless surveillance of american citizens’ private communications will no longer most effective affect the work of journalists, legal professionals, and others who often communicate with humans overseas. it’s going to also affect the behavior of everyday residents, now scared of travelling a arguable internet site or discussing a selected topic via email.
