On the "Expectation of Privacy"

In assessing the "search and seizure" of personal data by law enforcement, modern courts have applied the test of "reasonable expectation of privacy." This test implies that if the citizen has used his data in such a way that exposes it to others, for example, used it in a business transaction, then law enforcement may use it against them without restriction.  

The Framers never conceived of this test and might well be surprised by it.  Rather, the tests that they wrote into the Bill of Rights were "reasonable" and "probable cause."  If a search or seizure is "unreasonable," then law enforcement must have a warrant from a court.  The test for the issuance of a warrant is probable cause to believe that a crime has been, not will be, committed.  

These are constitutional tests and they are independent of how the citizen uses his personal information or what his expectations are.  He should not need to do, think, or "expect" anything in order for them to apply.  The tests apply to the behavior of the state, not the expectation of the citizen.  They restrict what the state, the police, may do.  The Bill of Rights places the burden on the state to show that its behavior is lawful, not on the citizen to demonstrate a right or "expectation."  Note that while information obtained in violation of these tests may not be used to convict the citizen of a crime, it is routinely used to investigate, threaten, and coerce, the very things that the Framers feared from a powerful government.  

In some cases, the state, with the tacit consent of the courts, pretends to get a warrant for all searches.  It pretends that it can legitimately collect anything as long as it does not look at it.  However, the Bill of Rights does not limit the tests to searches but also to "seizures." The government operates a data center in Bluffdale Utah.  In a world in which one can put a terabyte of data in one's pocket for $100, the government requires 26 acres of floor space to accommodate the data that it collects world-wide on citizens' communications.  It claims that this seizure is not "unreasonable" and that it does not need a warrant unless it "searches" or looks at the data.  By what reasoning can the arbitrary collection of so much data be called "reasonable?"

I am not hopeful that this view will be argued before the courts or that, even it argued, it will change much.  Nonetheless, I had to argue it.