"Shrinking zone of privacy" question of the day: Should police be able to track you by placing a GPS unit on your car, without getting a warrant?
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. Most adults in the U.S. have created Facebook accounts, which disclose more information than the most avid gossip-monger could have produced in the days before social media.
As an example of how privacy expectations have changed, consider a case brought in the late 19th century. Actress Marian Manola was playing a Broadway role requiring her to wear tights, a racy outfit for the era. To protect her modesty, she got an injunction when someone in the audience used the new technologies of a camera and a "flash light."
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Technology makes it easier for law enforcement to gather information, even as we expect more information to be public. "In the pre-computer, pre-Internet age most of the privacy that people enjoyed," Justice Alito noted, "was not the result of legal protections or constitutional protections. It was the result simply of the difficulty of traveling around and gathering up information."
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There is an element of circularity to Fourth Amendment rights. As we get used to new technology, expectations of privacy decrease and more searches seem reasonable. Instead of trying to set a new legal definition of reasonableness in stone, the justices might embrace humility and leave it to legislators to outlaw overzealous law enforcement.
Thought-provoking article, full read recommended. It's been mentioned here more than once, but it still bears repeating, that the most insidious aspect of that shrinking zone is how much less zealous we seem to be these days about both protecting our privacy and protesting its diminishment. It's off the Fourth Amendment topic, but also contributing greatly to changing attitudes about privacy is the fact that many youthful users of the "social media" seem to have no reservations about putting everything about themselves out there for public consumption, with no clue that it could come back to haunt them later.
