Can the FBI Secretly Track Your Cell Phone?

[pauldun170]

Originally Posted by Papa_Complex

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.

Nope...doesn't quite do it.

Origins of the fourth amendment: (From the Virginia Declaration of Rights)

"That popos warrant, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted."

The history goes farther back into all the bullshit from England and the way they operated....you know...the reason why we jumped off the God save the queen bandwagon.

By itself it only prohibits the Federal government from just showing up in your house without a warrant (a warrant that is generated based on genuine concern and not for shits and giggles (see 1833 Barron v. Baltimore). State governments could actually just walk in and take a dump on your living room table as they watched you fingerbang your wife since it was established that the Bill of Rights did no apply to the states and only to the federal government.


But along come the 14th amendment in 1868 after the Civil war because the Federal governemtn had enough of uppity southerners and decided to bitch slap them Constitutionally.

Over the 100+ years that followed, the Supreme Court has been trying to figure out WTF was Willis talkin about...

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

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wickitty-wickity pedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorpo...)#Amendment_IV

[edit] Amendment IV
Unreasonable search and seizure

This right has been incorporated against the states, along with the remedy of exclusion of unlawfully seized evidence, by the Supreme Court's decision in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). In Mapp, the Court overruled Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), in which the Court had ruled that while the Fourth Amendment applied to the states (meaning that they were bound not to engage in unreasonable searches and seizures), the exclusionary rule did not (meaning that they were free to fashion other remedies for criminal defendants whose possessions had been illegally seized by the police in violation of the Fourth Amendment).
Warrant requirements

The various warrant requirements have been incorporated against the states. See Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964).
The standards for judging whether a search or seizure undertaken without a warrant was "unreasonable" also have been incorporated against the states. See Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963).

Here is an awesome timeline
http://atheism.about.com/library/dec...ivacyIndex.htm

Some more reading
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...ofprivacy.html