Do we need a constitutional amendment to protect privacy?

National Constitution Center ^ | June 12, 2013 | NCC Staff

[Political Junkie Too]

I thought there were already emanations from penumbras that covered this.

At least that's what the liberals told me when it served their own privacy purposes at the time.

-PJ

[manc]

just like obama who is not telling the truth nor his thugs and corrupt officials

[Mister Da]

No point in adding any more amendments if they wont abide by the current ones.

The problem with the Constitution is its gross misinterpretation by Liberal judges & it being ignored by those charged with enforcing it, not its lack of adequate, proper content.

[BlatherNaut]

“The thought of a ConCon being thrown open in an age of low-info voters scares the literal crap out of me.”

Particularly since, in light of recent revelations, it’s safe to assume that the participants may have already been compromised on a wide scale via illegal surveillance by dear leader & co.

the last thing we need right now is to have a bunch of blackmail-facilitated leftist tools and puppets messing around with the constitution

[supercat]

What's shouldn't be, but apparently is, needed is an explicit statement of a few principles which all people should recognize as being requirements for legitimate governance.

To start with...

1. The fact that an action is not so patently illegitimate as to require a remedy does not imply that the action is legitimate. Likewise, if finding an action to be patently illegitimate would justify a remedy that would be impractical, it is better to acknowledge that the action is illegitimate but cannot practically be rolled back, than to imply that the action was legitimate.
2. All government personnel are required to make a good faith effort to abide by the Constitution, and not merely endeavor to avoid violating it so badly as to justify a remedy.
3. The fact that a government action is not undertaken in a good faith effort to abide by the Constitution is, in and of itself, sufficient to imply that the action is patently illegitimate and worthy of remedy, regardless of whether the action could have been legitimate if done in good faith.
4. The question of whether particular actions performed by particular individuals were done in good faith shall be a legitimate subject of factual inquiry; for example, if a prosecutor presents evidence gathered by a search, the defendant has the right to present evidence that he feels would show that the people conducting the search were not making a good faith effort to abide by the Constitution [which, among other things, requires that searches be conducted in reasonable fashion, and that those conducting the search make a good faith effort to avoid unnecessarily damaging the person's property]; a jury should be instructed that if they find that a search was not conducted in good faith, they should not construe any evidence thereby in any fashion detrimental to the defendant.

Much of the incrementalism of the government derives from the belief that a court's failure to find that an action implies a remedy implies a new threshold for what is legitimate. It shouldn't be necessary to state that such failure does not expand the scope of what's legitimate, but apparently it is.