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Comment by dfc | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for changing titles when they make the topic clear to the reader or combat hyperbolic escalation. With that in mind what was wrong with the original title?

9th Circuit Appeals Court: 4th Amendment Applies At The Border; Also: Password Protected Files Shouldn't Arouse Suspicion

Other than grammatical errors what did the change of title provide?

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I like the modified title. It serves as a tidy tl;dr.

What is in the modified title that is not in the original? (Other than grammar errors)

Conciseness.

In addition to what rhizome said, the modified title puts the most significant piece of information first.

Re: grammar, I think the article (expected "the") is optional in that case, if you read "expectation of privacy" as a singular concept.

The new heading seems reasonably accurate and much more clear.

"9th Circuit Appeals Court" does not add useful information (at least not enough to warrant inclusion in the heading) and "4th amendment" doesn't mean anything at all to those of us who are not Americans.

Unless you were following the case the inclusion of the 9th circuit is a nice way to scope the impact of the ruling.

9th Circuit adds a ton of useful information: its decisions are only binding in the 9th circuit (California, etc). Also, it's the most overturned Circuit at the Supreme Court level by a large margin.

The sixth, I think, took that honor a few years ago. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/a_sixth_sense_6th...

> Also, it's the most overturned Circuit at the Supreme Court level by a large margin.

The stat pack for the previous term appears to disagree with you. (For anyone not familiar with their terminology, note that OT 2011 refers to the period between October 4, 2011 and September 30, 2012.)

http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/SCO...

The 9th Circuit was 7-17 while the 6th was 0-5. For a discussion of prior years, see: http://westreferenceattorneys.com/2011/07/should-the-ninth-c...

I'm not saying that that the 9th Circuit isn't useful information per se. But this thread is about what belongs in this particular headline. Just because it's interesting information (to that tiny sector of the readership that follows US law closely enough to know their 9th Circuits from their 10th Circuits) doesn't necessarily mean that information has to live in the headline. The crux of the story is that the courts have finally upheld the idea of privacy at the border. That's the news.

'"9th Circuit Appeals Court" does not add useful information'

"9th circuit appeals court" is probably the most important part of the article. It tells me the Supreme Court didn't decide this -- so nothing has changed for 41 of the 50 states.

Yea, I hate the 80 char limit too.

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