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Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

The US Constitual protection for privacy only applies to US citizens. Would US citizens be willing to amend it to make it apply to everyone.

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Some things in the constitution apply only to citizens, most don't. When it says person, it means person, not citizen. Educating people that this prevalent view is false would already go a long way.

However, this definition of "person" requires them to be subject to US law (typically by residing in the US) which foreign residents of a foreign country are not.

That is part of the reason we have a detention facility at Guantanemo.

It is not sufficient that the person acting on someone else is subject to US law? That seems kinda broken. Do you have a link that elaborates on this? From the 14th Amendment for example:

> 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.

Note how it mentions citizens, any person, and persons within the jurisdiction as three separate things... ?

Not quite that clear. There is an (sort of) exemption to the US 4th Amendement warrent requirement for " surveillance is conducted to obtain foreign intelligence for national security purposes and is directed against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers reasonably believed to be located outside the United States"

And this applies to blanket mass surveillance how?

What protection is that? Search and seizure is not about privacy; it's about physical intrusion into personal space. Had they meant to address intrusion into abstract privacy they would have.

It's easy to argue that abstract privacy as a concept separate form physical privacy simply did not exist at that time in history because of a lack of electronics. A corollary is that they probably would have added abstract privacy if they had had the benefit of hindsight.

Oh, it certainly existed. Conspicuously no stricture on unwarranted spying for purposes of investigation was stated and that had to be read into it later by the courts (which I consider juristic legislation.) It's not clear to me that the framers didn't intend to reserve that right for investigation.

I'm not saying it is wrong to restrict it, just that the constitution should have been so amended for it to be considered a constitutional question.

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