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Comment by hawkice | Hacker News Reader

The Fourth Amendment is part of a document legally defining and describing the rights in American legal tradition, in this case a right that you and I both find to be a core part of our humanity and social contract (which is why it is so important it is legally respected, although I personally find the principle worthy of extending much farther).

While we recognize in a moral and philosophical sense today that we should treat all people of the globe identically, that isn't the group of people the Fourth Amendment protects. In a general sense, people in other countries are not subject to American law (despite being part of the same humanity and, we can agree, deserving of being treated with respect). If people and objects in other countries were subject to American law, there is a deep sense in which there would only be one country (The United States) with charming colonies labelled things like "Iceland" on maps.

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> In a general sense, people in other countries are not subject to American law

The rights are really limitations on the American government, so it's not "subjecting" anyone to anything, and there's no reason limitations on the US government couldn't apply to how it treats people all over the globe. It's no imposition on the sovereignty of Iceland for the US not allow itself to hack into servers there.

Moreover, in practice, it's way more complicated than you're implying. The Supreme Court has been clear that the geographical location of a US citizen actually doesn't matter at all:

> When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land. [1]

So it's not just "people in other countries", and presumably the same thing applies to his property being in that other country.

And it's not just citizenship that matters: foreigners on US soil are protected by much of the Constitution, even undocumented immigrants [2]. So apparently neither location nor citizenship strip you of your rights. However--and this is the weird part--for some reason the combination matters: foreigners on foreign soil are not afforded the protections of the Constitution. See e.g. [3].

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/354/1 [2] http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/illegalrig... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Verdugo-Urquid...

I think you'll find we completely agree -- the simplification seemed appropriate because it really is a question of how US law applies to objects located and plausibly operated by people who aren't Americans.

An important point you made, though:

> The rights are really limitations on the American government [...] It's no imposition on the sovereignty of Iceland for the US not allow itself to hack into servers there.

This is pointing in the key direction I was trying to go. I feel we _should_ hold ourselves to a higher standard, and I suspect there is no substantial barrier legally. But judges are rarely in the business of "should", otherwise we wouldn't have rule of law. Hence my comment about him seeming to just do his job in this case.

Anyhow, you got my upvote. :)

> The Fourth Amendment is part of a document legally defining and describing...

No disagreement there. But that doesn't mean that the document grants the right. It merely recognizes the rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...

These rights are not granted by the United States. The United States cannot grant or take away natural rights. That's what they are and how they were intended to work.

The Declaration of Independence is not part of the Constitution, you know.

Also, there are limits on those rights. There's one example in the opinion; if the police somewhere else discover some incriminating information about you and voluntarily pass it along to American police, it is admissible regardless of whether the foreign investigation would have been valid under the 4th amendment if initiated by American law enforcement.

As a simple example, imagine a drug bust in Thailand which would not be 4th amendment compliant turns up evidence that 50% of the money from the drug operation is always send to John Doe, who lives on 123 Main Street in Anytown, USA. The FBI duly arrests John Doe and he's charges with international drug trafficking. The Thai evidence is admissible notwithstanding the non-compliance of Thai investigative procedures with US law.

This isn't meant to be an analogy for this case, BTW, just an illustration of one limiting case.

A great opinion. I heartily endorse that opinion.

But the FBI, and US DoJ, operate under some interpretation of the verbiage in the US Constitution. That interpretation has come to mean less and less protection against searches and seizures over the years, as the US Supreme Court interprets what the (to me) plain and simple language of the 4th amendment says.

They can hold those truths self evident, but it isn't self evident.

Germany does give human rights to non-Germans. And you can sue the German government for not upholding them. (They only give citizen's rights to Germans, though.)

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