132 Protection from Search & Seizure

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The 4th Amendment of the Constitution states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”</p> <p>Thomas Paine said a patriot was “a citizen who protects his country from his government." Americans do not trust government to be benevolent nor should they. This was the reason the Constitution was written in the first place but it doesn't seem to be working in the case of the 4th Amendment: how can confiscation of your property by government, where your property has to prove it is innocent, not be a violation against seizure. And when a shadowy government organization, the NSA, peruses everything on you computer, is that not a search? This is an example of how not fervently defending a Right allows it to atrophy out of existence.</p> <p>More than 300 federal statutes authorize government agencies to issue "administrative subpoenas" unilaterally, bypassing neutral judges & probable cause, letting government agencies obtain private records of individuals & businesses. Police were looking at the personal data & pictures on people's cell phones before The Supreme Court stopped them. Snowden's release of secret documents showed they are making full scans of people's computers, but that will only stop after it too is adjudicated before the Supreme Court, and even then I've lost faith that law enforcement can be trusted to show proper respect for the 4th Amendment. Is there really any protection from Search & Seizure? Why do we let them? Almost 50,000 people die of prescription opiate overdoses a year, but we let terrorist killing of even a handful of people stampede us away from a Right actually enumerated in the Constitution. We are cowards, not deserving of our liberty.</p>