Saturday, February 20, 2010

If anyone ever asks me why I've got the simplest cell phone I can find...

...I can answer with this attempt on our God-given, Constitutionally-guaranteed safe from government bureaucrats rights.

Blackberries, iPhones, and other really fancy communications devices have edged away from being mere 'phones into being small computers, containing much of their owners' lives through correspondence, paperwork, appointment books, and the like.

Law enforcement agencies are pushing for the legal ability to thumb through peoples' lives through their cell phones without the need for a warrant. That, as I said, is like picking through their computers, or through hard-copy filing cabinets, without said warrant. It is not necessarily protected within the wording of the laws, Constitutionally or otherwise, but it is by God protected by the intent behind those laws.

I don't know if law enforcement will get what they want regarding warrantless searches of arrested perps' cell phones; however, I do know that, if this is permitted, none of us are safe from the same.

2 comments:

  1. Another reason why I don't own a
    'cell phone"!

    Why in the hell does anyone want anything more on a "cell phone''
    other than the ability to call someone??

    ReplyDelete
  2. My other half insisted when I got pregnant and was still working on campus.

    As for why anyone wants anything more than a phone...so they don't have to carry anything *but* their phone (as in, not having to carry note taking supplies, computers, etc.) to meetings. I would have been using something like that to read novels during boring pedagogy meetings during grad school. My classroom students use them to do something other than class work (and I take their cell phones away).

    It's not worth it, in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete

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