On the recordDecember 27, 2012
I rise today in support of the Fourth Amendment Protection Act. The fourth amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. John Adams considered the fight against general warrants--or what they called in those days writs of assistance--to be when ``the child Independence was born.'' Our independence and the fourth amendment go hand in hand. They emerge together. To discount or to dilute the fourth amendment would be to deny really what constitutes our very Republic. But somehow, along the way, we have become lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. We have allowed Congress and the courts to diminish our fourth amendment protections, particularly when we give our papers to a third party--once information is given to an Internet provider or to a bank. Once we allowed our papers to be held by third parties, such as telephone companies or Internet providers, the courts determined we no longer had a legally recognized expectation of privacy. There have been some dissents over time. Justice Marshall dissented in the California Bankers Association v. Schulz case, and he wrote these words: The fact that one has disclosed private papers to a bank for a limited purpose within the context of a confidential customer-bank relationship does not mean that one has waived all right to the privacy of the papers.…
