I seem to recall a case where a land owner used the third amendment to refuse and block rent-free occupation of his land by the Border Patrol. His land was bounded on the south by the Mexican/US border. This case (mid-70's)already makes the generalization from military to agents of the state. I will try to find the citation. If found it will be posted. -----Original Message----- From: bgt [mailto:bgt@chrootlabs.org] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 1:45 PM To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Quartering soldiers On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 12:48, Tim May wrote:

On Jan 13, 2004, at 8:41 AM, Steve Schear wrote:

...

At 11:23 PM 1/12/2004, Tim May wrote:

...

"But if I own a computer and I rent out accounts to others and the FBI comes to me and says "We are putting a Carnivore computer in your place," how else can this be interpreted _except_ as a violation of the Third?"

The pure form of the Third (in this abstract sense) is when government

knocks on one's door and says "Here is something you must put inside your house."

By the way, there have been a bunch of cases where residents of a neighborhood were ordered to leave so that SWAT teams could be in

For this to make sense, we have to interpret Soldier to mean not just agents of the armed forces (military), it has to mean law-enforcement as well. I can accept the idea of abstracting the Third beyond humans to software/hardware agents, etc... but I'm not so sure about the military vs. law enforcement distinction. Can anyone point me to some founder's writings that may help support the interpretation of Soldier to mean any agent of the government? Even if we did extend the Third to mean law-enforcement... since Congress has repeatedly ceded their authority to determine when the country was "in a time of war" to the Executive, and as such we are now in a perpetual time of war, any quartering has to be prescribed by law, rather than prohibited outright. For these reasons, I have to agree with Tim's earlier referenced post, to the effect of "the only solutions now available are Technology and Terrorism." their

houses to monitor a nearby house where a hostage situation had developed. (It is possible that in each house they occupied they received uncoerced permission to occupy the houses, but I don't think this was always the case; however, I can't cite a concrete case of this. Maybe Lexis has one.)

If this takeover of houses to launch a raid is not a "black letter law" case of the government quartering troops in residences, nothing is. Exigent circumstance, perhaps, but so was King George's need to quarter his troops.

I think someone in this case would have a much better argument for a Fourth amendment violation (unreasonable seizure of their home, albeit temporarily), though probably, today, still unsuccessful in a court. --bgt