On Thursday, August 9, 2001, at 01:55 PM, Trei, Peter wrote:

Aimee, who is somewhat of a newcomer to our list, is groping towards an idea which seems to hold the minds of many contributors; that the contents of our private data are as personal, and should be as inviolate, as the contents of our heads.

To those of us to whom the use of computers is as natural as breathing, our data are as much a part of us as our memories, and we instinctively feel they should be just as intimately held.

We now use computers as extensions of our minds - a vast store of knowledge, ideas, and abilities. This ability simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was written, and as computers grew out of accounting equipment, their data came to be treated as 'papers' rather than 'memories'.

I agree with your sentiments, but not where I think you are going with this. Importantly, there is nothing in the Constitution about "memories" have special protection. There is "secure in one's papers and possessions," there is language about under what conditions a person may be compelled to testify, but there is no special protection or language about "memories." And I think writings on a computer are no more special than writings in journals and letters and personal papers. Many of the Founders and their contemporaries were _prodigious_ writers, generating thousands of notes and letters a year. Many were ardent diarists. They would agree, I'm sure, with our current revulsion for having fishing expeditions where the King's men root around in papers looking for thoughtcrimes and evidence of conspiracies. I'm not a historian, but I don't recall hearing about many "take all of the papers and diaries in the house" raids on people in the 1800s. Most court cases were about alleged actual crimes, not thoughtcrimes. (Perhaps during the persecution of the Mormons in Missouri there were zealous prosecutors and judges who ordered all papers sifted through. As I said, I'm not a historian.) It seems that it was this past century that political crimes, thoughtcrimes like Debs being jailed for talking about the draft being bad, became so central to our corrupt legal system. The search for communists, dissidents, and troublemakers. This was paralleled by trends in "discovery." In the past 20 years it has become routine for lawyers to demand every scrap of paper of any conceivable relevance, whether in a divorce case or an antitrust case. (This is why IBM, Microsoft, Intel and other companies shred so many records.) Then we had the War on (Some) Drugs, the seizures of property, the Steve Jackson Games case (where _every_ computer and disk drive was dumped in the back of a truck and hauled away. It's as if someone accused of a minor crime in 1820 were to have his diaries and papers and all of his books taken away for later scrutinizing. And it could have happened in 1820, had the people allowed it. The problem is not that "memories" are being seized. The problem is that "secure in one's papers and possessions" has become a joke, a null and void idea. The solution is pretty obvious to most liberty-minded folks: 1) End the War on (Some) Drugs. This will eliminate most trafficking, distribution, money laundering, and gang war crimes. 2) Nix the idea that a simple search warrant means the contents of a house or office can be carted away. (The Founders would have been shocked at how easy it now is to get a search warrant.) 3) Return to the concept that a search warrant is to be _presented_ to the target of the warrant. There are very few cases where secret searches are needed, once drug crimes and "conspiracies" are interpreted less broadly. 4) Require that _judges_ who issue secret search warrants disclose them after some amount of time. This takes it out of the hands of the FBI to disclose such warrants. Perhaps have a judge supervised by a more senior judge, who monitors compliance. 5) Fewer things criminal, but punish real crimes harshly. Instead of letting an arsonist off with a stern lecture while putting a kid selling blotter acid at a Dead concert in prison for 10 years, don't prosecute the kid and kill the arsonist. For thieves, put them on a work gang for several years. For murderers and rapists (real rapists, not Wimmin's Lib victims), kill them. 6) For cops found guilty of inserting toilet plungers into detainees, kill them. 7) For those involved in burning the Waco compound, kill them. And so on. But stop manufacturing police state thoughtcrimes and then using the courts to rubber-stamp hunting expeditions for more crimes revealed in papers and diaries and computer discs. --Tim May