Because the FBI only needs a warrant to wiretap people in the US. Nobody in the US was arrested as a result of this. The 4th amendment to the US constitution doesn't protect, for instance, Australians in Australia.
Literally speaking, the 4th Amendment is just a legal right. Most human rights declarations don't require warrants either, they're mostly much more loosely worded than legal rights documents.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
It specifically says that the natural right will not be violated, how is that a legal right?
The constitution is a legal document that is formally upheld by the US legal system. Many of the ideas within it were derived from other places, but it, itself, is a codified legal document.
It is a legal document guaranteeing a natural right. The Bill of Rights doesn't codify much of anything, it lays out certain things further laws can't tread on without extraordinary permission granted.
It guarantees much more than a natural right, and does so with the backing power of a legal institution. For example, the UDHR doesn't even mention the word "warrant", and it doesn't do anything to compel enforcement.
The BoR is, by plain definition, a codification of rights. To codify means to make into law, which is what it is: a law, implementing the formal recognition rights... and it does so by making illegal specific abuses.
That's not the way the US Bill of Rights frames it. It says that purely by existing people have certain rights, and society chooses which ones should be protected and which should be surrendered. By having means of communication, I naturally have the right to free speech. The government can only limit that freedom.
It's supposed to be a way of showing that the government is subservient to the citizens, as it does not have the power to grant citizens rights. I doubt it's effective though, as most people seem to think the Constitution grants rights.
> It says that purely by existing people have certain rights
Maybe that's just me, but that's way too abstract for me. Have planets and stars always had certain rights purely by existing as well?
> and society chooses which ones should be protected
Well in that case you could make the case that every single person has every single right anyone could possibly have and the society chooses a subset of these rights as actual laws. I guess this is a way to eat your cake and have it, too, since it makes the difference between my and your view unobservable.
The constitution grants legal rights on the basis that natural rights already exist.
You are right that people have rights without the constitution. Other people are right that the constitution grants rights. The confusion is that you are both talking about different types of rights.
We just fundamentally disagree on whether the Bill of Rights grants people legal rights or restricts the actions the federal government can make. I get that you probably don't think there is a difference, as even I think the difference is largely semantic. I still see it as a difference.
I recognize the difference between the two -- but those two concepts are not inseparable, the one causes the other. The restrictions that the constitution imposes created a set of legal rights.
A law that says "the government can't legally do [x] to me", by definition, creates a legal right that I have "a right not to have the government do [x] to me". They are semantically different in perspective, but causal in relationship.
Yeah, I completely understand your point of view. I think if the intention of the Bill of Rights was to grant legal rights they would not have used the language they did. All the talk of "infringement" and "enumeration" make it clear they were going out of their way not to grant rights.
If people said "the constitution grants the right for our free speech not to be infringed" I'd probably ignore it. That's not how any discussion goes though.
Here's why I think this matters in this instance. By saying the 4th is "just a legal right," you are saying that the Constitution only grants it to certain people and the government can spy on anyone else. But by saying it's only a limitation, there's no qualifier on whose rights they can infringe.
The citizens of the world who believe in universal human rights should gather consensus with the world lest they have nothing to do but continue to talk about how much of a bummer things are on a HN forum.
Of course, international rights also need international enforcement, since a right without enforcement is just a nice thought. Perhaps we'll also have a world order to enforce these rights.
> Of course, international rights also need international enforcement, since a right without enforcement is just a nice thought. Perhaps we'll also have a world order to enforce these rights.
Universal human rights have exploded to be adopted by much of the world, without an international government.
Rights are not just nice thoughts. Even oppressive governments don't have the resources to control everything everyone does (of course). Just adopting the outlook, just believing you are free will make you free to a great extent.
Seeing the current state of freedom and rights across the world, I'd much rather have to deal with my own national crooks than a worldwide organization purporting to fight for my rights
Citizens are groups of humans who decide on different subsets of rights. E.g. humans in Germany are not allowed to be educated while young outside of the buildings of the state.
Sure, but that doesn't change the basic point - you can't use an argument for human rights to confer citizen-only rights.
If you're the US government, and you're justifying your power by saying that you respect human rights, and then you do a bait-and-switch and provide citizen's rights but not human rights, you just lied.
That being said, strictly speaking I disagree, citizens do not have full authority on rights and neither are all rights conferred to classes of citizens.
No, they didn't. That document literally discusses that they only wiretap overseas messages, likely because they couldn't legally wiretap US messages (though it should be noted that the Australian police did have a warrant for the wiretaps in their jurisdiction).
Probably the same reason why planting a bug in someone's home is illegal, but selling an always a smart speaker (aka always on microphone) to them and getting them to install isn't.
