Talk:Expectation of privacy (United States)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sandratorres28. Peer reviewers: Scubasarah8, ChrissyJensen, HannahGillis.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Invasion of privacy redirect

Invasion of privacy is a class of common law torts. It shouldn't redirect here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.163.49.29 (talk) 00:56, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Article history

While monitoring "polydactyly" I spotted an anon listed Daniela Cicarelli there. While perusing the latter article to see if the addition was valid I wikilinked "expectation of privacy" in it and noticed that the wikilink actually redirects to a wrong page. At first I re-redirected it to privacy law, but immediately detected that the latter article sucks, so I had to write my own stub here despite being an utter laymman in the legal area. Laudak (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Globalize

It seems imperative to me that the beginning of this page should emphasise that this is exclusively about the US. --The Lesser Merlin (talk) 12:08, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I've added the globalization template and tossed in a few words to the effect that this is USA-only. If there are other countries that have a similar concept, it would be interesting to see the differences and similarities compared. And if not, then that very fact could be worth mentioning. Carl T (talk) 12:52, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Since this appears to be a US-only subject, there is no need for the {{globalize}} template. If the concept exists in other countries' legal systems, then that information can be added and the template re-included as necessary. 69.74.234.178 (talk) 13:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course the the notions of privacy and its expectation exists in other world. Laudak (talk) 16:24, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not think that this can be or should be globalized. The legal test of a reasonable expectation of privacy is litigative tool that has brought to the US protections of privacy (such as the secrecy of correspondence) that in many (if not most) other countries are guaranteed by specific parts of their respective constitutions. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

P.S. - What remains of the old intro is crap. The law does not guarantee a "reasonable expectation of privacy". Litigation tests if an expectation is reasonable in order to see, if the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:47, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

It is exactly this unsupported loose opinion ("many (if not most) other countries") that prompted my original caution that this page should emphasise that this is exclusively about the US. One often encounters US citizens who expect the same Civil liberties wherever find themselves (perhaps forgetting that The Bill of Rights is exclusive to the United States Constitution. The Lesser Merlin (talk) 14:02, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

DYK conflict

Although the DYK teaser 6/11/08 contrasted legal expectation of privacy in a phone booth and in a car, there's nothing at all about cars in this article (there should be: searches of cars constitute a major part of privacy and search law). Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 14:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I removed it as not supported by the reference, and from an unreliable source (also removed it from todays DYK because it was no longer in the article). It's fundamentally wrong to say that there is no privacy in cars; a great deal of search and seizure law is regarding the rights of suspects in a vehicle.⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 15:53, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

"Unreliable source" - I beg to disagree: the book is written by attorneys and provides law references. Phrase restored. If you have something interesting to write about seizure in vehicles, please add a wikipedia article. Laudak (talk) 17:04, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Has Anybody Read This Section

With respect to the English language?

== Canada ==

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms; Without authorization violates Section Eight of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Providing everyone within Canada with protection against unreasonable search and seizure)

What does that mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MikeyMoose (talk • contribs) 00:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Dunno. Appears to be random garbage. The globalize tag on this article is ridiculous as the U.S. is the only legal system that actually has extensive case law relating to the reasonable expectation of privacy. Other legal systems have a "right to privacy," which is fundamentally different. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Not true. The US simply has had the most extensive civil rights debate over privacy in open court since the 1960s.

By the blanket statement of "right to privacy" you are actually simply pointing out the conservative nature of most other nations to en masse accept the current traditions until political and social power mongers decide to make changes behind the scene. US type court room circus are not allowed in many nations or seen elsewhere as too much expense and lack of dignity.

ALL practical Constitutions suffer for the necessity of brevity. The US Constitution is probably more verbose than most on the topic of privacy. Nevertheless as time passes and circumstance multiply (often due to technology) the Pros and Cons of where to draw the privacy boundaries becomes a matter of fresh impact on the public. Again in lots of countries the public lets the people in national political power draw the new boundaries by fait accompli of unadvertised new laws. From what little I know only the liberal northern European countries make their Constitutions into a book writing contest in order to precisely define defining social rights exhaustively in Constitutional form. From what I understand they have a lot more grassroots effort in making political decision outside court rooms (like the US) or backrooms of government offices (elsewhere). Formal processes to ratify specific language is more spontaneous last minute formality once substantial consensus is reached in the informal population. Many factors help them do that including low population density, traditional communal society, and lots of dark time in the winter with nothing better to do. :)

PS I am one of many US citizens who do NOT like to see court rooms used for political purposes or silly personal quests. But "political circus are us" especially in civil courts has come to outweigh the ballot box and often even the legislature. Probably due to the high position of the US Supreme Court in our nation in refereeing between Executive and legislature.

72.182.3.3 (talk) 18:06, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Globalize tag replaced

I replaced the "globalize" tag and removed the claim "The 'expectation of privacy,' as a legal concept with a precise definition, is found only in U.S. case law." The concept of expectation of privacy is not unique to U.S. law. It is a concept in Canadian law as well: see Hunter v. Southam and R. v. Tessling for example. ... discospinster _talk 21:37, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

no expectation of privacy

This passage was added by anonymous user 216.14.42.138 in July 2011 with no citations:

Other examples include: account records held by the bank, a person's physical characteristics (including blood, hair, fingerprints, fingernails and the sound of your voice), what the naked eye can see below in public air space (without the use of special equipment), anything in open fields (eg. barn), odors emanating from your car or luggage and paint scrapings on the outside of your car.

I find it very hard to believe that bank account records are not essentially private. That's not to say that the government can't gain access to it, but if my bank were to tell anyone that asked how much money was in my account, etc. I think most people would consider that a gross invasion of privacy.

As to a person's blood, that is definitively not a good example of something where there is no expectation of privacy. Blood that a person leaves at a crime scene is not private, but blood that is still in a person's body requires a court order in many jurisdictions. The US Supreme Court has just agreed to take a case on exactly this issue http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/25/us-usa-court-idUSBRE88O19U20120925

--- Vroo (talk) 20:28, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

email

Most people think it's private, some governments think it's public. It would be nice if somebody could write something on this issue. Palosirkka (talk) 06:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

It hilarious that simply based on the word "mail" the similar act of composition - people have convinced courts and law makers to extend postal regulations before any laws to do so existed. Can graffitti "mail" between gangs etc be similarly extended regardless of media and public access? What is even funnier is that postal mail privacy is referred to as a constitutional issue but actually only establishment of the postal service itself is brief mentioned in the US Constitution ("To establish Post Offices and post Roads").

Lots of circumstances AND POLITICS come into play. Too much for Wikipedia to analyze even for one country like the US. Until the 1960s the 4th amendment only covered the federal government (not state, local, corps or other individuals) and only physical entry onto property (land/buildings).

First a lot of email still crosses networks and even the Internet in unencrypted form. Anyone can read it if they bother to eavesdrop with simple network tools. Just check out your local neighborhood cable Internet in promiscuous mode with a simple protocol analyzer (email probably one of the easiest more human readable masses of data out there). As such email is very much like talking in public gathering space...just because its a PERSONAL conversation does not actually make it private except as wishful thinking. Court cases about government snooping are very cloudy here. It seems that privacy is only an issue at this stage if the snooper needs to control, reconfigure or execute code on someone else's network hardware and did not get their permission. Even then its primarily about theft of resources and ruining commercial/public reputation for the hardware owner.

In contrast if your email is on servers at work - the whole corporation versus individual flavor of politics overcomes the practical aspects of corp owning physical email storage and transport and providing it exclusively for business purposes. Plus ignoring that any deep administrative diagnosis by technicians tends to reveal particular email passing through the system as a matter of normal business. Nevertheless, the US courts have established that corp email is private unless higher federal court orders give the government search rights. Originally this was merely a matter of how civil courts precedences get wound up in politics (you can sue for anything in the US). This has now become partially a matter of criminal law...despite constitutional roots actually only saying what the GOVERNMENT cannot do. Anyways the odd thing is that its legally established that private individuals can make unlimited use of corp email in the US and any legal liability falls to the corporation.

Specifically corp email is the best legal place to operate illegal porn rings and conduct other illegal activities because it normally has much higher privacy protection for individual than their home computers. Plus zero civil liability plus it can cast doubt on criminal liability in some circumstance. As always consult a lawyer about specifics. I suspect the reasoning extends from the wide-held political belief that once the court order is obtained the government cannot resist snooping into everyone's email even if the order names a single person or trail of email conversations.

Free commercial servers like Hotmail.com and Gmail.com are similarly effected by corp association and past political dislike of marketing research based on mailing list etc. Note: webpages yield tons more marketing gathering events including your email address on most browsers.

However, if your email was on an classroom educational server or even a public non-profit organization server...it might well be seen as not private. Oh and some such email is automatically posted to public forums and as such you would not expect privacy if you were observant. Basically if the server is non-political and primarily operated for public discussions - don't count on it being considered private email.

And personal home run email servers or ones of a private club? Email there is likely just a whiff of suspicion from probable cause court order. :( 72.182.3.3 (talk) 17:28, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Drug Dog Sniff

The overview of this article currently lists the SCOTUS precedent a drug dog sniff at a car to be a search where an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy. It might be prudent to note or contrast this with this term's Florida v. Jardines case, wherein the majority ruled that similar searches conducted immediately outside citizens' homes do, in fact, infringe the 4th.. Since the constitutionality of the action turns solely on the reasonable expectation of privacy, it could be very appropriate here. 2601:0:8580:63:C02C:34A6:22FC:775D (talk) 19:35, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

References

Peer Review

This page seems to be coming along! Of course, the lead section needs developed more to be a more thorough summary of the article. I'm glad to see you added more court cases regarding this issue in order to address Wikipedia's issue of a too focal view on the US. I don't see issues with language as far as being persuasive or opinionated. Keep it up!```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChrissyJensen (talk • contribs) 17:15, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 21 November 2024

Expectation of privacy (United States) → Reasonable expectation of privacy (United States) – This legal doctrine originated with the Katz ruling in 1967 and subequent cases using that as a precedent have adopted the more precise phrasing "reasonable expectation of privacy". Also, the article's text as developed over the years focuses on the precise legal doctrine rather than a vague value. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 14:45, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

• No objection to retitling in general, but I don't see why "(United States)" is needed in the title at all. BD2412 T 18:22, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I left "(United States)" in the proposed new title because it's in the current title, and another namespace without the disambig is currently a redirect. That can all be cleaned up via page swaps if necessary. Also, I figured WP:GLOBAL is relevant because this legal concept is specific to American court precedents. On this particular matter I'm fine either way. What matters is "reasonable". ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 15:51, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose for now, but will watch the discussion. An extension of the title doesn't seem needed per brevity, and the text of the 'Overview' section describes two forms of expectation of privacy with 'reasonable' being included in the language of one of them and not the other. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:35, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I did not notice that when making the proposal yesterday, but it's a simplification from previous editors. The word "reasonable" should appear in both or neither of those two definitions in the Overview section. According to court precedents, "reasonable expectation of privacy" is relevant for both subjective and objective perceptions. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 15:51, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose as proposed but would support a move to Reasonable expectation of privacy. A quick scan of Google Books shows that the latter term is used only to refer to the specific American legal concept. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:50, 22 November 2024 (UTC)