In the United States, when can someone legally search my personal laptop? (Government or private security) Unlike the United Kingdom, U.S. citizens don't have an explicit right to privacy in the Constitution. Although there are implied privacy rights within "penumbras" of the Bill of Rights this has evolved into various laws that have changed depending on the situation... it's hard to sus though and figure out. Generally speaking, What frequently used law does does the Government rely on to search private property? (e.g. warrant, detainment, or arrest) What "domains of authority" are relevant? Is it strictly hierarchical: local, state, Federal? When can corporations, search private equipment without violating tort laws? (as the 14th amendment doesn't apply to them) For a government example, despite schools having en loco parentis authority, private schools have more flexibility with the 14th amendment than state funded schools do. For a private example, if I bring my laptop to a mall, does the mall security officer have the right to detain my equipment? ... or search it? Furthering the private example, from what I can tell parents are always allowed to search the property of their children. Motivation My need is to identify a general framework of where exceptions to privacy may exist in the interactions of Government, corporations, and private citizen, and not be an exhaustive list. My goal is to use this with instructional material to motivate people to care about computer privacy within those contexts, because often times people either share more than necessary, or don't guard themselves appropriately without thinking of the consequences.
This question is framed such that it could include myriad different scenarios that could lead to a search of one's personal computer. You seem to gear the bulk of your inquiry toward when the government can search, but then move to when a corporate entity has the right to do so, which is a very different thing. These are different issues with different concepts and rules that dictate when this can occur lawfully. You might want to narrow your question a bit. By way of generalization: the citizens of the U.S. have an implied right to privacy as construed through the Bill of Rights, even though there is no explicit right written into the constitution. The most common way to conduct a search in the U.S. is with probable cause through a search warrant. There are questions and answers both on here, as well as resources all over the internet, pertaining to constitutionally accepted forms of search and seizure such that you could get that information fairly easily. However, as with the U.K., and despite any rights (explicit or implicit), there are many ways your computer could be searched by the government - both known to the owner and unknown - and even remotely, that use means less common to the standard search warrant. As you've probably heard from the revelations of Edward Snowden (Wikileaks), the governments of the world have been shown to search metadata and other electronic records without a warrant under laws aimed toward protecting national security. In the U.S. the Patriot Act gave wide reaching powers to invade the privacy of individuals that required no oversight or basis for doing so. Corporations that deal with the transmission of data work with government entities to to accomplish this end. As one individual has already noted, you subject yourself to search (which includes your computer) upon entry to the country through customs. There are many ways that the government can and does engender to search computers, computer files, emails, metadata, etc. A corporation may search your personal computer under a contractual relationship you create with it (for instance if you work from home and elect to use your home computer, and to do so you elect to agree to allow the entity to inspect your computer for their intellectual property in certain circumstances). They can also do this pursuant to a civil lawsuit, which can allow for the inspection of your computer through the process of discovery. These are just some of the ways your information can become subject to inspection (search) by government or corporate entities. Again, your question would need to be limited more to address any one situation more fully.
Generally speaking the &quot;blessings of liberty&quot; phrase from the preamble to the US Constitution is not relied on for anything. It does not grant additional power to Congress or the Federal government as a whole, neither does it restrict the Federal government beyond the restrictions already included in the body of the Constitution. Congress often accepts hearsay when it takes testimony before a committee. Such testimony need not comply with the rules of evidence that apply in court. I am not clear what you mean by &quot;to pretext privacy and the right to try&quot;, please clarify this. I am not aware of any &quot;right to try&quot; under the Federal or State governments. The word &quot;pretext&quot; is not usually used as a verb in this way. Edit The link on &quot;right to try&quot; goes to a Quora question about laws passed by Congress later being held to be unconstitutional. That does happen. but I have never herd it called &quot;the right to try&quot;. The link on &quot;pretext&quot; goes to a security.se question about a &quot;convict internet&quot;. I don't see what that has to to with the preamble to the Constitution. 2nd Edit The &quot;blessings of liberty&quot; phrase from the preamble has nothing to do with laws against discrimination, neither authorizing nor restricting such laws.
What appears to be the controlling case is DC v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570. In Heller, the meaning of "Right of the People" is relevant, and the court finds that in three instances in The Constitution, these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not 'collective' rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body" However, Art. 1 Sec 2 of The Constitution says that "the people" will select members of The House, and then there is the 10th: Heller says that Those provisions arguably refer to 'the people' acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights In other words, "the people" can act collectively, but "the people" have individual rights. In the remaining cases of "the people", the expression "unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset". We are then directed to US v. Verdugo-Urquidez 494 U.S. 259, which is a warrantless search case involving a Mexican citizen and a search in Mexico, and the part that Heller finds relevant is that ‘[T]he people’ seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution… . [Its uses] sugges[t] that ‘the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community." In other case law, Underwager v. Channel 9 Australia, F.3d 361 which cites US v. Barona, 56 F.3d 1087 it is likewise said that constitutional rights expressly limited to the "people," such as those created by the Fourth Amendment, are held only by "a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community" "The People" thus starts from identifying "a national community", and then if the context is about rights, each such individual has the right, but in the context of powers, the collective has it.
In addition to compelling a store to produce evidence such as video footage, via a search warrant as described by bdb484, police can request access to information in the possession of such information. The store may voluntarily comply with the request, or not. Especially in the case of online transactions, there may be a privacy guarantee that information about a customer's transaction will not be revealed to a third party unless required by law (ergo, a warrant), but security camera recordings are not protected by such guarantees.
Commonwealth Public Schools The Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 does not apply to state and territory governments including public education. Private Schools The Privacy Act applies if: they have an annual turnover of more than $3 million - this will capture all but the smallest schools. At a low-end fee of $10k per student per year, this means 300 students will cross the threshold. they’re connected to a larger organisation (with an annual turnover of $3 million) - which captures most private education networks such as Catholic Education Australia. they supply a health service and hold health information, although this isn’t their primary activity - which is unlikely to apply. Consent is required to collect sensitive information or to disclose non-sensitive personal information for purposes other than for which it was collected. There is no age criterion on consent - an individual who can understand the concepts (as you clearly can) can give or withhold their own consent even if they are a child. Given that they can monitor all activity, this may be sensitive information (e.g. political opinions or associations, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or associations, sexual orientation or practices) depending on what you use the computer for. If so, then consent is required. However, if the school prescribes the activities that you are allowed to use the computer for such that you are not required to disclose sensitive information; if you do so knowing that it was being collected this would be implied consent. State Law new-south-wales NSW Education is subject to a specific Code of Practice under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act. Consent may or not be required depending on the purpose for the collection of the information. For example, if its primary purpose is to &quot;control and regulate student discipline in government schools&quot; then consent is not required.
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.
This is currently untested but the U.S. Supreme Court did leave the door open to allow someone to plead the 5th amendment in order to hide their identity. In Hiibel v. Nevada the U.S. Supreme Court held that the petitioner did not have a 5th amendment right to withhold his name from a questioning police officer. The Supreme Court held that Mr. Hiibel could be arrested for failing to identify himself because Nevada's statute requiring identification was narrowly tailored and was not vague. The police officer who stopped Mr. Hiibel had reasonable suspicion that a crime had occurred and Mr. Hiibel could have satisfied Nevada's statute by simply stating his name; there was no requirement to turn over any papers or other documentation. The final paragraph of the opinion speaks of the importance of the narrow scope of the disclosure requirement and then goes on and states: ...Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances...Even witnesses who plan to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege answer when their names are called to take the stand. Still, a case may arise where there is a substantial allegation that furnishing identity at the time of a stop would have given the police a link in the chain of evidence needed to convict the individual of a separate offense. In that case, the court can then consider whether the privilege applies, and, if the Fifth Amendment has been violated, what remedy must follow. We do not resolve those questions here. While the court is leaving unanswered the question of whether there are circumstances where one may refuse to identify themselves, they are making it quite clear that such a situation would be very different than the case decided in Hiibel. There is a strong hint that they would uphold Fifth Amendment privilege in the situation you posit.
The fire department is entirely within its rights, which are the same as any other property owner. The fact that property is owned by a governmental body does not mean that members of the public can't be excluded that property. Some governmental property is public, but lots of it is private, and this would usually include most parts of fire department property. As long as you have not been denied any access to a public road by this fence, there is nothing improper about it. Anyone can walk through their parking lot, park their car there, meet friends, whatever, This is almost surely inaccurate. The fire department does not have to allow members of the public to have any access to their property and probably would demand that most of the uses you describe stop if they interfered in any way with the performance of its duties.