[1286] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Wayner op-ed in today's NYTimes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Phil Karn)
Wed Jul 30 00:26:50 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 21:11:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
To: sameer@c2.net
CC: perry@piermont.com, cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: <199707300207.TAA19379@gabber.c2.net> (message from sameer on
Tue, 29 Jul 1997 19:07:13 -0700 (PDT))
[I think this is probably enough on the 3rd Amendment -- I suggest we
get back to crypto... --Perry]
> At the time they Constitution was written, they wrote a 3rd
>amendment, which banned putting troops in your home, because those
>troops were used to "spy" on dissidents. They didn't know about
>wiretaps, but they banned them in principle.
That's brilliant!
It's an understatement to say that the Third Amendment does not have
much of a judicial history. Alderman and Kennedy really had to scrape
here to get info for their book "In Our Defense". So if you want to
make this argument you'd have to go back to the record of the
Constitutional Convention to see if privacy was mentioned as a primary
basis.
One could otherwise argue that quartering troops was simply a
particularly inconvenient form of taxation, and they merely wanted
congress to provide for troop housing by more usual means.
Phil
