Quick: Which Amendment to the Constitution goes furthest in protecting our freedom?
Of course, there is no clear answer: The First, Fourth and Fifth all play a crucial role in maintaining that which we call freedom. The Fourth (unreasonable searches) and Fifth (self-incrimination) appear to be the most susceptible to changes from technology, and we are constantly forced to re-evaluate our stances and interpretation.
Every time we get an advance in electronic technology, it is easier for law enforcement to think, "Ah, what we could do to ferret out the criminals in our society!" However, there is usually a trade-off involving a loss of privacy for us, and it is these trade-offs that we constantly need to evaluate.
Very interesting article up at The New Yorker this morning concerning Lavabit's (Lavabit is a secure email service) brief to the 4th Circuit of Appeals to allow it to resurrect its secure email service. Lavabit was shut down by its owner and founder after the government asked that it 1) hand over its encryption keys 2) create an easily traceable system wherein every email could be used to identify sender and recipient.
While it is easy to think "but I don't do anything wrong, why should I care?" I think the analogy that the orders "constitute that a city give the police a key to every home in search of one man" places it in perspective. We routinely find criminals without going to such intrusive lengths, why should we trade our privacy? More importantly, we only have much to lose if we do so, with no proven gain to offset the loss.
