It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

Paper Title

-- By YinHuang - 23 Feb 2012

Introduction

The evolution of technology has complicated the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Modern interpretations tend to focus on the portion of the Amendment prohibiting "unreasonable searches and seizures." Crucial as this fragment might be, it must be read in light of the surrounding language. In particular, the concepts of "search" and "seizure" do not exist in a conceptual vacuum. Rather, they are defined with respect to particular physical settings: the people have a right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects." This language indicates that the ratifiers were concerned mainly with government intrusion into well-defined private spaces. Given the eighteenth-century backdrop against which the Amendment was drafted, these limitations are not surprising. At that time, "searches" could only be conducted by physical intrusion into a house or the physical detainment of a person. Likewise, "seizures" necessarily referred to the taking of physical objects or papers bearing information. In this historical context, "surveillance"--as that term is presently understood--simply did not exist. In effect, carrying out an act of search and seizure was an all-or-nothing proposition: either the government refrained from attempting to obtain private information, or the government employed physical methods of search and seizure that implicated the plain language of the Fourth Amendment.

Modern technology, however, has blurred the distinction between that which is "private" for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment and that which is "public." Given that a significant portion--if not the majority--of communications are now transmitted by electronic means, it is no longer necessary to detain "persons" or invade "houses" in order to secure "papers" and "effects."

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