Fourth Amendment eroded.

• Position: List - Brief article

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans' right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure. But government lawyers have argued repeatedly that this right should be limited, and the Supreme Court has often agreed. Amie Stepanovich, director of the domestic surveillance project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, offers three I ways the government has attempted to erode Fourth Amendment protections.

1 They've worked around it. In 1979, the Supreme Court denied constitutional protection to information voluntarily turned over to third parties. The government argues this permits warrantless collection of, among other things, information about Web visits, phone calls, location, and banking data.

2 They've limited its scope. The Supreme Court has said that Fourth Amendment protections don't apply in all places or at all...