Digital Laws/ Search and Seizure

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The question of whether U.S. should place restrictions on the contents posted on World Wide Web is actually debatable. First, World Wide Web is what forms the internet. The big question one should ask is whether U.S owns the internet. If yes, then they can be allowed to control the contents because after all it is their property. If no, Then it is a completely different thing altogether. Internet contents depend on the interconnected nature of technology. This means that any problem with the web contents is a global problem and not U.S problem. This is why we do have regional agreement like the Europe convention on Cyber crime mainly to regulate issues of cyber crimes. Because of this, it is common knowledge to argue that U.S cannot restrict the contents to be posted on the web unless it is an agreement between it and other nations (Clough, 2012).

However, I could support them to control such restrictions if there is any law that gives them the power to do so. This is because cyber crime page contents are like any other crime which should be dealt with in accordance with the law. This can be supported by the discussion from the CNN’s report where many people from technology world agree that piracy and other cyber crimes are real problems and which results to job loss (Jack, 2012). In this case pirated contents, those of hate messages and the likes should be restricted.

The current laws regarding search and seizure have the potential to violate the Fourth Amendment in a case where the privacy laws seem to contradict the Fourth Amendment laws. A good example is the case where the government installed Global Positioning System (GPS) device on Jone’s car purposely to use it in monitoring the movement of the vehicle which was considered the Fourth Amendment search according to one of the Supreme Court judge. Another, judge also held the opinion that the government trespassed on Jone’s property by installing GPS to obtain information. In considering the second opinion to be right, it means that Jone’s privacy should not be trespassed by the government through installation of GPS. As a result, this becomes a violation of the Fourth Amendment which allows the installation of GPS for search of information (Iyengar, 2012).

References

Clough, J. (2012, December). The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime: DefiningCrime’in a Digital World. In Criminal Law Forum (Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 363-391). Springer Netherlands.

Jack Cafferty.(2012). Should the U.S. government censor the Internet? CNN, retrieved on 13th/ Nov, 2014 from http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/18/should-congress-censor-the-internet/Iyengar, V. (2014). US v. Jones: Inadequate to Promote Privacy for Citizens and Efficiency for Law Enforcement. Tex. J. on CL & CR, 19, 335-335.