Balancing Surveillance and Privacy: The Fourth Amendment's Role

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The Fourth Amendments “They may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism, if these folks — if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.”(Obama’s remarks) President Obama said this in an interview regarding the NSA’s work on surveillance to protect the country while also following the Fourth amendment’s Guidelines. The fourth amendment can be beneficial to the government by allowing them to legally conduct search and seizures. The Fourth Amendment also allows law enforcement to access suspect’s phones and any electronic devices. It also allows law enforcement to access all suspects’ files. Even though, The Fourth Amendment can help Law Enforcement it can also invade privacy. Although some believe the Fourth Amendment promotes invasion of privacy, it is beneficial to the government because it helps protect citizens from illegal search and seizures, allows the IRS to access foreigners, and in some cases American’s emails/phones, and helps law enforcement access suspects’ files. …show more content…

Search and seizures are illegal and unreasonable without a search warrant, however one is not needed for abandoned property. The Fourth amendment helps so anything within the property cannot be seized without a warrant. A warrant is needed for a search but it can help find crucial evidence toward a crime. Evidence of a suspected crime must be good enough for a court to grant a search warrant to law enforcement for a search and seizure to be legal. If evidence of suspicion isn’t adequate enough a court will not grant a search warrant, that being the fourth amendment protecting the privacy of innocent people. As the fourth amendment protects the privacy of people it also helps law enforcement access phones to find

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