"A mail cover is a surveillance of an addressee's mail conducted by postal employees at the request of law enforcement officials. While not expressly permitted by federal statute, a mail cover is authorized by postal regulations in the interest of national security and crime prevention, and permits the recording of all information appearing on the outside cover of all classes of mail."
In particular American supreme court arguments often stand out to me in how clearly the judges manage to connect old principles to newer technologies.
Meanwhile, it's predominantly young people who freely hand their information to mega-corps to be disseminated and distributed. Outside your (our) bubble young people don't give two craps about privacy.
Apple is engaging in this activity of their own free will for sake of their own commercial gain and are not being incentivized or coerced by the government in any way.
As such, the warrantless search of the customer data is lawful by virtue of the customer's agreements with Apple.
Honest question: how do you know this, for sure? Or is your comment supposed to be read as an allegation phrased as fact?
What's the commercial gain?
Apple is basically saying to governments: see our walled garden? The more you allow us to wall it, the more we can help you oppress your citizens.
Is the pornography the problem, or is the the abuse of children?
> Apple employees have flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan announced a week ago, workers who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Many expressed worries that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests, according to workers who saw the days-long thread.
The wording of the CSAM law is that content should be scanned when uploaded. That condition "upon upload" triggers the 3rd party doctrine.
Apple has gone above and beyond here, not the actual US gov. So, the bill of rights doesn't apply to Apple's decision to scan content on device, just before it is uploaded.
However, if they do review the material and see child porn they're obligated to report it.
if they WERE NOT acting as an agent then the 4th would not apply. I think they way they get around that is not do not report to the FBI but instead to NCMEC a "non-profit"
No. The courts have already explicitly rejected the entity that NCMEC is a private entity. NCMEC can only handle child porn via special legislative permission and is 99% funded by the government.
The searches here are lawful because Apple searches out of their own free will and commercial interest and when there is something detected their employees search your private communications (which the EULA permits).
This is also why Apple must review the matches before reporting them-- if they just matched an NCMEC database and blindly forwarded then to NCMEC then it would be the NCMEC conducting the search and a warrant would be required.
If a private citizen, on their own initiative, searches your house, finds contraband, and reports it to the government, they may be guilty of a variety of torts and crimes (both civil and criminal trespass, among others, are possibilities), there is no fourth amendment violation.
If a police officer asks them to do it, though, there is a different story.
you do not want criminals to escape justice to do you???? /s
It applies to private actors acting as agents of the government, it doesn't apply to private actors who for private reasons not directed by the government conduct searches and report suspicious results to the government (other property and privacy laws might, though.)
But the 4th Amendment would cover Apple being forced to modify their system to scan for anything else the Government has told them to.
it has literally been inverted from it original purpose
That...varies. The right to a speedy trial can be waived. The right against enslavement cannot. You can consent to a warrantless or otherwise unreasonable search given adequate specificity, but outside of a condition for release from otherwise-constitutional more severe deprivation of liberty (e.g., parole from prison) I don't think it can be generally waived in advance, only searches specifically and immediately consented to when being executed. But I don't have any particular cases in mind, and that understanding could be wrong. But “constitutional rights can be waived” is definitely way to broad to be a good useful guide for resolving specific isssues.
There are limitations, of course. If you live off-post in private housing, your commander has no legal authority to inspect it. They can only go through your stuff if you live in government-owned housing.
That's not a waiver, that's a space warrantless searches are reasonable under the fourth amendment and Congress’ Art. I, Sec. 8 powers with regard to the military, etc. Otherwise, when we had conscription, conscripts, who do not freely consent, would have been immune.
"In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society."