In article ,
"DGDevin" wrote:



Except when there is. Your relationship with your doctor or lawyer is of a
commercial nature, and yet if either or those folks blabs about you they're
in trouble. If you're a renter your landlord can't enter your home (which
he owns) except in certain narrowly defined emergencies. If you buy or
lease many products you have to agree not to discover or communicate
proprietary information from those products--and so on. There are lots of
commercial transactions in which one or more parties have an expectation of
privacy--your blanket statement to the contrary is in error.

WHich are specific and written into the law. There are also many (for
instance a mortgage) which HAVE to be entered into a public record.
With the exception of a few that have been specifically codified, there
is no blanket expectation.





And, as a further correction, a warrant to disgorge information from a
hotel, Starbucks, or anywhere else would never be issued. If, previously,
a federal law enforcement official wanted to examine the credit card
records of a motel (and the owner declined to cooperate), the feds would
get a subpoena from a grand jury, not a warrant from a judge.

The point is of course that the feds couldn't just order someone to cough up
information on you on their own say-so, either a judge or a grand jury had
to okay it. But now all they have to do is send a letter and your ISP rolls
over and tells them whatever they want to know. But it's for
"security"--which apparently means that the Constitution is now more a
collection of guidelines than the supreme law of the land.

Like the man said: Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a
little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz