6.805/STS085 Weekly assignment

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fall Semester, 2007

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier

Preparation for week of class on September 27
Basics of Fourth Amendment Law

The purpose of this week's class is to give you a grounding in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, especially as it relates to wiretapping and other electronic surveillance.

Readings

Please read the following court cases, one from old English law, and three seminal US Supreme Court cases. We are not asking you to write up briefs to turn in, but you maight find it useful to brief these for yourself as a good way to prepare for class discussion.

Semayne's Case. "A man's home is his castle" case from 1604.
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928). This was an early rejection by the Supreme Court of Fourth Amendment rights in telephone conversations on the grounds that wiretaps do not constitute a physical search, and nothing is actually seized.
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). This decision effectively reversed Olmstead and established a reasonable right of privacy in electronic communications, on the grounds that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places."
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968) "stop and frisk"

Writings

There is no rotisserie writing assignment for this week.

Browsings

In lecture on Sept. 13, Hal talked about the possibiliy of applying face recognition to photos on the web. Here's another site we just noticed, that applies the same thing to videos. Check it out. Note the demo application to the Reuter's news video archive. How long do you think it will be before this becomes standard for use with surveillance cameras and other applications?

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier

Preparation for week of class on September 27 Basics of Fourth Amendment Law

Readings

Writings

Browsings

Preparation for week of class on September 27
Basics of Fourth Amendment Law