{"id":60915,"date":"2025-04-26T22:32:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T03:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=60915"},"modified":"2025-04-26T22:32:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T03:32:18","slug":"techdirt-enter-the-fourth-amendment-yet-one-more-reason-doge-is-such-a-constitutional-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=60915","title":{"rendered":"techdirt: Enter The Fourth Amendment, Yet One More Reason DOGE Is Such A Constitutional Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

techdirt: Enter The Fourth Amendment, Yet One More Reason DOGE Is Such A Constitutional Nightmare<\/a> by Cathy Gellis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This post is about two things: that it looks like DOGE has violated an injunction, at least in spirit if not letter, and why it matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The injunction in question arose in the hybrid case, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO v. Social Security Administration, which named both DOGE and agency officials at the Social Security Administration. It began as a TRO issued on March 20, which then became a preliminary injunction on April 17. The district court also refused to stay its enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this language does not specifically raise the issue of the Fourth Amendment, it echoes it. Per the Constitution people are to be secure in their private matters (\u201cpapers and effects\u201d) unless there is probable cause, which would entitle the government to invade their privacy and conduct a search and seizure with sufficient particularity. And here the court appears to be saying, \u201cWhere is your probable cause that would entitle you to invade people\u2019s privacy in the information on these systems? Where is the particularity?\u201d The Fourth Amendment says that the government doesn\u2019t get to rummage through people\u2019s private records to look for a crime; it has to already have probable cause to believe there was one and then it can get a warrant allowing it to go find the proof. Whereas here DOGE was saying they had a \u201cneed\u201d to conduct a warrantless search, and the court reminded them that no, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the concerns that the court stood up for in ordering its injunction is why all this Privacy Act litigation is so important. One way the Fourth Amendment stops being a barrier to the government getting access to people\u2019s private affairs is if they consent to it. Here, the government has an awful lot of private data people have consented for it to have because it made sense to give that consent in that context. For instance, if people want social security benefits, it makes sense to consent for the Social Security Administration to have enough information about them to provide that benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

techdirt: Enter The Fourth Amendment, Yet One More Reason DOGE Is Such A Constitutional Nightmare by Cathy Gellis:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60916,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60915\/revisions\/60916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}