proximity1

the rules don't require that the four points --or any three of them--share the same plane. I never disputed the validity of the tetrahedron reply at http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/101796-a-simple-question/#entry962407 But that does _not_ correspond to my answer. If you took my four points, a plane described by the line of the two points in the "northern hemisphere" would bisect at a right angle the mid point of the plane of the line described by the two points in the "Southern hemisphere." That's not possible in a tetrahedron's four points--any three of which constitute a common plane surface. Two put it differently, a regular tetrahedron can have either one or three points in either of two opposite hemispheres. My four are either of the following two configurations : N hemisphere : 2 ; S hemisphere : 2; E hemisphere : 1 ; W hemisphere : 1 or N : 1; S :1; E : 2 & W : 2 I won't respond to any further smart-ass criticism but will answer good-faith questions or objections.

If you think there's a "corner" (I.e. a ninety-degree angle) _anywhere_* in the result then you're not conceiving it correctly. In fact, there's no flat, rectilinear surface connecting any three points--only imaginary curved surfaces. The two points common to each hemisphere describe lines which nowhere intersect. * The sphere's center is not one of the "seeds" --it's only a conceptual point of reference. Once buried, it has no part in the figure. It simply a common distance to each of the 4 points.

No. Take the radius line segment described by the angle of phi from the center to the surface. Call the end-points of that radius "c" (at the sphere's center) and "N1" on the sphere's surface. Now, from "c," mark the point on N1's hemisphere which is its chord (opposite) endpoint and call that "N2". So angle of phi + the angle of the N2, c equals ninety degrees. Repeat these steps in the lower hemisphere, at a right-angle to the plane which passes through N1 & N2. Now, taking each of the four points on the surface as a radius, relocate each midway to c. the resulting four points are equidistant from both c and each other. They don't describe a square since they are not all on the same plane.

using your hands and other tools or containers, make a (globe) sphere of a quantity of soft, moist soil which, when compressed, coheres and holds its speherical shape. Then, place each of the four seeds equidistant (midway from center to surface) from the sphere's center and two equidistant mid-points in each (upper) and (lower) hemisphere. In the model image above, a seed is planted along the radius --midway from the surface to the sphere's center point. Similarly, another seed in the same hemisphere is planted at 180° from the position of the first. Repeat this in the lower hemisphere, at right angles to the plane of the two seeds in the opposite hemisphere. When finished, bury the sphere at any desired depth and water, fertilize, etc.

I have two recommendations for both you and your daughter --as her interests in biochemistry/molecular biology is an invitation to an adventure in learning which you can share as you both learn. First, this site, http://www.scienceoveracuppa.com It's the work of Dr. Emily Casanova, a gifted researcher and writer who has a knack for explaining science to non-specialists. See also: https://scienceoveracuppa.com/about/ and, Second, this book--in its English-language translation -- The Origin of Individuals, 2009, World Scientific Publishers, Singapore by Jean-Jacques KUPIEC Title page, Foreword, and contents pages from The Origin of Individuals, 2009, World Scientific Publishers, Singapore. I read the work (in the original French edition*) and at the time I had no previous specialist knowledge of genetics or microbiology and was able to follow the author's exposition with no trouble at all. At times I had to look up certain technical terms of microbiology in French but this posed no obstacle to a text which I found so fascintating that I wrote at the time and still believe today that the book is second only to Darwin's Origin of Species in its scientific importance, It's easily one of the most interesting and world-view-changing books I've ever read. You can read about the book's author and his research work at this thread: On Ontophylogenesis or "Cellular Darwinism" http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/68764-on-ontophylogenesis-or-cellular-darwinism/?hl=ontophylogenesis Have fun and good luck to you both. P. ___________ * Editions Fayard, Paris : http://www.fayard.fr/lorigine-des-individus-9782213629247

A Single Cell Shines New Light on How Cancers Develop By GINA KOLATA JAN. 28, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/health/how-skin-cancer-develops-melanoma-zebra-fish.html?_r=0

[ Note about the author excerpted below (from his website @ ) : "Vinay Prasad MD MPH is a practicing hematologist-oncologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. He is nationally known for his research on oncology drugs, health policy, evidence-based medicine, bias, public health, preventive medicine, and medical reversal." On various important current trends in science research and with comments supporting my previously posted views on the centrality of (as here described) the importance of "serendipty" in all research breakthroughs: _________________________________

The Criminal N.S.A. By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN* THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.” It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius. This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught. The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn. Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on. The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism. Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all — it’s a dragnet. “How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It’s not. ... ... We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal. ---------------------------------------------------- * Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print

In fact, you barely even began responding to me. With extremely few exceptions, and even fewer which related directly to the thread's substantive issues, you responded barely at all. In addition, your comments do not show the slightest indication that you ever, even for a moment, looked at, considered or took sincere interest in any of the links I posted with suppporting text from legal scholars or the argument I presented, drawn from them. So, if "at this point [you're] done responding to [me], I don't see that that's going to make any significant difference.

My post, (@ 88) contains a direct and complete cite of your words, Nothing was truncated that wasn't, in the very same post of mine, previously cited in full. Do you deny that? Further, had I included AGAIN the previously-cited part, "I'm pretty sure those court cases are real, and that " it should have changed nothing about my point. And, again, you've failed to show how it does change your comment's meaning. How has the second, truncated, part changed the meaning? How? You have not explained that. Do you deny that? You assert, above, ..."The quote is truncated. By truncating it you change the meaning, and then claim it's a straw man. (Which it is, but it's your straw man rather than mine) " I challenge you to back up your claim that ..."By truncating it you change the meaning,"... So show us! Where--I'm asking you again--have you shown how your meaning was changed? A recap: (me) "You can start by explaining how, since I already cited your complete comment IN FULL in the same post, I must again cite it in full rather than addressing a particular aspect of it as that pertains to my point." Ignored by you. You wrote ""I'm pretty sure those court cases are real, and that the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional. Argument to the contrary is, frankly, irrational." (my emphasis added) Now, you're trying to pretend that "argument to the contrary" refers ONLY to "those cases are real" and NOT also to "the supreme court gets to to decide what's constitutional". Is that your claim? Again, WHERE did anyone argue that "those cases" aren't real--(ETA) or, indeed, for that matter, that the Supreme Court doesn't get to decide what is constitutional ? In writing AND, linking both that "those cases are real" and that "the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional," the plain meaning of those words is that they are referred to in what follows in the next sentence by argument to the contrary: "Argument to the contrary is, frankly, irrational." So, RE: your "Is this sufficient, or do I need to explain this in more detail?" I repeat: No, it isn't sufficient. You haven't explained how my reading is a change of the plainly evident meaning in the words you wrote. I'm asking you to explain how, as you worded it, both "those cases are real" AND "the supreme court gets to decide" are not clearly included as referents of "Argument to the contrary is...irrational." Where has there been "argument to the contrary"? That is the strawman assertion you make: back up your implied assertion, please, that there has been "argument to the contrary" on either one of these aspects. Otherwise, your claim is bogus.

Yes. You do. You can start by explaining how, since I already cited your complete comment IN FULL in the same post, I must again cite it in full rather than addressing a particular aspect of it as that pertains to my point. Then you could actually address the point I have made and from which, by this unsupported contention of yours, you are diverting our attention. I cited you in full. And you've failed to indicate how anything I wrote is in any sense a distortion of the sense and the point of your fully-cited comment. Then you could explain how your comment is other than a strawman assertion which says that somewhere there has been "argument to the contrary of" the fact that "the Supreme Court gets to decide what's constitutional" (ETA) or that anyone has argued that the Court's opinions, case decisions, aren't real. I've already asked you to indicate where anyone in this thread has claimed otherwise, and you've given us no example. So, as it stands, you've asserted a "strawman" in this: ""I'm pretty sure those court cases are real, and that the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional. Argument to the contrary is, frankly, irrational." and, when asked to back up--show where there has been any---"Argument to the contrary," you haven't done so. Let me put AGAIN! and explicitly, what you are attempting to pretend wasn't prefectly clear in the first place: My objection is not and never was that the Court's opinions on Fourth Amendment cases "weren't real". I wrote and I contended that these real opinions---cited from sholars' reviews of them!!!--- do not, in the opinions of these same scholars, supported with cases and quotes--amount to what is or can be coherently called a "current law of the land," where you wrote, @ 78: "The "view" I've "defended" is that the current law of the land says that metadata is not private." A reading of the scholars I cite refutes this assertion's having any valid meaning, since the Court's rulings amount to, in their words, unstable, illogical theoretical chaos. That is your "current law of the land" on the only issue the Court takes into consideration: a fanciful "reasonable expectation of privacy 'test'." To that, to these scholars' cited views, you've offered no pertinent reply.

What's changed? Cite and explain what meaning was changed, if you can, please. And, on the subject of 'truncating'---I wasn't aware that's either a 'fault,' or a an instance of a 'strawman' argument--please explain how that is. ETA: I cited twice, in full, the comment of yours relevant to my post @ 88: ---- RE: "I'm pretty sure those court cases are real, and that the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional."

RE: "I'm pretty sure those court cases are real, and that the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional." ignores this, which I posted above and you ignored: Previously, (@78) you'd asserted, "The "view" I've "defended" is that the current law of the land says that metadata is not private." But, with the support of numerous legal scholars, I've shown these scholars explaining that the Court's rulings aren't coherent, consistent, and don't, taken together constitute what can be called "current law of the land" on the issues involved here. This is because the Court has no unifying theory on which it bases its analyses of its sacrosanct "reasonable expectation 'test'", instead, every case is an ad hoc cobble-work of confused rationalizations. That is why it is idle to argue as you do that there is something which can be called "current law" which affords a lawyer or a legal scholar with a hope of guessing correctly how the Court might determine the next twist in its erratic path. You've ignored all that and retreated into strawman responses--when you respond at all: (@ 85) "the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional. Argument to the contrary is, frankly, irrational." That's a strawman retort since no one here has asserted that the Court doesn't "get to decide what's constitutional and, thus, there is no "argument to the contrary." (Please, otherwise, show where I or anyone else has argued 'to the contrary' of "the supreme court gets to decide what's constitutional." I thought strawman tactics were forbidden here. And then there's this "gem of reasoning"(@ 70) And this is supposed to advance the discussion how ? The implication here is that an opinion « differing » from yours « about the function of the police » is something you can use for probative value in this discussion. Would you please explain how that could be ? Or, to quote you again, (@ 75) « Was this (@70) meant to rebut anything I've been saying? »

You asserted, "All constitutional provisions are subject to interpretation, which is why we have a supreme court in place specifically to assist with those interpretations and to help decide on matters such as this." Of course they're "subject to interpretation," but, as many cited legal scholars have written, argued and pointed out, the Court can also, quite improperly, simply apply a short-cut to interpreting "Constitutional provision" and apply instead, some supposedly handy rule of thumb, such as the "Reasonable Expectation of Privacy" "Test"--- an artful exercise in judicial self-deception, and expressly described by Solove as "game playing".

Did you even bother to read any of the linked papers? Since Katz, all the Court's deliberations concerning the Fourth Amendment turn strictly and solely upon an examination of their Almighty 'Reasonable expectation of privacy' test" --leaving aside, in that way, any direct address of the terms and the principles of the amendment. This amounts to judicial thought-saving short cuts and it has lead to the complete chaos in theory and in application which the authors named above have taken pains to point out in their articles. RE: True, it certainly does 'include the Katz precedent---i.e. a narrow and blind application of the illusory "reasonable expectation of privacy" test --Which makes my point for me. Thank you. In taking up each new Fourth Amendment controversy, the court simply asks itself: 'Okay, in light of the evolutions in technology, what now are our notions of what it is reasonable to suppose may be "expected" "private" on the part of the public? " ---and, with that, the Court dispenses handily with any meaningful consideration of the meaning and import of the Fourth Amendment as it concerns the techonological developments which have brought a controvsery to their bench. ---------------------------------------------- The following, cited by Solove, (2010) Note 63, page 15224 of "Fourth Amendment Pragmatism" (Boston College Law Review) : "Fourth Amendment doctrine... is circular, for someone can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in an area if and only if the Court has held that a search in that area would be unreasonable." (Michael Abramowicz) (Richard Posner, The Uncertain Protection of Privacy by the Supreme Court, (1979)) wherein Posner is "...arguing that whether a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy is 'circular' because 'such an expectation will depend on what the legal rule is."

RE: No. The issue isn't "metadata" and isn't about asking, "is 'metadata' 'private' or not under the 'Reasonable expectation of Privacy' test". The issue, the problem, is that what you call "the current interpretation of the Fourth Amendment" is a figment of your imagination. There is no "current interpretation of the Fourth Amendment" since any such depends upon another figment of your imagination: a 'Reasonable Expectation of Privacy' court test (ennuciated in Katz v. United States, in 1967), which is, itself , "unstable" (Sherry Colb),"illogical" (Gerald G. Ashdown), engenders "pandemonium" (Richard G. Wilkins), "is in a state of theoretical chaos" (Donald R.C. Pongrace). That's not a "system". It's a faulty legal theory and a faulty manner of reasoning about the Fourth Amendment. For the court to suddenly come to the "recognition" that, now, "metadata is, by an examination of the (so-called) Reasonable Expectation of Privacy test "private" would not "reform the system" it would simply apply it again with a different result based on the same faulty foundations as were previously used to arrive at the nonsensee that "metadata" is "not private". No reform of a system is needed. We need not "climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate". We just need to drop the foolishness of Katz v. United States, with its illusory " 'reasonable expectation of privacy' test".

GCHQ revelations: mastery of the internet will mean mastery of everyone

"Was this meant to rebut anything I've been saying?" Yes. It's an example of the flagrant nonsense inherent in an utterly ridiculous and unworkable judicial "test", one which, in its wildly varying applications, produces results which range across the spectrum of the human capacity to produce policy horrors through an application of rational concepts which ignore actual principles in living practice. The view you defend is unmistakably clear: in so far as the people's rights, per the Fourth Amendment, "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," are concerned, the Fourth Amendment "preserves" a "right" which is completely at the mercy of technology's limits, a right which is a mere appendage, the "left-overs" from technology's ravages of privacy. We are, by that view, all helpless hostages to whatever may come next in the relentless "advance" of technological "progress." Taken to their logical conclusions, that constitutes a totalitarian conception of technology's role in all our lives, leaving us in conditions which make those in Orwell's picture of life in "Oceania" enviable by contrast. Indeed, Orwell's novel, "1984," is woefully inadequte as a fictional alert to the potentialities of future totalitarian society. Our own conditions already admit of an insidiousness that Orwell didn't conceive of. You are taking positions which--no matter how you deny or attempt to excuse it-- leave open and unchallenged the doorway to this present-and-future nightmare--one which cannot fail to reduce scientists and the pursuit of science to a begging serfdom in the face of an all-powerful state, the very product of scientists' own blindness to the fundamental importance of limits on technological applications of scientific discoveries. Once this situation reaches full-flower, scientists will find themselves in the grips of the just-desserts of their current blindness. RE: No, it does more than "talk about what the law should do". It proceeds, as your views do not, from the understanding that the Fourth Amendment's authority preceeded all of the case-law and the acts of Congress which, since the 1920s, have so consistently undermined it. The quote recognizes, as your views do not, that Supreme Court decisions (and their authors) can and do suffer from human frailties and human faults in deliberately or inadvertently reasoning in ways which have repeatedly been seen to corrupt, distort and subvert plain meanings in the Constitution's Bill of Rights. After all, Katz v. United States overturned (forty years later!!!) Olmstead v. United States . There is no need to "change the law to reflect that desire" since "that desire" is to return to a respect for the pre-existing terms and conditions of the Fourth Amendment.

Legal scholars discuss the state of Fourth Amendment case law, its evolutions and the implications of 20th and 21st century technology for the issues of privacy and government searches, seizures and mass stockage of data. Some law review (or book chapter) papers : by Daniel J. Solove : "Fourth Amendment Pragmatism" Boston College Law Review "Data-mining and the Security-Liberty Debate" University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 74 «The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age » in : GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 121 and in : Daniel J. Solove, THE DIGITAL PERSON: TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE, NYU Press, 2004 --------------------------- by Susan W. Brenner : « Fourth Amendment Future: Remote Computer Searches and the Use of Virtual Force » in Mississippi Law Journal, Vol. 81, No. 1, 2011 « Fourth Amendment Protection for Shared Privacy Rights in Stored Transactional Data » (with Leo L. Clarke) in Brooklyn Journal of Law and Policy ------------------------- by Lewis R. Katz : « In Search of a Fourth Amendment for the Twenty-first Century » in Indiana Law Journal, Vol. 65, Issue 3 http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol65/iss3/ « We should return to the privacy test intended by [Justices] Stewart and Harlan and to the underlying values that motivated it. » ----------------------------------------------- by George C. Thomas III : « Time Travel, Hovercrafts, and the Framers: James Madison Sees the Future and Rewrites the Fourth Amendment » http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1920376## in Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 80, p. 1451, 2005 RutgersSchool of Law-Newark Research Paper No. 98 « The 'expectation of privacy' notion is flawed to the core. »

Oh for pity's sake, no-------- the hypothetical's "conditional" status is ONE THING. But, WITHIN THAT, you posited AS A CONDITIONAL FEATURE of the scenario, the "person" who tenders the photo(s) as (already in the scenario's set-up) "If I am permitted to turn the photo over without there being a warrant, there is no seizure of any of your property." in this statement, the "I" is taken to refer to the "person" who tenders the photo(s) as (already in the scenario's set-up). RE : which is false--"these data" are either sought by the police (hence, a "search") or as your fanatsy has it, tendered by a third party, absent any apparent demand on the part of the police nor, significantly, any affirmation on the tender's part that this photo relates to an affirmation of information about the commission of a crime (past) or its probable commission (future). You haven't given us that in the scenario. Instead, you posit that, for no apparent reason, a person presents the police with "photos" of a public place, and a crowd of as-yet anonymous people in it. At this point, unless the agent of the photo tender presents the police with a statement about a crime or its planning, no, they have no probable cause to inspect the photo(s). Your scenario has no bombing. Where is it? I've repeatedly asked you this. You have no answer. Absent some information of a crime's planned commission in that area? No, they don't. No. In your scenario, as you've set it out----i.e. in the "present" of your scenario, there is no bombing. There is no report of one. There is no report of a plan of one. Hence, IN YOUR SCENARIO AS YOU WRITE IT, Corrrect: the police have neither the obligation to "secure" that area nor even to suppose that it needs "securing". No. They don't need "evidence". But they do need something on which to act, and that, while not being "evidence" is some report or affirmation---it could even be from a police officer on patrol. But that officer has to discover something! He has to notice, see, something, or have something more than a completely vacant and delusional fancy to "secure the area". If he see something suspicious, then that is a ground on which to act. YOUR SCENARIO AS GIVEN PRESENTS NO SUSPICION ON WHICH TO ACT. RE: "Police cannot look for unusual activity while out on patrol, until they have gotten a report of a crime?" That is, again, another example of bad-faith "argument". No one has claimed that. I haven't claimed it. Of course the police can "look for UNUSUAL ACTIVITY" while on patrol. It's your scenario. Where, in it, is the "unusual activity"? Nowhere. You presented none---well, I take that back: you've conjured a third party who, completely without stated reason or explanation, just shows up offering the police photo(s) of a crowded public place, that person is sort of, kind of, "unusual." Got anything better to offer the reader here? more bad faith on your part: I referred to a centuries-past attitude about the concern or lack of it, for people in public to be photographed. They didn't see it as an infringement of their privacy because, unlike today, they couldn't imagine their every movement being photographed, recorded, and stocked for official government or private commercial uses. Today, people live with their every movement being photographed, recorded, and stocked for official government or private commercial uses--often without their expressed consent. And, indeed, for this reason, legal scholars are moving away from "expectation of privacy" as a sane, let alone useful, guide to what is private. That's the problem here. You don't see, won't see, can't see. You're in this thread "not to see"--your part here is one of blatant bad faith.

Your argument is a model of bad faith. You write, "I am not claiming that the government can violate your rights," which is only true because you use "claiming" as in an open, frank expression of what one contends, argues. But you don't do that. You don't state openly the foundations of your reasoning and defend them on their merits. Instead, you leave the reader the work of excavating your comments for the unstated implications of your views, and then, when those are presented to you overtly, you retreat into saying "I am not claiming...." That is hypocrisy, or arguing in blatant bad faith. You don't recognize the right (i.e. the 4th amendment right) in the first place except in your own peculiar private version of it , and you skip the part where you demonstrate in argument why and how that peculiar interpretation you follow is or ought to be accepted as valid. Thus, you avoid a need to claim that the government may violate it. This is straight out of "Newspeak". Above, you'd written, That's a conditional statement. Only here, in post 65 do we finally learn that, as a matter of fact, in your scenario: "There is no probable cause, there is no warrant." That is a first-time statement that your scenario does not include probable cause (i.e. to believe that a crime has been committed or is in the planning). That is a first-time statement that your scenario does not include any warrant. So, as a scenario, we have No (stated, avowed,) probable cause of a crime's commission or planning, No warrant for the collection, inspection, or keeping of "evidence"---how can there be "evidence" if there is no investigation of an actual or potential crime? Thus, with no PC, no warrant, and no crime, why would the police accept or take an interest in the presupposed photo? AND WHY & HOW SHOULD THEY HAVE A LEGAL RIGHT TO DO SO? RE: Wrong. I wrote that, over a century ago, (that is, before the common practice of even the police routinely making photos at the booking of a suspect) people had neither the suspicion-- nor the ground for it-- that their photograph, taken, in open, broad view and spontaneously and without their permission, by the rare artist-photographer, should or could be part of a vast photo databank held by the authorities. I wrote that any common person's assumption today that such a publicly taken photo of a public scene, including one's self, is not an infringement of the right of privacy is nothing but a throw-back to that earlier time's views of it. On the contrary, my position is, indeed, that as concerns the authorities--a point I have stressed here, and which stress you have repeatedly ignored-- the "mere" (LOL!) "viewing a photograph" is a search--within the terms of the Fourth Amendment--and thus an illegal search, unsupported by cause or warrant. The police have no legitimate ground to even take the tender of the photo, let alone view it. No crime investigation, no probable cause--IT'S THEN NOT A POLICE MATTER. Is that very clear? ETA: I've just had another revelation of the real underlying foudations of your line of bad-faith arguing. And it has hit me like a ton of bricks. Briefly, you apparently believe that the first onus--the one that counts most-- is inherently on the public, individual or group, to demonstrate an actual violation of their right of privacy, rather than, as the 4th Amendment has it, the onus being on the government authorities to show cause for any overt act which inspects a person, or his home, papers, or effects. But this turns the 4th Amendment's reasoning and purpose upside down. When do you answer MY questions? (@ 64) : RE our topic: "Is metadata private?" I've asked, What makes "metadata" inherently distinct from plain old everyday "data"? and I now ask: Why shouldn't we regard "metadata" as a term worthy of inclusion in a dictionary of Orwell's (1984) "Newspeak" along with such weasel terms as "enemy combattant", "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "extraordinary rendition" ?

> 63: Yes. I answered your question--see post N° 60. But I'll rephrase and amplify what I wrote there: the police authorities (at every level of the government system) have a mission: to investigate criminal acts, to detect crime and of course, where practical, to prevent a crime's commission in so far as that can be done lawfully. (Putting everyone in prison preëmptively is an illegal way to "prevent crime" and should be regarded as--or once should have been regarded as--a crime in itself). The so-called "Intelligence agencies," that is, espionage organizations of the state, have a different mission from that of the police authorities. But since both the police and spy orgs are in the business of gathering and interpreting information (criminal evidence in the case of the police and virtually anything in the case of spies), both police and spy agencies of the government are bound by the Fourth Amendment which regulates the government, prohibits its agents from violating a right described as : "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"... The Fourth Amendment doesn't say "the police" may not violate this right. It does not say "espionage agencies" may not violate this right. It says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated." Period. So, unless the police have a criminal investigation of a crime underway, they have no legitimate interest in receiving and retaining a document or its copy, and, thus: what is their presumable interest in a photo "turned over" by a third party? (I'm putting QUESTIONS TO YOU IN BOLDFACE SO YOU WON'T MISS THEM.) I ask you AGAIN: What crime? What lunatic? What bomb? Where is the probable cause in your scenario that a crime has been or is planned to be committed? You wrote: "photo with you in it, not taken by you but by someone else. I deliberately did not use seized because that's not the scenario. "If your picture is private data, the government can't look at it without a warrant." No, you're wrong. Private data or not, the police may not do anything which violates Fourth Amendment rights-- described above. The police are not a library or a data-bank. They are a crime-investigation organization and they are bound legally to carry out their mission within the confines of the Fourth Amendment. RE our topic: "Is metadata private?" I've asked, What makes "metadata" inherently distinct from plain old everyday "data"? and I now ask: Why shouldn't we regard "metadata" as a term worthy of inclusion in a dictionary of Orwell's (1984) "Newspeak" along with such weasel terms as "enemy combattant", "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "extraordinary rendition" ? From Wikipedia, on "Newspeak": And, from Orwell's 1984 :

a photograph turned over to the government The government's search for, and seizure of, that photograph, is what is under consideration. "Turned-over" is deliberately used to gain the advantage of a benign-sounding event. How was it "turned over"? The government sought those individuals potentially holding or those stationary photo recording devices potentially containing, the photographs for search and seizure of their contents. The search and the seizure themselves, unless founded on a reasonable cause by prior oath or affirmation, are "the parts" that violate one's right to be secure in one's person, home, papers and effects. Upon what probable cause? No answer from you. What lunatic bomber? No answer from you. What credible evidence of a bomb's placement? No answer from you. What oath or affirmation?--as required prior to search or seizure. No answer from you. I think that in addition to your posing questions, it's time you met your responsibility to answer questions posed you.

"The NSA claims that cell phone location data is not part of the collected metadata. I had earlier talked about the dangers of keeping that data, so if the NSA is honest this is reassuring." They mean, presumably, that this data is not deliberately collected from "U.S. persons". Who here doubts that any and all non-U.S. persons, on the other end of the connection, are subject to their phone's locale being detected, recorded and stored? As for the U.S. persons, if in the U.S., their approximate location, down to town, neighborhood, and street, can be reconstructed from other airwave-or -otherwise-accessible-data readily available during surveillance or even long after--as with credit-card transaction and travel data which locates a person: roadside service station transactions, air and rail travel transactions, ATM withdrawals, etc. The location of the U.S. person is not a challenge for technology's reach. The non-U.S. person, that cell phone location data is unquestionably captured and stored. How much longer (?) before this is also the case for "U.S. persons" who have, through technology's evolutions, lost their "reasonable expectations of privacy" as to that datum? You may feel reassured. I'm not at all reassured--and the honesty of the N.S.A.'s officials enjoys no benefit of a doubt on my part. On the contrary, I assume that their words are to be taken as false or deliberately misleading until proof to the contrary. More references from Daniel J. Solove: "Fourth Amendment Pragmatism" Boston College Law Review and "Data-mining and the Security-Liberty Debate" University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 74