These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights, but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual, and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government.Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, writing on the 4th Amendment in his dissenting opinion of Brinegar v. United States (1949)
(Via Free to Search and Seize, an op-ed in today’s New York Times on the recent chipping away at privacy protections)
