JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Just a quick notice here of an interesting note found in Scientific American (vol 83, no. 4, pg 54) for 28 July 1900:
I wonder if this observation violated the expected zone of privacy of an individual, meaning a violation of the fourth amendment? Now this activity described above in Rochester took place on a bridge, so perhaps there was no expectation of privacy on a public street , especially if you are out-and-about and committing a crime. A quick look at the history of the fourth amendment gets immediately complex to me, and so I'll leave it alone--except to say that it is not a clear-cut issue as to whether the above use of a telescope would've been a search-and-seizure issue. On the other hand, when this issue is discussed the idea of what would be "normally" observable to the unaided eye comes up--but what sort of unaided eye are we talking about? If the eye needed correction, would using eyeglasses constitute a challenge to the fourth amendment? I don't know, as I'm not a law guy--but the question about the telescope and the fourth amendment seems mildly interesting.
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