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From: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Proposed Amendment
Message-ID: <12229619657.51.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 10-Aug-86 03:07:12 EDT
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Posted: Sun Aug 10 03:07:12 1986
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    From: Hoffman.es@Xerox.COM

       ... witness the recent ruling that employers can
       fire AIDS victims on the grounds that they are contagious.

    You've already vehemently defended an employer's right to fire
    anyone for any reason whatsoever, and, while not completely
    agreeing with that, I've already conceded that hiring and firing
    do not fall under any privacy rights amendment.

  I was using that ruling simply to illustrate that it is the
government's position that AIDS is a danger to nonconsenting people.
I DO support an employer's right to terminate someone even for a silly
reason, just as I support an employee's right to resign even for a
silly reason.  The government, however, does not.  So it is clear that
they do not think that fear of casual exposure to AIDS victims is
unreasonable.  And from that I conclude that they would hold that
someone having AIDS presents a clear and present danger to others, and
thus behaviors that make AIDS likely are not protected under your
proposed amendment.

    That [Meese] commission's report has utterly no effect.
    Legislation is required to put it to work, and THAT is what my
    amendment would, I think, prohibit.

  The Meese comission report comes to the conclusion that someone's
viewing pornography results in a clear and present danger to others.
Thus it would not be protected under your amendment.  I still don't
see why it isn't protected under the FIRST Amendment!  The First
Amendment is just as clear on the subject as yours.

    I tend to think wiretapping and reading other people's mail would
    remain generally illegal under the Fourth Amendment (forbidding
    unreasonable search and seizure).

  What about peeping?  Your previous response implied that one could
only be a peeping tom on one's property.  This is not true.
Binoculars can be used.  And apartment dwellers do not own or control
the space immediately outside their windows in any case.  If
binoculars are used to read private documents through someone's
window, does that constitute search and seizure?  Nothing physical is
siezed, but the same is true when secret computer files are remotely
viewed.  What if it is private behavior rather than private documents
that is viewed?  Should the law recognize a difference?
  This is not just paranoia.  Where I work there is a rule that
windows must be blocked before sensitive documents can be exposed,
even though the only way to see desktops through the windows would be
from midair or outer space.
                                                              ...Keith

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