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TOPIC
Crime
TUESDAY, JAN 17, 2012 11:36 AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME
Should the government search your brain?
The state may soon be able to force you to reveal your password. That's a huge threat to the Fifth Amendment
In this brave new world of invasive technology, one of the easiest way to understand the relevance of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is to understand it through the prism of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Essentially, the Fifth Amendment’s notion that you cannot be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against oneself” is a declaration that self-incriminating information in your mind is privileged, and that government efforts to get that information is, in fact, an “unreasonable search and seizure.” Put another way, these constitutional protections say the government cannot get a search warrant for your brain, nor can it hold you in contempt of court for refusing to disclose any self-incriminating information in your cortex.
Enshrined in our highest governing document, this principle had been considered uncontroversial for most of American history. But then we saw the advent of state-sanctioned torture and forced confessions in the last decade, and now a new criminal prosecution in Denver may end up with a court declaring that the mind can be forcibly opened to searches under a threat of jail time.
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David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at [email protected], follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.