
Originally Posted by
Brian4Liberty
I am not a legal expert, and wish I could remember specifics, but IIRC, there was massive data collection by the government, and the excuse was always that no one could identify an individual whose rights were violated. Nobody had standing to take it to court. 4th Amendment be damned.
Oh I know cases like that have happened and have left me scratching my head. Yeah I can't think of a specific one. I found this law review article that covers this issue.
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/vi...08&context=nlj
Some of the relevant parts to what you're talking about:
Many scholars have critiqued the Court’s Fourth Amendment standing doctrine for a variety of reasons,8 and I join the chorus with my view that the Court has developed an unduly narrow vision of standing (and thus, the Fourth Amendment) that fails to take into account the collective, regulatory objective of the Amendment and of its primary remedy—exclusion. However, the main focus of this Article is the Court’s collapse of the standing inquiry into the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim, a doctrinal move that, while noted by scholars, has not generally been the primary focus of analysis.9 I hope to demonstrate that with this move, the Court not only effectively restricted the scope of the Fourth Amendment, but helped ensure that its narrow, individualistic view would endure.
To form a backdrop against which this argument can be developed, it is necessary to begin with a few thoughts on judicial activism in general and with respect to criminal procedure rules in particular. In an excellent article, Professor Stephen F. Smith provides a highly useful, ideologically neutral definition of judicial activism, in both its substantive and procedural dimensions.10 According to Professor Smith, substantive activism is implicated when a court reaches a decision at odds with the text or structure of the constitutional or statutory provision being adjudicated, when a court overrules precedent without proper justification under relevant stare decisis rules, or when a court distinguishes or limits precedent on tenuous grounds.11 Procedural activism, on the other hand, may be suspected when a court chooses to reach the merits of an issue despite justiciability rules that would (or should) otherwise restrain the court from so doing, or when a court decides more than is necessary to dispose
of the case before it.12
There is little doubt that the Court’s decisions in Rakas, Salvucci, and Rawlings are substantively activist decisions. After all, in the course of these three opinions, the Court in effect rewrote the Fourth Amendment by erasing “effects” from the text itself, obliterated several existing standing doctrines, and arguably misread or misapplied prior cases.13 Whether these decisions are also procedurally activist is somewhat less clear. Standing is one aspect of justiciability that inhabits two worlds at once: the question of who may raise a claim under a given constitutional or statutory provision is informed by the substance of the relevant provision.14 I propose that these decisions are procedurally as well as substantively activist—the Court decided more, and less, than was necessary.
One great thing about participating in this forum. Even though it's not a legal discussion forum per se, there are often good discussions that expand my legal knowledge. I ought to earn CLE credits for this. 
Something that's interesting to note. The same SCOTUS that seems will to expand the First Amendment past its original intent (I doubt the founders intended to protect adult entertainment of any kind but rather to protect political speech), there seems to be a willingness to contract the Fourth Amendment (diminishing the idea that you can't inspect a persons "effects" without a warrant). Even the "political speech" aspect for the First Amendment has been diminished. Democratic and Republic presidents have threatened churches' 501(c)(3) status over political speech. Biden is currently prosecuting black socialists who spoke out against the war in Ukraine for supposedly being "Russian agents" even though technically we're not even at war with Ukraine. And Fauci under Trump and later Biden pressured social media companies to censor. So people have the "freedom" to undermine the fabric of the nation but not the freedom to challenge the government. It reminds me of how China took the porn filters off the "Great Firewall Of China" because they were tired of porn addicts finding ways around their filters and sharing that with actual activists.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/once-b...nt-explanation
I'm not sure if the Chicoms ultimately put the porn filters back, of if the hackers finding their way around "The Great Firewall Of China" actually cared more about freedom than about porn, but the war over China's censorship technology has continued through the present day.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/thre...china.1082472/
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