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THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Kiefer,
will you take the floor to yield to a question?
DELEGATE KIEFER: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: For the
purpose of clarifying the two issues that
are before this convention, first of all "shall
not be violated" in line 31 means not only
shall not be violated by the government or
by the State, but also shall not be violated
by private individuals, is that correct?
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Kiefer.
DELEGATE KIEFER: I think that is
a hooker.
No, not necessarily. We are talking about
personal rights here, Delegate Hardwicke.
We are talking about the framework of
government. We are talking about a situa-
tion where we are establishing certain
basic rights that no government can take
away from its people. We are not talking
about individuals versus individuals, so
this does not apply to individuals.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Then, Mr.
Chairman, you mean "shall not be violated",
and it is implicit that this means by the
State?
THE PRESIDENT: To make your ques-
tion more pointed, when you use "State"
you do not limit that necessarily to the
State, you mean any governmental agency
or state agency. Is that correct?
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Yes, Mr.
President.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Kiefer.
DELEGATE KIEFER: Are you asking
me? What are you asking me?
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: I am ask-
ing you whether or not when we read "shall
not be violated", we should in our own mind
understand that that means "shall not be
violated by the State or any of its instru-
mentalities or agencies"?
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Kiefer.
DELEGATE KIEFER: Certainly, that
is my understanding of what the Fourth
Amendment does and it is my understand-
ing of what we are doing here by the
present declaration of rights.
We are not adding anything here with
respect to individuals versus individuals.
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That gets away completely from the con-
cept of what a bill of rights is.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: May I ask
a second question of Delegate Kiefer?
THE PRESIDENT: Proceed.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Delegate
Kiefer, as I understand the point that was
made by Delegate Willoner, if we accept
the Committee on Style and Draftings rec-
ommendation with regard to taking "and
to be secure against unreasonable intercep-
tions of their communications" and placing
it separately in this line, it then will not
relate back to "persons, houses, papers and
effects", and is thus a broader guarantee,
is that correct?
DELEGATE KIEFER: You might want
to direct that question to Delegate Wil-
loner, but that is my understanding. We
want the "unreasonable invasion of pri-
vacy" to relate back to the first four items
which the President in his explanation
stated.
I think President Eney stated the posi-
tion of the Committee accurately, and I
do not think there is any question about
that. I think that is why Delegate Willoner
made the amendment, for the purpose of
getting back to what the Committee's orig-
inal understanding was or is.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Willoner,
would you take the floor to respond fur-
ther to Delegate Hardwicke's question?
DELEGATE WILLONER: The question
is somewhat difficult to answer, because it
obviously would have to refer back at least
to "persons".
The problem that we are confronted with
here is that there has been some argument
that an interception of communication is
not a search or seizure, and that is why
there is a comma after "and interception
of their communications", because the
three categories, "searches, seizure and in-
terceptions" have always been tied in with
invasions of privacy, and that was the
purpose of it.
The purpose of the amendment, accord-
ing to Chairman Eney, was to broaden this,
to broaden it beyond "persons, houses, pa-
pers and effects". I am not quite sure how
he contemplated that.
The difficulty, as I see it, Delegate Hard-
wicke, is simply that there are areas where
you may have an interception of a commu-
nication which is perfectly admissible as
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