Meanwhile, this:
> “If Google is allowed or required to turn over information in this Colorado case, there is nothing to stop a court in a state that has outlawed abortion to also require Google to turn over information on that kind of keyword search.”
seems like it's of entirely different magnitude, far less amenable to such a narrow scope.
If the past has taught us anything it's that law enforcement will use any tool to the maximium of what is allowed and then beyond (e.g. coerced phone searches, racially motivated stop and search, drug dogs to force vehicle searches, privately sourced licence plate tracking and face recognition, criminal DNA testing from rape kits, forced biometric collection and more).
> no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
Legally, the term is "particularity".
This whole system really highlights a flaw in using a 200 year old document as the basis of our legal system. Pervasive surveillance in the form of video cameras, photographs, audio, and now Google search requests wasn't really a thing at the time. I suspect with the present conditions, the authors of the 4th amendment would have put in an even stronger requirement for warrants regarding data from third parties and maybe even searches generally given how non-consensual consensual searches often feel to everyday citizens. Unfortunately, I think textualism is more in vogue with the current SCOTUS.
And SCOTUS can knock them down, or make them irrelevant via qualified immunity.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...
"The Reuters analysis supports Sotomayor’s assertion that the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police. Over the past 15 years, the high court took up 12 appeals of qualified immunity decisions from police, but only three from plaintiffs, even though plaintiffs asked the court to review nearly as many cases as police did. The court’s acceptance rate for police appeals seeking immunity was three times its average acceptance rate for all appeals. For plaintiffs’ appeals, the acceptance rate was slightly below the court’s average."
"In the cases it accepts, the court nearly always decides in favor of police. The high court has also put its thumb on the scale by repeatedly tweaking the process. It has allowed police to request immunity before all evidence has been presented. And if police are denied immunity, they can appeal immediately – an option unavailable to most other litigants, who typically must wait until after a final judgment to appeal."
In some cases, it takes only a single Congressman to prevent a law from being passed. If the minority party is dead set a bill -- if only for political reasons -- it often requires absolute unanimity on the other party to pass it, an unreasonably high bar to pass.
Legislation is nearly always trivial. They are only barely capable of passing even the most basic, crucial, mandatory law appropriating funds for the executive branch -- and that's only possible because the filibuster does not apply to appropriations bills. Real legislation is sometimes bundled into appropriations bills precisely to piggyback on that exception.
Theoretically, the legislature can do lots of stuff. Pragmatically, you can't simply say "well, the legislature should act". There is an enormous thumb on the scale in favor of the status quo.