The first one where the police uploaded videos and wanted viewer information is absolutely egregious and makes me wonder how a court could authorize that.
The next one, which I didn’t fully understand, but appeared to be in response to a swatting incident where the culprit is believed to have watched a specific camera livestream and the police provided a lot of narrowing details (time period, certain other characteristics, etc) appears far more legitimate.
They asked for information about a video watched 30k times. Supposing every person watched that video 10 times AND supposing the target was one of the viewers (it really isn't clear that this is true), that's 2999 people who have had their rights violated to search for one. I believe Blackstone has something to say about this[0]. Literally 30x Blackstone's ratio, who heavily influenced the founding fathers.
I don't think any of this appears legitimate.
Edit: Ops [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
Blackstone was talking in the abstract. Clearly Franklin was too considering many of the other things he's known for saying.
You are wrong. Punishment is when you impose a penalty as retribution for an offense.
I understand why you think I'm wrong, but I hope you understand why I think that way. We can disagree, and that is fine, but let's not act as if there are objective answers in social constructs.
Because, I do think punishment is an imposed penalty. In this case, on your rights. Rights are abstract, and these are not binary nor clearly discrete. House arrest is not jail, nor are fines. But as communicated to you elsewhere, the 4th amendment is about ensuring friction for removing someone's negative rights.
But I disagree that punishment is imposed as a penalty as retribution for an offense. You imply that this requires an actual offense to have been made. I assure you that punishment can be imposed for any arbitrary reason. I can also assure you that punishment is a spectrum, from extremely minor (as I think we'd agree is in this case) and extremely harsh.
if your entire family is "interrogated" over some crime you did not do, is that "punishment"? Maybe not legally, but it's a stressful time that may or may not cause strains on your relationship between your spouse and kids. And it's not like this is an investigator coming in for tea and asking a few questions, either.
morally, it would indeed be a punishment. There is now a bunch of nervous sentiment among your family for no reason, all because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or if we want to be frank, you looked the wrong race at the wrong place at the wrong time.