A redcoat solution to government surveillance

[Commentary] Efforts to halt the government's mass surveillance of ordinary citizens have taken two forms: urging Congress to do the right thing (something it rarely does anymore) or suing spy agencies under the 4th Amendment (which prohibits most warrantless searches and seizures). Neither strategy has been particularly effective. Perhaps another route is available, using an amendment so rarely cited that the American Bar Assn. called it the "runt piglet" of our Constitution. It's the 3rd Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from lodging military personnel in your home.

The National Security Agency is part of the Department of Defense and therefore of our nation's military. By law, the NSA director must be a commissioned military officer, and per its mission statement, the NSA gathers information for military purposes. That's strong evidence that NSA personnel would qualify as soldiers under the 3rd Amendment. And why did the framers prohibit the government lodging soldiers in private homes? Besides a general distaste for standing armies, quartering was costly for homeowners; it was also an annoyance that completely extinguished a family's sense of privacy and made them feel violated. Sound familiar? I'm not alone in seeing the ever-expanding federal government's military-run surveillance as a modern form of quartering troops in our homes. Several mainstream but inventive constitutional law professors have argued that the 3rd Amendment applies to surveillance. Like me, they see that the ubiquitous incorporeal presence of a military agency in our household systems is as significant to us as the physical presence of redcoats was in the 1700s. Let's dust off the 3rd Amendment to make this point, and soon.

[State Rep Mike Gatto is a lawyer and the assemblyman from California's 43rd District in Los Angeles County]