"The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring social media accounts as early as 2010 (EFF). Depending on how people view social media, some may believe that social media is a public sharing device and can be monitored and viewed by anyone. Others would argue against this idea and say that social media is a private device and should not be monitored by any form of government. The government’s monitoring of it is unconstitutional as social media is protected under the First Amendment as ruled by the United States Supreme Court and is also protected under the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.
The First Amendment protects a person's right to ""the freedom of speech or of the press"" (U.S. Constitution). A person has the right to speak her mind without the fear of being punished or arrested. People hold this idea to all forms of speech including all platforms of social media. When the government monitors and arrest people due to what she posts on social media, people believe that her First Amendment right was broken and that the government unlawfully arrested the individual. The Supreme Court of the United States held up this idea with their ruling in Packingham vs North Carolina. The person accused claimed that a North Carolina state law was “limiting
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People need to know what is protected or not under the Bill of Rights. The government should not be allowed to monitor social media accounts. This will become clearer once the Supreme Court is able to decide how social media or even what on social media is protected under the Bill of Rights. Previous cases have barely touched on the subject of technology due to wanting most cases of due process to be based on a case by case basis. Once the courts have made their decisions then those decisions can be used in future cases. Peoples’ rights must always be thought of even in this growing technological