Excellent article, Jon. I just have one thought. Not knowing much about the judgments or Canadian law, I'm just wondering - is it really the use of American 4th amendment case law that decided the Canadian Supreme Court's understanding of the Canadian provision? In other words, had there never been any American case law on the matter, wouldn't it still be possible to adopt an extremely narrow reading of the clause? Perhaps even narrower than the one actually adopted?

I would guess it has a lot to do with the legal culture more generally, and how the Supreme Court of Canada approaches constitutional interpretation (and, perhaps also very important here, if it is ready to adopt "changed readings" - to use Lessig's term - in case of new technology). So I withhold comment. All I can say is that I shudder to think of what some Croatian courts would do when faced with actually applying such an open-ended clause.

-- MislavMataija - 03 May 2009