The feds maintain that sweeping up bulk data held by telecommunications firms, such as phone records, emails, and and browsing histories, does not violate the Fourth Amendment, because a "search" is not a "search" until they look at them. That is like saying, we will take every receipt, hospital record, prescription, and and old love letter in your big bottom drawer, but we promise not to look at them.
If they do look at them, you will never know, because Obama seems to see no need for a judge's role in all this either. New York Times:
Quote:
"he [Obama] will not endorse leaving bulk data in the custody of telecommunications firms, nor will he require court permission for all so-called national security letters seeking business records."
One problem: It is not up to Obama to decide he requires court permission. It is the Constitution he is sworn to uphold which requires it.
Any bureaucrat with the security clearance to view NSA records can dig as deeply into your life as he or she wants to. At present, about 1.5 million people hold "top secret" security clearances. These of course will be the "Ins," while everyone else will be the "Outs."
Survivors of Stasi Germany, East Germany under the Stasi secret police, find it naive for Americans to think that the information won't be used against law-abiding citizens in unscrupulous ways. McClatchy in a 2013 article reported:
Quote:
Schmidt, 73, who headed one of the more infamous departments in the infamous Stasi, called himself appalled. The dark side to gathering such a broad, seemingly untargeted, amount of information is obvious, he said."It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won't be used," he said. "This is the nature of secret government organizations. The only way to protect the people's privacy is not to allow the government to collect their information in the first place."
Lest it be doubted that the government is more interested in the oppression of ordinary citizens than catching terrorists, let's remember that the NSA was doing everything it is doing now at the time of the Boston bombing. Obama just wants to make it all legal. According to the FBI, the suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was using the Internet to download bomb plans, and surfing and uploading jihadi videos.
Yet, despite even multiple warning flags put out over the suspects by Russian intelligence, the NSA did not disrupt the plot.
Nor is this the first time that Obama, and indeed Congress, have "levied war" upon the Constitution. This year may see the fourth renewal of the NDAA's (National Defense Authorization Act's) purported authorization for the US military to arrest and detain US citizens without charge or trial, forever, upon suspicion of being "associated" with terrorist activity. There is a nationwide backlash against the law, first signed by Obama in the dead of night on New Years Eve, December 2011. Cities, towns, and states have passed local legislation instructing local authorities not to cooperate with feds and military acting under this law.
The truth is, Obama cannot declare any part of the Constitution null and void. In fact, any law which flies in the face of the Constitution, that is, not just questionable but repugnant, is already null and void. One of the earliest major US Supreme Court decisions, Marbury v. Madison, held that any law passed by Congress which was "repugnant" to the Constitution was "void." Chief Justice Marshall wrote:
Quote:
"a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and...courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument."
As sentiment for the American Revolution grew, one man, James Otis of Massachusetts, railed against one of the most hated of the kings prerogatives: the British General Warrant. The "warrant" was essentially a blank check for the king's agents to search through homes, belongings, letters and personal effects of any subject, at any time, for no reason. Otis thundered from his seat in the Massachusetts State House that such law made men the "servants of servants."
Quote:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
