In this country today we are witnessing the actions of a government that, as mounting evidence seems to indicate, is suffering from an acute case of paranoia by which its leaders see enemies in not only every corner of the world but in all the corners of America.
As a result, we have a government that has been erecting a massive blanket of surveillance over this entire country. Americans have, because of the revelations made by Edward Snowden, become aware that the NSA, the National Security Agency, has been monitoring and collecting data from all forms of their communications.
Such actions are clearly in violation of the 4th Amendment that explicitly states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated -----."
The people of this country must have been shocked to learn that this governmental agency, the NSA had, without their knowledge, been violating their rights of privacy. And then even as the furor in Congress over these covert actions intensified, Americans heard that yet another government agency, the CIA, had been caught in the process of hacking into the computers of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
What's going on here? First the government spies on its own citizens through the NSA and then we hear that the CIA has been caught taking covert actions against the Senate, the very governmental body which, among its key responsibilities, is supposed to perform oversight of the CIA. How very bizarre is that?
Under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the Congress is granted "implied powers" that have been interpreted to include oversight authority over this nation's intelligence agencies. The problem has been, for some time, that Congress has failed to carry out these responsibilities in the manner it should and has by its dereliction of duty allowed this to happen.
What kind of a government acts in this manner? Well, it's a government that, in its state of paranoia, trusts absolutely no one. It's a deep seated paranoia that has become embedded in this government's psyche over many years to the point that it is metastasizing and growing much worse.
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