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Author
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Topic: Liberty in shambles
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted June 14, 2013 06:48 AM
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Published June 13, 2013
FoxNews.com
When British soldiers were roaming the American countryside in the 1760s with lawful search warrants with which they had authorized themselves to enter the private homes of colonists in order to search for government-issued stamps, Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
The soul-searching became a revolution in thinking about the relationship of government to individuals. That thinking led to casting off a king and writing a Constitution.
What offended the colonists when the soldiers came legally knocking was the violation of their natural right to privacy, their right to be left alone.
Modern-day British soldiers -- our federal agents -- are not going from house to house; they are going from phone to phone and from computer to computer, enabling them to penetrate every aspect of our lives.
We all have the need and right to be left alone. We all know that we function more fully as human beings when no authority figure monitors us or compels us to ask for a permission slip. This right comes from within us, not from the government.
Thomas Jefferson made the case for natural rights in the Declaration of Independence (“endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”).
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to reduce to writing the guarantees of personal liberty. (“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of … religion … speech … press … assembly…” “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”)
And, of course, to prevent the recurrence of soldier-written search warrants and the government dragnets and fishing expeditions they wrought, the Constitution mandates that only judges may issue search warrants, and they may do so only on the basis of probable cause of crime, and the warrants must “particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Last week, we discovered that the government has persuaded judges to issue search warrants not on the constitutionally mandated basis, but because it would be easier for the feds to catch terrorists if they had a record of our phone calls and our emails and texts.
How did that happen?
In response to the practice of President Richard Nixon of dispatching FBI and CIA agents to wiretap his adversaries under the guise of looking for foreign subversives, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978.
It prohibited all domestic surveillance in the U.S., except if authorized by a judge based on probable cause of crime, or if authorized by a judge of the newly created and super-secret FISA court. That court was empowered to issue warrants based not on probable cause of crime, but on probable cause of the target being an agent of a foreign power.
The slippery slope began.
Soon the feds made thousands of applications for search warrants to this secret court every year; and 99 percent of them were granted.
The court is so secret that the judges who sit on it are not permitted to keep records of their decisions.
Notwithstanding the ease with which the feds got what they wanted from the FISA court, Congress lowered the standard again from probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person.
After 9/11, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This permitted federal agents to write their own search warrants, as if to mimic the British soldiers in the 1760s. It was amended to permit the feds to go to the FISA court and get a search warrant for the electronic records of any American who might communicate with a foreign person.
In 30 years, from 1979 to 2009, the legal standard for searching and seizing private communications -- the bar that the Constitution requires the government to meet -- was lowered by Congress from probable cause of crime to probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person.
Congress made all these changes, notwithstanding the oath that each member of Congress took to uphold the Constitution.
It is obvious that the present standard, probable cause of communicating with a foreign person, bears no rational or lawful resemblance to the constitutionally mandated standard: probable cause of crime.
Now we know that the feds have seized the telephone records of more than 100 million Americans and the email and texting records of nearly everyone in the U.S. for a few years.
They have obtained this under the laws that permit them to do so. These laws -- just like the ones that let British soldiers write their own search warrants -- were validly enacted, but they are profoundly unconstitutional.
They are unconstitutional because they purport to change the clear and direct language in the Constitution, and
Congress is not authorized to make those changes.
These laws undermine the reasons the Constitution was written, one of which was to guarantee the freedom to exercise one’s natural rights.
These laws directly contradict the core American value that our rights come from our humanity and may not be legislated away -- not by a vote of Congress, not by the consensus of our neighbors, not even by agreement of all Americans but one.
The government says we should trust it. Who in his right mind would do so after this?
President Obama says the feds have your phone records but are not listening to your calls and will not read your emails.
Who would believe him?
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, testified that the feds were not gathering vast data on Americans. Who would trust him?
The NSA says that Congress knew about all this, but its members were prohibited from telling the American people. What kind of a democracy is that?
The modern-day British soldiers -- our federal agents -- are not going from house to house; they are going from phone to phone and from computer to computer, enabling them to penetrate every aspect of our lives.
If anything violates the lessons of our history, the essence of our values and the letter of the Constitution, it is this.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel.
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31450 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted June 14, 2013 07:11 AM
Margaret Thatcher's funeral
President Obama was a no-show at Margaret Thatcher's funeral despite being invited to attend and thus snubbing England's invitation as a representative of the American people.
The British took note of the fact that the Obama administration chose not to send a single senior member of the Cabinet. In fact, no actively serving, elected Democrat attended Lady Thatcher’s funeral.
The Obama Administration did, however, send a formal delegation to the funeral of Socialist Dictator Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died last month.
Need any more red flags???
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31450 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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BangPop
Knows what it's all about
Member # 3876
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posted June 14, 2013 08:41 PM
What is it they say? Birds of a feather.......
Posts: 28 | From: Gallatin Gateway, Montana | Registered: Jul 2011
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted June 16, 2013 03:15 PM
I've actually had people ask me why I get so up in arms about this email/text data gathering issue. My answer to them is relatively simple to understand.
Let's pretend for a minute that this data grab has been going on for several years and it involves everyone's calls, emails, texts and the like. The feds have been grabbing this stuff from presumably law abiding folks and archiving it. Why?
Now, let's say that someone you emailed three years ago, or who you received a call from on some totally benign matter is suspected to have been involved at some level in an activity thought to be subversive in nature.
You don't know the guy, but in the follow up search of their history, your number and ultimately, your name, are added to the list of players. Even though that data was secured in a time and under circumstances when you had no reasonable cause to be concerned about the person you were in contact with, you are now on the list of people of interest to the government and find yourself ion the unenviable position of now providing proof that you are and were not involved in that other person's activities.
In other words, a single momentary event in your life - one you may not even recall - now has cast you under suspicion and is forcing you to provide a defense of yourself when the Constitution clearly provides for your protection from just this situation. At least, it used to. And believe me, after the past 2 years, I (and my wife) know only too well the detriments of the government accusing you of crimes you did not commit, and supporting those charges with purely fictitious and fabricated evidence to suit their agenda.
Now, let's pretend that you still don't see the problem with this data grab.
How do you react when a knock comes at your door and, when you answer, it's an agent of the Department of Homeland Security and he's there to swab the inner lining of your cheek for DNA under a new federal law that aims to establish a database of every American's DNA? You haven't committed any crimes. You've done nothing wrong. Is there really any reason to be concerned? What if your DNA is found someplace ten or fifteen years from now where a crime has been committed? What if your DNA is found in the home of a subversive suspect that you don't know, but whom maybe found something on the street that carried your DNA, like a drinking straw, and who took it home for whatever reason he might. Again, there you are proving that you did not do something. Explain to me again how you'll prove this? Again, make a list of 100 activities you did not do over the past ten years then pick the easiest one of the bunch and prove to me with incontrovertible evidence that you did not do that activity. It cannot be done.
Your texts, your emails and your phone conversations are yours and yours alone. Then words I say are my opinions and my thoughts put to speech. They are, in a manner of speaking, my intellectual property.
Your DNA is yours - uniquely yours. Should the government have any more right to acquire and archive your phone data, texts, and emails for future reference than they do your genetic material?
[ June 16, 2013, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: Cdog911 ]
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted June 17, 2013 07:27 AM
It's actually a little worse than that, Lance.
Take the fact that they are allowed DNA samples when arrested and booked for a crime. (news item) Off duty cops spend all day gathering mouth swabs of motorists in Georgia.
It won't be long before the government will be able to prove that this has solved a crime, somewhere. This is reasonable justification for obtaining a DNA sample from anybody at a traffic stop, even if there was no violation, like to check license and registration, proof of insurance ....and DNA sample.
BUT, IT KEEPS US SAFE! WE CAN CLAIM TO HAVE PREVENTED TWO DOZEN TERRORIST ATTACKS BECAUSE OF OUR SNOOPING! THAT FACT ALONE SHOULD JUSTIFY OUR RECORDING EVERY PHONE CALL AND EMAIL AND AT THE SAME TIME, COLLATING THIS WITH ALL AVAILABLE SURVEILLANCE VIDEO, THE PURPOSE OF WHICH IS TO KEEP EVERYBODY SAFE.
Quit being a difficult dick! Ever see "One Flew Over The Cuckoos' Nest"? Okay, I'm exaggerating. A little.
Good hunting. El Bee
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31450 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Kokopelli
SENIOR DISCOUNT & Dispenser of Sage Advice
Member # 633
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posted June 17, 2013 07:59 AM
So at what point will the government set up a National Data Base Org. to collect DNA samples AT BIRTH??????
Might as well tattoo bar codes on our forearms too.
Do it for the children yadda yadda make us safe yadda yadda..............
We'll give it a sexy name, like........Dept. Nineteen Eighty Four. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Nothing to see here........move along.
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And lo, the Light of the Trump shown upon the Darkness and the Darkness could not comprehend it.
Posts: 7576 | From: Under a wandering star | Registered: Apr 2005
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Kelly Jackson
SECOND PLACE/GARTH BROOKS LOOK-A-LIKE CONTEST
Member # 977
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posted June 17, 2013 09:14 AM
What??? I figured 'they' have been collecting DNA at birth.
Posts: 997 | From: Comanche OK | Registered: Oct 2006
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Kokopelli
SENIOR DISCOUNT & Dispenser of Sage Advice
Member # 633
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posted June 17, 2013 07:35 PM
Kelly;
`They` HAVE been collecting DNA but so far it's only for the Alan Alda Cloning Project.
I wonder if the people monitoring this site talk about us on their breaks???? ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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And lo, the Light of the Trump shown upon the Darkness and the Darkness could not comprehend it.
Posts: 7576 | From: Under a wandering star | Registered: Apr 2005
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