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Supreme Court Standoff Next? ACLU Sues Obama Over Constitutionality Of NSA Surveillance
If the constitutional scholar was hoping he would quietly avoid a major showdown over the constitutionality of the biggest spying scandal since Nixon (whether legal or not remains to be determined) and which would likely have led to an early POTUS retirement if current president was republican, the ACLU just slammed the door shut on the possibility. Moments ago, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its "dragnet" collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it and order the records purged. And, as the NYT reports, "the lawsuit, filed in New York, could set up an eventual Supreme Court test." Only once that happens it will be too bad that InTrade is no longer available, to take the other side of a trade that believes the SCOTUS will for once do the right thing and preserve the constitution when everyone knows the decision to formally enact a Big Brother state will pass along political party lines and America will officially become the country that for 5 decades, at least superficially, it was waging "cold war" against.
The program began as part of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 programs of surveillance without warrants, and, it is now known, it has continued since 2006 with the blessing of a national security court, which has ruled in still-secret legal opinions that such bulk surveillance was authorized by a section of the Patriot Act that allows the F.B.I. to obtain “business records” if they are relevant to a counterterrorism investigation.
Congress never openly voted to authorize the N.S.A. to collect logs of hundreds of millions of domestic phone calls, but the administration notes that some lawmakers were briefed on the program. Some members of Congress have backed it as a useful counterterrorism tool, while others have denounced it.
“The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can,” Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Sunday. “I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this is an abuse of that law.”
Over the weekend, in hope of preventing a backlash, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, also disclosed details about privacy protections built into the program. Among them, officials may access the database only if they can meet a legal justification — “reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization.” To deter abuse, queries are audited under the oversight of judges on a national security court.
Timothy Edgar, who recently left the government after serving as a privacy and civil liberties official on intelligence matters in both the Bush and Obama administrations and who worked on building safeguards into the phone log program, said the notion underlying the limits was that people’s privacy is not invaded by having their records collected and stored in government computers, but only when a human extracts and examines them.
“When you have important reasons why that collection needs to take place on a scale that is much larger than case-by-case or individual obtaining of records, then one of the ways you try to deal with the privacy issue is you think carefully about having a set of safeguards that basically say ‘O.K., yes, this has major privacy implications, but what can we do on the back end to address those?'” he said.
Still, even with such restrictions, privacy advocates say the mere existence of the database will inevitably erode the sense of living in a free society: from now on, whenever Americans pick up a phone, before dialing they now face the consideration of whether they want the record of that call to go into the government’s permanent files.
Living in a what society?
Supporters of the program privately say the database’s existence is about more than convenience and speed. They say it can also help in searching for networks of terrorists who may be taking steps to shield their communications with one another, for instance by using different phone lines; if calls are going to and from a different number at the same address or cellphone towers as the number that is known to be suspicious, for example, having the comprehensive database may be helpful in a way that subpoenas for specific numbers cannot match.
It remains unclear, however, whether there have been any real-world instances in which a terrorist network that tried to evade detection was identified in that way, and so the existence of the database prevented an attack that otherwise would have occurred, or whether that advantage is to date only theoretical. A 1979 ruling over a small-scale collection of calling “metadata,” Smith v. Maryland, held that such records were not protected by the Fourth Amendment since people have revealed such information to phone companies and so have no reasonable expectation of privacy. However, in a 2012 case involving GPS trackers placed by the police on cars, the Supreme Court suggested that the automated collection of people’s public movements may raise Fourth Amendment privacy issues in a way that nonbulk surveillance does not.
A 1979 ruling over a small-scale collection of calling “metadata,” Smith v. Maryland, held that such records were not protected by the Fourth Amendment since people have revealed such information to phone companies and so have no reasonable expectation of privacy. However, in a 2012 case involving GPS trackers placed by the police on cars, the Supreme Court suggested that the automated collection of people’s public movements may raise Fourth Amendment privacy issues in a way that nonbulk surveillance does not.
Can we just cut to the chase and take this straight to a Supreme Court showdown so that just like in the case of Obamacare, it can be voted through along political party lines, and the final schism of an already broken society, where one half no longer demands any right can be put in the books.
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Dup
Finally!
Never thought I would be on the same side of an issue with the ACLU... The world is indeed a-changin'...
Shades of the ACLU back 50 years ago
Am I too late to start chanting ONE MORE TERM!!
he did promise transparency....he just didn't say who would be transparent
The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police, and on the government, not the other way around...
welkome to the new amurkkka, where everyone is a suspect
presumed guilty
oh...and yes, those Palantir pricks do use a data mining programme called PRISM, but our NWO wannabe PM lisps "can't thay anything about that...nathional thecurity"
Welcome to the land of the screwed... Oh but you all already knew about that with Kim Dotcom, no?
Ah yes, the NWO in all but the formalities
The members of SCOTUS should not be handed lifetime tenure. They should be given single term 10 year tenure after which they can never become eligible for SCOTUS. The SCOTUS is juast as much to be blame for the decline of this country as reagan/bush/clinton/gwb/obama/bernanke/volker/greenspan. God damn ... 36 years with these characters in charge and you can tell why this country is now a cesspool of rightwing and leftwing lunatics.
They were given lifetime tenure to be immune to political threats.
Turns out that building federal judicial palaces and creating a vast new federal criminal code simply bought them off.
Convict all nine cowardly fucks and send them to a work camp to dig latrines with their bare hands.
To blame our mess on the politicians (and other representatives from our government and government sponsored entities) makes sense at first glance; however, I believe there is a more systemic cause: the size of government (as a percent of the economy). As politicians spend more money, they become more powerful (the true goal of all politicians, apparently). As they become more powerful politicians become more corrupt. Doesn't more power corrupt more than less does?
That being the case, our real trouble began a hundred years ago right around 1913. Gee I wonder what happened in 1913 besides the adoption of the (horrible) 17th and (horrible) 16th amendments to the US Constitution? The following are totals for all of the governments in the US: state, local, municipal, federal, etc.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1890_2012USp_14s1li01...
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_chart_1890_2012USp_14s1li011l...
http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1890_2012USp_14s1li011lcn_H0t
http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1980_2012USp_14s1li111lcn_H0t
After looking at these charts, is there really anyone who can honestly still say that the government cannot afford to cut spending -- even if only by reducing its growth rate in order to let the economy catch up with the spending?
And to think, there are still a lot of people saying that the sequester (slower rate of GROWTH of spending, not a spending CUT) is harming economic growth. What a complete load of BS!
And, PS, what is happening in those last few years of the revenue chart? Is that Atlas I see? 'Shrugging?
I'm 47 years old, and for the past three decades plus, I have witnessed the slow erosion of the bedrock of this nation. Namely:
Competition in Commerce - Mergers and Acquisitions in the late 80's, accellerated under Clinton, and continuing to this day, turning this nation into a gaggle of anti-competitive, anti-free market cartels and monopolies. 1905 all over again.
America will eventually boil down to: One airline, one automaker, one food producer, one bank, one telecom, and WalMart.
Decline in Individual Achievement: Expansion of the "I Gets Mine!" Free Shit Central State. The expectation of entitlement is 20X worse than it was in the 80's, when many of us already thought it was out of control,
Belief in Limited Government and Restricted Government Power: Expansion of the Powers of the Central State:I used to shudder thinking that half of the modern world lived under an Iron Curtain of tyranny and oppression and thanked God everyday that I was lucky enough to be an American.
I honestly started crying when I saw the Berlin Wall come down in 1989, having lived through a decade and a half of the Cold War. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom, I thought. Man, they have no idea what they're going to experience! God Bless em'.
Little did I know that we were merely two trains, headed in opposite directions, with East Germany headed towards America, and America headed towards East Germany.
I am ashamed of my country.
And most importantly, I am ashamed and disgusted with my fellow citizens.
In fact, my favorite past time is finding foreigners (not hard here in S. Florida) and joining them in mocking and bashing stupid Americans.
I love spending time in Europe and Canada. At least the people there are not utterly stupid like Murican's are here. We're a nation of ignorant soulless consumers. Nothing more.
The culture is rotten. "America", the idea, is finished. Kaput!. What was once the greatest experiment in the history of man has now been reduced to being "Just another goddamn country", and a lousy one at that.
Frankie Carbone said: "We're a nation of ignorant soulless consumers."
How ever did that happen? Wait...
"Please don't squeeze the Charmin."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7coJTpyLPI8
Well, for perspective, you have to remember that you are in Florida.
You obviously haven't visited the UK lately. Thick as shit,,,,the lot of 'em.
No. Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany the past three years. All work related. I hear that the subjects in the UK are in general dumber than a bag of hammers though. Just like here. :)
Why is it that they still worship a family that subjugated them for a millenium? I don't get that. Personally, if I saw Prince Charles or Prince Phillip I'd give both of them a swift kick in the balls. I certainly wouldn't swoon over them or track the latest "Royal Gossip".
Soulless consumers?
~~~
We're BASTIN STRANG!... So next time a turrrrrrrist attack happens, do your Patriotic duty & go shopping...
Everyone in the ACLU voted for the Obummer and now they're suing him? - LOL!
In the world we live in it's bad enough nothing will come of this.
As long as people can still collect their unemployment checks / welfare and get government assistance nothing will change. Majority of people follow the 4th branch of government (mainstream media) and believe what they are told, not blatant facts.
Do you blame the Shepard who leads his sheep to slaughter or the sheep who follow willingly?
The Supine Court, in a historic 5-4 decision, will decide that the Government can do whatever it wants.
... and refuse to hear Snowden's appeal.
I thought they already did when they ruled that it was constitutional for the government to tax you for NOT buying something.
Precisely.
And that Corporations are individuals.
And that your property is really the state's and the corporation's (the kleptoligarchy's).
And that your own DNA is not yours, and can be taken under suspicion and no conviction of guilt.
Well, in my opinion, corporations are just groups of people, just like unions, neighborhoods, and any number of other such groups. They are to represent the best interests of their owners, members, or other representatives. I just don't like it when there are disparities in how they are treated in fundamentally rigged fashions like when corporations are unable to pay unlimited amounts for "speech" but unions can.
Regarding political spending, I would prefer a system where anyone could spend as much as they want, but where all spending is immediately recorded in a public website for all to see in all glorious dirty details: who gave what to whom, for what!
You shouldn't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
What is the precedent for DNA collection without a warrant from a judge (other than at deadly auto collisions and other such obvious crime investigation scenes)?
But, I agree with you otherwise as long as they can still determine how much of the fruits of your own labor that you get to "have". I would prefer the Fair Tax.
... and most Americans will be happy with and support that decision, especially the house trained 50% receiving entitlements such as a government salary, welfare, SS or disabliity checks.
Orwell's book "1984" will be banned before the year 2084 because it portrays a society with too many civil liberties.
Any dissent will be silenced. This includes the Supremes. This country may still be called America, but the foundation upon which it was built has been replaced with shifting sand. Patriot/traitor, who defines?
I love it... a far-left terrorist organiztion like the ACLU suing the Prez. How fitting.
Lol, better study hard, White House lawyers, that Supreme Court test might be a tough one!
/SARC
Surveillance is much more effective when the surveilled are aware of it, and much more polotically acceptable when it's been rubberstamped by a kangaroo court.
All goes according to plan. Forward!
Precisely...
Watch out, your sleeve's in your Bearnaise sauce
For true understanding:
TIA stands for Total Information Access, which clearly lays-out the purpose.
Total Information Awareness was a deliberate misdirector to hide the evil purpose. The alteration to Awareness was mde in public, Congressional testimony to create gibberrish that effectually destroyed the meaning.
Effectively, use of the substitute Awareness sabotaged clear thinking on the matter. Per Orwell's 1984, that was a palimpsest technique to rewrite and thus establish a lie.
IIRC, I read this long ago and far, far away.
Truth is anti-semitic.
Truth is no defense.
ACLU sleeps with the gefilte fish.
Three cheers for the Snow Man
A friend of mine has one of those little Jesus [fish looking] symbols, [that some hucksters put 'DARWIN' in, with two little legs st the bottom] in his kitchen...
~~~
He has one that has 'GEFILTE' in the middle... I always got a kick out of that...
I am sick and tired of crybaby complaints from you guys who can't get a job at NSA consultant Booz, Allen, Hamilton in Hawaii with a salary of $200,000 a year.
Count me in! I'll read the Hedge for 'em all day!
I'm greatly ashamed that our country has a community organizer for President - impeach the wimp, screw biden, let's get someone with a set of balls and stage iv pancreatic cancer....
G'day NSA you piece of shit..........
All your freedoms and privacy are belong to us...
SCOTUS
BY the time this hits court it will be chaos. There looks to be more revelations to come out.
The year is 1975. http://cryptome.org/nsa-4th.htm
so, will Roberts be blackmailed again or another Justice by NSA, like EM Escher's hand drawing the hand, will Holder be investigating Holder? Love to see those checks & balances in action.
So 5 unelected government lawyers get to decide if their employer can break the rules that originally constituted it.
This is abuse of power. And if you conclude that it's not, then nothing is. Even the people on the fence all this time are beginning to see that.
Also, the problem with suing the president and the executive branch means that you give them a forum to defend their actions. I say they don't get that right. The action has already occurred. They didn't oopsie into this. It's willful and deliberate. So why not just determine in an open forum whether they get to keep their jobs without their input?
What's the difference between Bush's stacked Kangaroo Kourt Incorporated and decimating the US Constitution/oppressing it's people?
Nothing.
Kangaroos love Fascism, if Citizen's United didn't reveal the sad state of liberty nothing will.
Pack your bags or load your guns, it is coming like a freight train -- the people will lose.
THE PEOPLE -WILL- LOSE.
Obama recently stated that if you don't trust the courts, the congress or the President then we have a problem.
I trust neither the legislative, executive nor judicial branches of the USG. It is to big, it is full blown fascist and it is completely criminal.
The question we need to ask ourselves is NOT who is going to protect us from Al Qaida, but who is going to protect us from our own government?
The question we need to ask ourselves is where do we go from here?
A lot of people made the comment on a previous article about bailing out and heading to other countries. Well, where the hell do you think you're going to go? America is the battleground. If America falls, the whole world falls with it and literally billions of people will die. This is not hyperbole, this is reality.
Gold and silver will have great value in the long term, but I prefer investing in lead in the near term (and food, of course). You need to start wrapping your minds around the fact that a physical confrontation may become a reality. This is not something any of us desire, but my hunch is that when the USD collapses, the USG will become completely tyrannical and we'll be required to respond in kind. Let them make the first moves and then we'll make ours.
Everyone needs to do this. If millions did it, would it fuck up the system?
Spied-upon Citizen: "Hello? NSA. Yeah, like, I can't find the email I sent to my brother with instructions on how to make a fritatta with goat cheese and poblano peppers. Can you download that from your servers and resend it back to me, please? My email address is…oh. Right. You already know that."
anyone who thinks that onazi will suffer any consequences for his spying, drone attacks, irs attacks, fast and furious attacks, illegal birth records, forged draft registration, or any other of his numerous murderous crimes is a fucktard.....
onazi is acting on orders from the rockefeller nazis - the same group which established adolph hitler, ruled the ussr under the stalin/khruschev/breshnev/et al years - and the bush crime syndicate....
onazi is not going anywhere and americans who fail to heil the fuhrer will be murdered by drones and other "accidents."
the aclu is staging a stunt.....
My bet is that the Totus or Potus or whatever the fuck it is will take alcohol and a hit off the crack pipe while he gets Holder the other whatever you call it to false flag Austin Texas faster than Kim Un fat mystery fucker dude ever could.
I have given every year to the ACLU since I graduated from my undergrad program and will continue to do so. One of the few organizations that pushes the buttons of those on the left and right and is more than willing to defend very unpopular opinions/issues or individuals especially against the power of state prosecution.
Yes, I did too, but once it was clear to me that for the ACLU, the right of gays to take their partner to the prom was of greater value than than trying to unwrap the Patriot Act, or to even make a token protest against NDAA, my donations stopped.
I've come to believe that their agenda is one of destroying our culture under the guise of pursuing freedom.
I'm afraid I have to lean toward this being some way for them to bassackwardy legitimize the whole Stasi scheme.
Hooray! The ACLU is attacking the burglar instead of the homeowner this time.
The insults, the slights, the overbearing nature of authority figures, the omnipresent fraud in all things commercial, the pervasive corruption in all things political is building a ground swell of resistance. The Supreme Court is the pressure valve. Properly utilized it will reduce tensions and preserve the status quo a bit longer. If it joins the other two branches of government in their lock step march towards tyranny there will be an explosion.
Ours is not a popular government. It is not a democracy. The majority does not rule. We are a republic specifically designed to protect the minority from the whims of the majority. A man, no matter how unpopular, has a right to his life, his liberty and his property. No coalition, no committee has the legitimate power to take those rights from him.
When legal recourse has ended, it will begin with a simple thing like the forming of a labor union in Poland or a tea party in Boston. The spark will be lit when they come for the guns. On that day, we all will reap the whirl wind.
When the fire storm begins, sitting on the front porch will become just as lethal as forming battle lines. As Wilber Mclean discovered many years ago, it may very well begin in our front yard and end in our parlor.
When we step off into this conflagration, we need to remember that we do not need some radical new form of government. We do not need a dictator to lead us to the promised land. We simply need to go back to the founding documents and reevaluate everything we have done over the last two hundred years. We need to scrutinize every law through the prism of strict constructionalism. Freedom of speech means freedom of speech. Privacy means privacy.
We must once again chain the leviathan. In the process, we must approach this with a thorough understanding that less government means more freedom. Security is a mirage. Government cannot save us, but we can save ourselves.