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Showing Original Post only (View all)Many Of You May Be Interested In What THIS Guy Has To Say, Re: FISA/NSA/Snowden... [View all]
Professor Pyle teaches constitutional law at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He is the author of several books, including Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics and Getting Away with Torture. In 1970 he disclosed the Armys massive surveillance of civilian politics and worked for three congressional committees, including Senator Churchs intelligence committee, to end it.
The Secret Court: Is it Constitutional?
By Christopher H. Pyle - warisacrime.org
8/5/13
<snip>
Americans are just beginning to discover that a secret court has been quietly erasing their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. They are also learning that this court is made up primarily of conservative activists from the Republican Party who have no respect for the original intent of the Constitutions framers.
With the blessing of this secret court, the National Security Agency (and well-paid companies like Booz Allen) have recorded billions of phone calls and e-mails belonging to nearly all Americans, with the intent of searching them later.
Under the Fourth Amendment, the NSA and its contractors are supposed to obtain specific judicial authority before seizing anyones communications. But, where NSAs spying is concerned, no judicial warrants based on probable cause and authorizing targeted searches are required. Quite the contrary. The secret warrant that Edward Snowden disclosed permits bulk seizures and subsequent searches without probable cause to believe that the targets of these computer searches are terrorists, criminals, or foreign agents. It is the very sort of general warrant that triggered the American Revolution and inspired the Fourth Amendment.
When the secret court was created in 1978, it was meant to authorize targeted searches, but sometime around 2004 it began, in secret, to issue general warrants for bulk seizures of communications. And it secretly coerced telephone companies and Internet servers to betray their customers privacy, without telling them.
According to Snowden, the agencys analysts can use their super-computers to search anyones records within these vast caches at their own discretion. The government denies this, but then, it has a long history of lying about its intelligence activities.
They say we shouldnt worry about these secret searches because the government never does anything wrong. But officials can use the results of these searches to punish their critics or intimidate employees and reporters from blowing the whistle on government waste, fraud, law-breaking, kidnapping, torture, cruel detentions, or the killing of citizens by drone in foreign lands. Embarrassing information can also be used to destroy the reputations of whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and anti-Wall Street politicians like New York Governor Eliot Spitzer...
<snip>
More: http://warisacrime.org/
Permalink: http://warisacrime.org/content/secret-court-it-constitutional
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Many Of You May Be Interested In What THIS Guy Has To Say, Re: FISA/NSA/Snowden... [View all]
WillyT
Aug 2013
OP
Have at it! Exactly which con law profs & their credentials & opinions on the subject.
Divernan
Aug 2013
#11
I will ask you as I asked another DUer, how much background do you have in constituational law/
JDPriestly
Aug 2013
#116
With that background, it should be clear that the SCOTUS says that the Constitution
JDPriestly
Aug 2013
#150
But there is no harm in pointing out the flaws in the reasoning of the Supreme Court
JDPriestly
Aug 2013
#157
But the fact that the Supreme Court has declared something OK by the Constitution simply
JDPriestly
Aug 2013
#160
Corporations are people only as a legal construct. But groups of people have the right to free
JDPriestly
Aug 2013
#166
But there is also plenty that we know. And what we actually know is bad enough.
sabrina 1
Aug 2013
#21
The facts and evidence have been examined by a large number of credible people
Maedhros
Aug 2013
#60
Lol!! I actually took you seriously upthread. But now I get it, you're a comedian!!
sabrina 1
Aug 2013
#106
You don't want 'Busies' dragged into this?? Really?? Well, then we are on the same side.
sabrina 1
Aug 2013
#100
Not sure how you gathered that... but no, I don't think I am that person you described.
cui bono
Aug 2013
#104
So what you're effectively saying is that Obama has no power to change anything, is that correct?
AppleBottom
Aug 2013
#136
Ahhh I see, so it doesn't matter who you vote for and your support of Obama's fascist
AppleBottom
Aug 2013
#140
I note you don't actually post even one peer of Pyle's as you claim you could.
Bluenorthwest
Aug 2013
#53
good question for those who swear spying is okay as long as it is democrats doing it. If the court
liberal_at_heart
Aug 2013
#32
K&R. Now that is how a constitutional scholar and professor thinks about these issues.
JDPriestly
Aug 2013
#33
sadly, because this article clearly names the Republicans as perps, and not "both sides"
librechik
Aug 2013
#50
As Democrats our targets should be our congressmen that voted against our interests [n/t]
Maedhros
Aug 2013
#61
"When the secret court was created in 1978, it was meant to authorize targeted searches, but..."
GiaGiovanni
Aug 2013
#54
I did a little hunting on this the other day myself..and Prof Pyle missed a big old target
Peacetrain
Aug 2013
#59