The point is not whether laws have been passed to allow the spying. All governments that turn authoritarian attempt to "legalize" what they do.

The point is not whether anyone listens to the phone calls, although we have no reason whatsoever to trust that they don't/won't.

The point is not even that the FISA court is rubber stamping every single request that it receives, although this fact certainly drives home what a kangaroo court and illusion of responsible legal oversight we are dealing with here.

The point is that the Fourth Amendment REQUIRES PROBABLE CAUSE before the United States government may intrude into the privacy of citizens.

When a criminal is loose in this country, the government may not send out police officers en masse to demand entry into and search every home of millions of Americans in an attempt to find him. They need probable cause to invade your privacy...to have access to your home and your private life and information.

Our government has now outrageously decided that it has the right to preemptively demand, sweep up, and STORE the daily, detailed private activities and communication information of every American citizen. That they promise to get warrants to view or use the information after they collect it is outrageously beside the point. They have no business whatsoever collecting it and storing it for government use *in the first place.*

The propagandists are deliberately creating arguments about the circumstances under which the stored material may be viewed, or the process by which permission to view it is obtained. They are deliberately and manipulatively trying to frame the debate so that the sweeping collection/storage of our private material is a GIVEN, and we fight about the legal process that occurs afterward for use of the data.

Building surveillance files full of the private, daily activities and communication of millions of citizens is what totalitarian governments do. It creates an entire infrastructure through which the government has the means to preemptively target any citizen they consider problematic, through access to the minute details of their lives. It is an invitation to abuse and tyranny.

Read the Fourth Amendment again:



On what probable cause does the US government have the right to demand, collect, and store the contents of YOUR daily private phone calls, emails, and internet activity, and that of millions of other Americans?

The corporate-authoritarian propaganda in the MSM and right here on DU now is inviting you to "debate" your fundamental Constitutional rights. You are being asked to have very respectful and serious discussions about the pros and cons of the government's having the right to spy on every single one of us, and amass and store our private information and communication activities in databases that can be accessed at any time in the future. The rationalizations are varied but invariably outrageous: Corporations do it, so what's the difference? Doesn't the new world of terrorism demand new methods? Don't you realize some bad, bad Republicans are against this?



How does authoritarianism happen? Bit by bit, step by step. And the outrageous propaganda we are seeing now is designed to shift our thinking.....to invite us to debate, in utter seriousness and with great respect for the opposing arguments, our Constitutional rights, as though they should be debatable at all. We do not entertain "serious" and "rational" debates about the pros and cons of killing and eating small children. We likewise should not respond to these oh-so-serious bids to debate whether we really need our fundamental Constitutional rights and protections.

I recommend that when we see utter garbage like this, we simply respond with the text of the Fourth Amendment, and probably the First, too, since that is equally under assault.

As Americans, we should be discussing how to stop this government abuse of power, not whether it might, possibly, be a good idea to stop it. We allow propagandists to frame and shift the debate, and we move steadily into an authoritarian new way of thinking in which what used to be our given, understood, fundamental Constitutional rights as American citizens become merely points of opinion, like whether the government should paint its flagpoles silver or grey.