Privacy Part III - Background.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Introduction:
Provisions of the Patriot Act and FISA violate the Fourth Amendment because they effectively permit searches and seizures without a warrant or with only a warrant from a secret court. The constitutionality of these provisions in these acts cannot be tested in court, however, due to the provisions written into the acts themselves. We are being told by government and security officials that precise and legal processes are in place to ensure that privacy of innocent citizens is not violated but this is simply not true or even possible given the legal language of the pertinent enabling acts.
None of this makes sense but Congress, the courts and the Bush and Obama administrations have thus far been steadfast in their claim that these provisions are required to protect us against terrorism. The attacks of September 11, 2001 dramatically escalated the fear of terrorism within the United States; the government was able to leverage this fear into public acceptance of draconian and unprecedented restrictions on the rights and liberties of all U.S. citizens as well as acceptance of the U.S. invasion of two foreign countries.
The Patriot Act:
October 2001: Within six weeks of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress and the George W. Bush Administration wrote and passed a highly tyrannical act of legislation, cynically and tortuously named "U.S.A. Patriot Act" ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act), which established unprecedented government powers for use against its own citizens. This act has subsequently been renewed and is still in effect.
FISA:
October 1978: Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to address concerns over government spying on U.S. citizens. It was designed to provide a systematic and accountable process for spying on communications where one party was understood to be international. It was amended on several occasions after September 11, 2001 to grant a range of powers to the government which reversed much of its original intent to the detriment of all U.S. citizens by effectively expanding the spying to potentially include all domestic communications, not just those communications that traveled internationally. These amendments also expanded the government's reach by including "all tangible things" in the search criteria - meaning they can take not only your communications data but your computer and written records as well as any other real property.
FISC:
October 1978: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This was created under the above-referenced act (FISA) to issue warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents in the United States. Its proceedings are secret and one-sided, meaning the subject of the warrant is not allowed to be present or be heard (except in certain cases, and then only in writing). The court is widely regarded as a "rubber stamp" for government warrant requests as it has turned down such a minuscule fraction of requests as to be irrelevant. Congress and the public has virtually no oversight of this closed court or its secret proceedings - which is a problem given that it often ensnares U.S. citizens in violation of the constitution.
Telephony Metadata:
This is the telephone data the government has been collecting for at least the last six-plus years: every telephone call made and received by every U.S. citizen by telephone number of caller and recipient, origin and destination of call, time of call and duration of call. The government claims that this does not include actual conversations but this is misrepresentation of the sorriest sort - for not only does the government have the technology in place to do just that, but what is really valuable to them today are the patterns a person generates in their communications and movements and associations with others, and that can be enough to snare an innocent person. Regardless, tracking when and who you call - and where you are - is no different than attaching a GPS device to your body and tracking your every movement in every moment of your life - where you go and who you see and even what you do. In actuality, this task is already performed by your smartphone, if you have one, and GPS devices such as those increasingly utilized in automobiles, for the benefit of both corporations and the government.
PRISM:
More insidious than even telephony metadata, PRISM is the government's system for tracking and storing every bit of data you generate or receive: emails, texts, web browsing, videos, credit and debit card purchases - everything. Along the way it too, like telephony metadata, serves corporate interests. The name PRISM may well be drawn from the term used to describe a technical device placed on internet trunk lines to siphon off vast amounts of data: prism.
Summary:
Government and business want us to believe that all of this spying is done in a judicious, highly regulated manner that does not intrude on an innocent person's rights. This is false. The technology is in place and in operation and the laws have been enacted to facilitate this on a constant basis. Any requests made for warrants or data are perfunctory and exist only as a charade. Much of the work is contracted out to private companies. The number of people involved in this endeavor is staggering - in the millions. To claim that the program is designed and operated with little or no risk to the privacy of citizens is ludicrous and denies human nature. Regardless, the public and Congress lack the oversight necessary to verify this claim.
The powers that the Patriot Act and FISA acts jointly confer upon the Executive branch (currently the Obama Administration) are unconstitutional in many of their provisions and are unprecedented in U.S. history in their scope and in the danger they present to each one of us - particularly as they not only permit spying but obstruct any judicial review of the laws themselves - an arrangement that is not only unprecedented under U.S. law but blatantly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is not on the side of citizenery, unfortunately; in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU challenging the constitutionality of U.S. government spying on U.S. citizens, the court in February 2013 ruled that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had been monitored and therefore lacked standing, or the right to sue, and dismissed their complaint.
You are being monitored by the U.S. government, but just try proving that you are. And do not look to your Congressional representatives for relief; they wrote and passed these bills and for the last dozen years have abandoned their responsibility to safeguard your rights and the United States Constitution. And President Obama's claim that they have bought into the program is a blatant lie, for Congress effectively knows no more about the program than do we. Least of all, do not look to President Obama to protect you or your privacy. These acts give the President unprecedented and tyrannical powers - and President Obama and his security agencies have embraced the power absolutely.
Provisions of the Patriot Act and FISA violate the Fourth Amendment because they effectively permit searches and seizures without a warrant or with only a warrant from a secret court. The constitutionality of these provisions in these acts cannot be tested in court, however, due to the provisions written into the acts themselves. We are being told by government and security officials that precise and legal processes are in place to ensure that privacy of innocent citizens is not violated but this is simply not true or even possible given the legal language of the pertinent enabling acts.
None of this makes sense but Congress, the courts and the Bush and Obama administrations have thus far been steadfast in their claim that these provisions are required to protect us against terrorism. The attacks of September 11, 2001 dramatically escalated the fear of terrorism within the United States; the government was able to leverage this fear into public acceptance of draconian and unprecedented restrictions on the rights and liberties of all U.S. citizens as well as acceptance of the U.S. invasion of two foreign countries.
The Patriot Act:
October 2001: Within six weeks of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress and the George W. Bush Administration wrote and passed a highly tyrannical act of legislation, cynically and tortuously named "U.S.A. Patriot Act" ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act), which established unprecedented government powers for use against its own citizens. This act has subsequently been renewed and is still in effect.
FISA:
October 1978: Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to address concerns over government spying on U.S. citizens. It was designed to provide a systematic and accountable process for spying on communications where one party was understood to be international. It was amended on several occasions after September 11, 2001 to grant a range of powers to the government which reversed much of its original intent to the detriment of all U.S. citizens by effectively expanding the spying to potentially include all domestic communications, not just those communications that traveled internationally. These amendments also expanded the government's reach by including "all tangible things" in the search criteria - meaning they can take not only your communications data but your computer and written records as well as any other real property.
FISC:
October 1978: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This was created under the above-referenced act (FISA) to issue warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents in the United States. Its proceedings are secret and one-sided, meaning the subject of the warrant is not allowed to be present or be heard (except in certain cases, and then only in writing). The court is widely regarded as a "rubber stamp" for government warrant requests as it has turned down such a minuscule fraction of requests as to be irrelevant. Congress and the public has virtually no oversight of this closed court or its secret proceedings - which is a problem given that it often ensnares U.S. citizens in violation of the constitution.
Telephony Metadata:
This is the telephone data the government has been collecting for at least the last six-plus years: every telephone call made and received by every U.S. citizen by telephone number of caller and recipient, origin and destination of call, time of call and duration of call. The government claims that this does not include actual conversations but this is misrepresentation of the sorriest sort - for not only does the government have the technology in place to do just that, but what is really valuable to them today are the patterns a person generates in their communications and movements and associations with others, and that can be enough to snare an innocent person. Regardless, tracking when and who you call - and where you are - is no different than attaching a GPS device to your body and tracking your every movement in every moment of your life - where you go and who you see and even what you do. In actuality, this task is already performed by your smartphone, if you have one, and GPS devices such as those increasingly utilized in automobiles, for the benefit of both corporations and the government.
PRISM:
More insidious than even telephony metadata, PRISM is the government's system for tracking and storing every bit of data you generate or receive: emails, texts, web browsing, videos, credit and debit card purchases - everything. Along the way it too, like telephony metadata, serves corporate interests. The name PRISM may well be drawn from the term used to describe a technical device placed on internet trunk lines to siphon off vast amounts of data: prism.
Summary:
Government and business want us to believe that all of this spying is done in a judicious, highly regulated manner that does not intrude on an innocent person's rights. This is false. The technology is in place and in operation and the laws have been enacted to facilitate this on a constant basis. Any requests made for warrants or data are perfunctory and exist only as a charade. Much of the work is contracted out to private companies. The number of people involved in this endeavor is staggering - in the millions. To claim that the program is designed and operated with little or no risk to the privacy of citizens is ludicrous and denies human nature. Regardless, the public and Congress lack the oversight necessary to verify this claim.
The powers that the Patriot Act and FISA acts jointly confer upon the Executive branch (currently the Obama Administration) are unconstitutional in many of their provisions and are unprecedented in U.S. history in their scope and in the danger they present to each one of us - particularly as they not only permit spying but obstruct any judicial review of the laws themselves - an arrangement that is not only unprecedented under U.S. law but blatantly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is not on the side of citizenery, unfortunately; in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU challenging the constitutionality of U.S. government spying on U.S. citizens, the court in February 2013 ruled that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had been monitored and therefore lacked standing, or the right to sue, and dismissed their complaint.
You are being monitored by the U.S. government, but just try proving that you are. And do not look to your Congressional representatives for relief; they wrote and passed these bills and for the last dozen years have abandoned their responsibility to safeguard your rights and the United States Constitution. And President Obama's claim that they have bought into the program is a blatant lie, for Congress effectively knows no more about the program than do we. Least of all, do not look to President Obama to protect you or your privacy. These acts give the President unprecedented and tyrannical powers - and President Obama and his security agencies have embraced the power absolutely.