The 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution specifically states that "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."
During the George W. Bush presidency, the Patriot Act was condemned by democrats, and President Bush was constantly accused of being a fascist for doing things that were never proven he was doing that are exactly what the Obama administration are doing now.
Arguments along the lines of "The Founding Fathers did not foresee terrorism, telephones or the Internet" is a dead end argument. The answer is, "wrong, and not quite."
The language is clear, and the attempt to split hairs by those that support the Obama administration's unconstitutional spying into our effects is unacceptable. The founders understood that there are enemies out there that our government would need to take actions to protect us against. America's first two international wars were the Barbary Wars. They were undeclared wars against the Islamic states along the Barbary Coast waged by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, to protect our trade routes, and our seagoing vessels and men. Those presidents were very aware of the depths the Islamic jihad would be willing to go to force their political ideology masked as a religion on America. Jefferson went so far as to take into his possession of a Koran, for the purpose of learning about his enemy.
In the 4th Amendment, the list of things people have a right to be secure in is "persons, houses, papers, and effects." It could very well have read, "persons, houses, papers, and all other things." The founders may not have seen phones, or the Internet coming, but they wrote the amendment in such a way that phone calls, the Internet, email, and so forth would be included in the things the federal government has no business tapping into.
The NSA has been accused of looking into the communications of Americans, in addition to spying on enemies, and the emails of allies. Now, U.S. intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the suspicions are correct. The National Security Agency claims it has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.
The back door in surveillance law, however, is not constitutional. The law does not give them authority, for the law cannot supersede the Constitution, and the 4th Amendment does not allow them to use warrantless spying techniques.
The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August they made a secret rule change, granting themselves authority without the benefit of the Constitution (or Congress, for that matter), allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.
With the surfacing of confirmation that the NSA has searched through individual Americans’ communications, it flies in the face of President Barack Obama’s claims that the NSA only uses broad surveillance tactics.
“When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about,” Obama said. “As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.”
As usual, Obama lied.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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