Judge Andrew Napolitano says that the conspiracy Edward Snowden revealed is vast. It involves former President George W. Bush, Obama and their aides, a dozen or so members of Congress, federal judges, executives and technicians at American computer servers and telecoms and the thousands of NSA employees and vendors who have manipulated their fellow conspirators.
The crime – capturing the emails, texts and phone calls of every American, tracing the movements of millions via GPS in their cellphones and cars, and seizing bank records and utility bills of most Americans in direct contravention of the Constitution while pretending to do so lawfully. The end game – to emasculate all Americans and many foreigners of their rights.
The Constitution, written in the aftermath of the unhappy colonial experience with the British, forbids the practice of judges authorizing government agents to search for whatever they want, wherever they wish to look. By requiring a warrant from a judge based on probable cause of criminal behavior and requiring judges to describe particularly in that warrant the places to be searched or the persons or things to be seized, the Constitution specifically outlaws general warrants.
This is more than just a constitutional violation – it’s a violation of the natural right to be left alone. When that right is violated, when all of our private movements are monitored, the menu of our free choices is reduced, as we alter our private behavior to compensate for being watched. And just as surely, the government expands its surveillance, knowing that it is not being watched.
Now the FBI has gotten in on the act, no doubt jealous of the unpunished lawlessness of the NSA. The FBI has acquired software that permits it to turn on those tiny cameras in many home computers so that they can observe whoever or whatever that may be in front of that tiny computer screen, at any time they chose. Not only can they capture whoever is using the computer, they can also capture the words and images on the screen.
The Washington Post reports that local cops, jealous of the NSA and FBI and their ability to break the law with impunity, have begun to ask local telecom providers for a “tower dump” consisting of digital recordings of all cell phone usage from a given cell tower. When local telecom providers balked, the cops headed to judges, some of whom authorized this illegal activity.
For the local cops that were refused, no problem. They just purchased a $400,000 device that mimics cell phone towers, drawing cell phone signals to it and enabling them to capture calls without the cooperation of telecoms or permission from federal judges. Last time I checked – that was called hacking, a federal crime.
Many may ask why any of this is necessary or why our elected representatives aren’t doing more to uphold the Constitution. To our elected representatives – the Constitution has taken a back seat to personal gain!
Every member who sits on the committees that oversee government intelligence operations has received campaign contributions from the top twenty largest intelligence companies in the United States, according to a new report from Maplight, a nonpartisan research organization that reveals money in politics. In total, members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $3.7 million from top intelligence services contractors since January 1, 2005.
The concept of violating the rights of many in order to catch a few, a practice perfected by tyrannical regimes, has been prohibited for 222 years by the same Constitution that the perpetrators of these crimes and the conspirators in these schemes have sworn to uphold.
“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone, the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” Justice Louis Brandeis
