Posted on 06/09/2013 10:51:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The National Security Agency pushed for the government to “rethink” the Fourth Amendment when it argued in a classified memo that it needed new authorities and capabilities for the information age.
The 2001 memo, later declassified and posted online by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, makes a case to the incoming George W. Bush administration that the NSA needs new authorities and technology to adapt to the Internet era.
In one key paragraph, NSA wrote that its new phase meant the U.S. must reevaluate its approach toward signals intelligence, or “SIGINT,” and the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
“The Fourth Amendment is as applicable to eSIGINT as it is to the SIGINT of yesterday and today,” it wrote. “The Information Age will however cause us to rethink and reapply the procedures, policies and authorities born in an earlier electronic surveillance environment.”
Americans learned about one upshot of NSA’s philosophy this week when Washington acknowledged two of its subsequent surveillance programs: One that tracks the phone records of millions of Americans and one that accesses the servers of several major Internet companies, including Facebook, Google and Apple....
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Why not, they’re rethinking all the others.
Just another example of the Constitution being a dead letter.
It shouldn’t be a problem to analyze anonymous patterns that require warrants to reveal sources.
>> Just another example of the Constitution being a dead letter.
To the contrary, this episode is a reminder to the citizens about the importance of the Constitution.
Hmmm, let's see, who was president BEFORE GWB? Oh, yeah, Clinton, for 8 years. I wonder if Newt Gingrich and John Boehner got a taste of this treatment on their trip to FL?
your freedom of association combined with freedom of speech means you have the right to control who you speak with... which means, you have a right to privacy
otherwise, if you do not control who hears what you say... people would be left afraid to say anything
Welcome to arbitrary government, where the law is what one man says it is.
True... but it also points out how those who govern us see the Constitution as “outdated” & a dead letter.
You’re absolutely correct.
I’ve been thinking that Homeland Securiy listing fundamentalis Christans and right wing Tea Party members as potential terrorists is not just some liberal faux pas. If they want permission to open phone and email records of “potential terrorists” that listing gives them permission to target us without naming us individually or as groups. We’re now officially lumped in the mix with Jihadis.
Yea right... all the progs WISH the Constitution was a dead letter. They’ve been trying their very best to eliminate it from the educational system for the last 30 to 40 years.
Still... dang it ... they have to deal with Tea Party Patriots.
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