At the so-called “Black Hat” (didn’t hear too many of them)
Hacker convention in Las Vegas, in reply to some hecklers (“Read the
Constitution!”) Gen. Keith B. Alexander insisted: “I did read it and so should
you!” At that point cheers erupted and
one had to wonder what kind of crowd had really assembled as hackers – and how
many were NSA plants. (Did the NSA scoop up emails indicating hecklers would
appear? Hmmmm…..)
But the bottom line is that in light of the latest revelations on the NSA’s “XKeyscore” program – which according to files released by the UK Guardian:
“allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.”
If Alexander HAD read the Constitution as he claims, there’d
definitely be NO XKeyscore! Thus, since he definitely missed the memo on the
Fourth Amendment, I cite it here for his educational benefit:
“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.”
Note here, Gen. Alexander, that “secure in ONE’S person, papers, house, effects” implies privacy first and is 180 degrees contrary to indiscriminate. mass scooping of data without SPECIFIC warrants, issued according to specific NAMES from a proper FISA court (which vanished after the 1978 FISA law was re-done to comply with the Bush lawbreakers – so don’t hand me any BS about what congress did or didn’t do). All such specific warrants, because they are specific – pertaining to particular house, particular papers, etc. must be issued per person. It can’t be via a mass assembly, techno-engineered “gobble up” – done by volume and without naming specific persons or reasons, or as one Guardian commenter put it: “The NSA would have us believe that it is right for them to have all our private information on hand 'just in case' we turn out to be criminals or terrorists”
But “just in case, to catch 'em later”- doesn’t cut it (apart from the fact all citizens are to be presumed innocent under our so-called legal system) The whole frickin’ idea
of the 4th amendment was to make it difficult for government to
barge into citizens’ personal
belongings, homes and papers, effects – knowing that this presented the very
thing the colonists who launched the American Revolution were trying to get
away from.
This is also why in a fascist dictatorship,. “personal
effects” or “personal papers” have no meaning. The state, via tyrannical laws
(i.e. the Enabling Act and Reich Laws in Nazi Germany) declares it has monopoly
powers over every and anything that conceivably can affect the state. The
latest excuse (in Nazi Germany it was “Jews”) is “Terrorists”.. They are the
new boogey men, like “commies’ were in the 50s-60s.
In this milieu of the faceless total security state, the
citizen can have no privacy in his papers, effects or home whatsoever, because
in the mind of the totalitarian paranoid: “What might he or she be concealing that
affects the security of the state?” In this guise the state trumpets “security”
which supersedes individual privacy and civil rights. The state can then seize
anything, any papers or assorted effects it deems problematic, on the mere suspicion that they might compromise
the state’s total hegemony. The fact the state has the capacity (technologically) to do such, is
also interpreted by the state as a license and necessity to do it – to preserve “safety”. ("How can we possibly forego such technology in our hands? For 4th amendment rights? Y'er kidding!")
Without the fundamental right of privacy enshrined in the 4th
amendment, “personal papers, effects” have no meaning and hence the 4th
amendment is meaningless and I say by extension so is the entire constitution. It is clear to me from Alexander’s statement that he
either regards the 4th amendment as a quaint anachronism –
inhibiting his NSA from their super scoop operations, OR he regards that
section of the Constitution as inapplicable. But if he does, then by extension
he must regard the whole Constitution as “just a piece of paper” – because none
of the other fine statements, proclamations mean a damned thing without the basic right to
privacy enshrined in the 4th amendment. What you have then is a kind
of Potemkin constitution, a Potemkin nation and clearly, Potemkin Patriots.
Prof. Garry Wills
has noted in his landmark book, A Necessary Evil-A History Of American
Distrust Of Government, Simon & Schuster, 1999,', makes it abundantly
clear why only the citizen has rights, not the government. He observes (p.
109):
“The Ninth Amendment talks of 'rights enumerated' and says 'the
people' retain unenumerated ones. The rights in the Ninth are not the
rights of the state, which can- strictly speaking - have no rights.
"Governments have prerogatives, people have rights - so Hamilton speaks of 'abridgments of prerogative' in the state to protect rights of citizens. What the Ninth says is that the rights enumerated as protected by The Constitution do not exhaust all rights inherent in a people. The states can retain powers, though not rights."
"Governments have prerogatives, people have rights - so Hamilton speaks of 'abridgments of prerogative' in the state to protect rights of citizens. What the Ninth says is that the rights enumerated as protected by The Constitution do not exhaust all rights inherent in a people. The states can retain powers, though not rights."
Hence, the term "state's rights" is bogus, in
error. States (including the federal state) have prerogatives, not rights, because states exist as
governmental entities not as persons-individuals. It follows that the
people then also have the unenumerated right to privacy. While said right isn’t
specifically listed in the Constitution the Founders understood that as time
went on new rights would emerge which they might not be able to think of (e.g.
to health care). In terms of privacy, however, it is clear the language of the
4th amendment shows that privacy is presumed hence the Founders saw no need to
elaborate it as a separate right.
We must conclude then that the the NSA, government mass
surveillance as evidenced in PRISM and XKeyscore- with their de facto mass
warrants (and specious courts that knee-jerk approved such), discloses a rejection not
only of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy but any right to be secure in
one’s person, papers, effects. So, screw the citizen, the gov’t has arrogated
to itself the right to seize anything deemed personal or private once it’s
within its purview – whether a phone record, an internet communication, email
or whatever. And do it even in real time.
I think not only Gen. Alexander, but his entire outfit needs
to read the Constitution again, particularly the Fourth Amendment (maybe write
it all out 100 times as our elementary teachers made us do when we didn’t grasp
a point.) Oh, and all those yahoos at the “Black Hat” Vegas convention that
cheered at Alexander’s snarky riposte to the heckler? THEY need to do the same
exercise!
See also the related Guardian story:
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