Paul weighs Supreme Court challenge to NSA surveillance programs

Originally posted by ABNARTY
reply to post by Xcathdra

 

With regards to the contract, that is with a private carrier and their equipment. Sure it is my information but their lines. How does that work with multiple parties? I am not a lawyer but it sounds shady. Is FISA a free ticket to everything?

We have state laws that can prevent one party from recording another party without their consent. We have other state laws that allow one party to record if that party is involved in the discussion without letting anyone know.

The companies themselves are governed by Federal regulations and are not exempt from the Constitution. It would be like arguing a Hospital can turn over any and all medical records of a person simply because the government asked for them. Those files, just li9ke your phone calls, are protected.

The problem comes in when they want to record prior to establishing probable cause a crime occurred / is about to occur, and even then those recordings / monitoring comes on the heels of an active criminal investigation.

Our government is using the national security argument in a broad interpretation. Couple that with the argument the evidence they are using to do what they are doing is classified and we run into the classic catch22.

If the government has identified a person as being linked to terrorism, and has begun building a criminal case, then they can abide by the law they expect all Americans to abide by and use the proper legal channels.

Originally posted by ABNARTY
I liken it to traveling down the road (public property, paid for with tax dollars, let's assume it belongs to the public) in my car. Following this logic, every car can be stopped and searched or at least its "metadata" recorded for posterity.

Does that sound lazy and incompetent or is it just me? Can't do honest to goodness law enforcement so we will just put everyone in the guilty corral until they finally do something wrong and we can hook 'em up. Fish in a barrel so to speak.

Driving a down a city / county road is not illegal and is owned by the public. Because the courts have consistently ruled driving is a privilege (some courts say otherwise but it needs to hit the USSC to clarify the conflicting rulings), officers only need to establish reasonable suspicion a crime occurred in order to conduct a traffic stop. From that point the officer will either reach probable cause to issue a citation / make an arrest or he wont, resulting in the person being released.

When it comes to searching the car, the Supreme Court has ruled the 4th amendment applies to an automobile (lesser protection than your home, but protections exist). That ruling has since been further defined by Gant vs. Arizona, which defined how an officer can search a vehicle.

A traffic stop, by definition, is a temporary seizure under the 4th amendment.

DWI checkpoints, under Supreme Court ruling, are lawful when the same standard is applied to all vehicles involved, IE stopping every, every other, every 4th, and only when a certified checkpoint officer is present. State laws can be more restrictive on checkpoints, and some are.

Randomly stopping everyone for no reason is as illegal as randomly listening to all phone calls in hopes of finding the crime.

That is the reverse of how its suppose to work. It forces the individual to prove their innocence where the burden of guilt should fall to the prosecution.

Originally posted by ABNARTY
We have never had more laws on the books than we do today. So many in fact, we need multiple enforcement agencies to cover down on all of them. There is no way an average American can go though their lives without breaking a law somewhere even though they may have the best of intentions of being a good citizen. This just seems to open the door to nailing people for....what?

I agree and I lay the blame on the American people, myself included, for allowing the Federal Government to damage States Rights. As a municipal officer I can only enforce municipal ordinance and state laws. I am not empowered to enforce federal laws, and vice versa (some exemptions exist but for discussion sake we will ignore those because it deals with task forces).

The states should be primarily responsible for what occurs within their borders, and the laws developed should be based on what the people of that state have approved (within compliance of US Supreme Court Rulings). The Federal government has consistently abused the commerce clause and supremacy clause of the Constitution to slowly ship away at states rights.

Granted, we were able to enforce the civil rights acts because of those clauses, however the propensity to date has been to abuse in order to enforce.

To me a good citizen is one who knows what their government is doing at all levels. they participate in government at all levels. They take ownership in their government.

To bitch about the government while doing nothing more is the problem.

Originally posted by ABNARTY
I do not buy the safety bit one iota. The US has made it through world wars, civil wars, invasions, epidemics, depressions, you name it without all these 'security mechanisms'. I think we will survive without them.

Agreed and it goes back to the crux of my argument. The government has used the national security card to many times in order to perform an action that does not serve the national security interest of the US or the American people.