Clearly, you get it.
The author grabbed one small portion of what Scalia said on the subject and used it as chum. Scalia also said:
“The institution that will decide that is the institution least qualified to decide it. We know nothing about the degree of the risk. The executive knows. The Congress knows. We don’t know anything, and we’re going to be the one to decide that question?”
SCOTUS shouldn’t have to balance an unspecified risk against an intrusion upon our 4th Amendment right. Congress should have explicitly narrowed the power it was granting because as we all know, unlimited scope always leads to broad interpretations of permissibility.
The TSA exists against a completely unspecified and phantom risk. If you fly you cannot be trusted. Drive a car or truck there and you’re OK. Same thing with a train, but something about planes makes us criminals, subject to search and seizure without a warrant. That’s a security state, not a individual liberty state.
The greatest thing that SCOTUS and the Constitutionalists have done is crack open campaign finance. Not enough in my opinion, but plenty more than Democrats or the GOPe wanted. We need to win and put the most conservative Congress in place, then hold their feet to the fire, year after year after year. Just holding the budget flat for a decade would cure the deficit problem.
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
The reasonable view is that one who installs in his house a telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice to those quite outside, and that the wires beyond his house and messages while passing over them are not within the protection of the Fourth Amendment. Here, those who intercepted the projected voices were not in the house of either party to the conversation.The court went on to say that Congress could limit the right of the government to obtain evidence by warrantless wiretapping, but providing protection of telephone privacy was not the court's job.
As for Scalia, one need look no further than the Heller case to see how willing he is to adopt the statist mantle. Scalia is no friend of the government being ruled by the people.