What is the proper balance between privacy and security?

The answer is in the constitution. The original intent of the constitution is to severely restrict the powers of government while guaranteeing our God-given, unalienable individual rights.

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.

Warrants shall be issued ONLY upon probable cause and MUST describe the place to be searched and things to be seized. General warrants are verboten!

Against whom? Which country? Where is the declaration of war per the U.S. Constitution?

The Islamic maniacs are at war with us, but they always have been, always will be. They cannot live in peace with the rest of the world. They must kill all who don't follow Allah. Perhaps we should declare war against Islam and get it over with but we won't.

Meanwhile, we cannot and should not suspend our constitution or allow government to stomp on our unalienable rights. Obama wants to set himself up as a dictator and that's exactly what will happen if we allow him to suspend the constitution. It's already happening right before our eyes and unless we get a handle on this thing immediately, America as a free country is over.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Along with the guaranteed right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, the founders also gave us these additional guarantees (among others):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The government is in direct violation of the constitution when it suppresses the free press or deprives the people of their constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. The government violates the constitution by spying on the press or the people. They cannot snoop on our phone calls or email messages or demand that companies turn over "billing records," "metadata," content, IP addresses, email addresses, ID's, or any other communications by or among individuals whether private or business. And obviously they're in direct violation of the constitution when they attempt to infringe upon our rights to keep and bear arms.

The second amendment is intended for our personal defense and security. Our country cannot declare war against Islam and they refuse to stop allowing people who are at war with us to take up residency within the U.S. so our only real security is to remain armed and vigilant. If the Islamists wish to conduct war against our people on OUR soil, then they had best bring their lunch and a lantern, because it's going to be a long day for them. Americans are armed to the teeth and we aim to defend ourselves, our families, our property and our nation. The government sure as hell isn't.

So, the proper balance between privacy and security is for the government to keep its snooping eyes and ears the hell out out of our mail, out of our phone calls, out of our email and online activities and to keep their fascist hands off our property and off our guns per the constitution!

The answer is incredibility simple. WE are treated as potential enemy because there is no control of the borders or immigration. When anyone with any intent can get into the country and assimilate into society without the core values the make up the values for good standing citizenship (membership in a society) at any time then the society, any society, has becomes hopelessly contaminated and must treat every member as a potential threat.

Every major terrorist act has an outside component. 9/11, Oklahoma City, Foot Hood, Pan Am bombing, first WTC bombing, Boston, and on and on.

We allow people with very questionable backgrounds to legally immigrate. We allow overstayed visas. We fail to deport hardly anyone. And then we say we need to be safe.

Our country is our society and visits should be limited and strickly and even harshly controlled. Immigration should be streamlined but it should be controlled with very strict and even harsh review. Visas should be closely monitored. Overstays should be addressed rapidly - and harshly.

With the current situation we are all treated as potential terrorist by our own government and we are treated as the enemy by our own naturalized citizen neighbors. Which is the chicken and which is the egg. We have ignored the meaning of citizenship and the need for controlling both visitation and immigration into OUR society. We are now paying a price for that.

(PS - if this sounds anti-immigration and anti-naturalization it is not meant to. It is clear our standards for entry into our country and our society as permanent new members or visitors are very lax and very low.)

Excellent post AA, thanks for that one.

In truth, law enforcement is simply that - law enforcement. It is not a protector that can be in every home or on every street. The only direct deterrent offered by police presence is where police are present. Absent the direct police presence, it’s the possibility of being found out and arrested that makes criminals think twice. Thus the judges and laws play arguably an even greater role in deterrence of crime, since the stiffer the sentence and the more certain the conviction in court, makes even a low probability of arrest perhaps not worth the risk. On the contrary, if arrest is certain, but the punishment will be little to nothing, the criminal will not fear arrest at all.

Statism harbors a desire for a wicked and demented use of technology to provide eyes and ears for the police state that watch over every citizen constantly; this is obviously about exerting complete control, not preventing crime or keeping people safe.

For thousands of years, prior to only a few decades ago, people would have scoffed or laughed at the idea that law enforcement, i.e., police, sheriff, etc., would be at the scene of every crime and thus able to prevent them all.

Law enforcement has always been primarily about simply finding perpetrators of crime and arresting them so they are forced to stand trial for the crimes they stand accused of.

Personal protection is, has been, and always will be the domain of the individual - it’s called self defense.

There is another view of defense - the national level. The protection of a nation from foreign attack or invasion. This is not dealing with crime, but war. And of course by no means is national defense successfully fulfilled by instituting a police state.

While immediately after 9/11 I was pissed and all in favor of invading Afghanistan for sole the purpose of finding and capturing or otherwise killing Bin Laden and his henchmen, I came to realize, years even before Obama’s presidency, (yes, under GWB and I hold him in part accountable for this mess –road to Hell and Good Intentions and all that), that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the WOT, the Patriot Act, FISA courts, the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA (yea, the near strip searching of 90 year olds, 3 year olds, elderly nuns, the disabled, etc.) all of it, has done nothing, and I would go to say absolutely nothing to make us safer but has done everything to erode or more precisely further erode the rights of American Citizens - all under the guise of “security” or what I and others refer to as “security theater”.

I understand the need for covert operations in hostile foreign countries or the need for limited boots on the ground in certain situations, i.e. CIA operatives, small tactical forces, surgical strikes, satellite observation of military targets or even the interception of communications to and from hostile countries among and between those who actually pose risk and the need to keep that under a security clearance and “need to know” basis, but what we have here is card blanche by an increasingly corrupt and despotic government to eaves drop on anyone and everyone at anytime for any reason.

While in response to the NSA leaks the government has made claims that some 50 terrorist attacks were thwarted via PRISM and such other data mining operations, I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that substantiate such claims and don’t expect to as the government will say they can’t tell us because it would give away our “secrets”. IMO the only real “secret” that was exposed by Snowden was that our own government is spying on everyone, with a mere rubber stamp or at the discretion of some low level and not too well screened analyst or by the DOJ (Eric Holder presently). What is to stop the DOJ and the WhiteHut from putting their own folks within the NSA or one of their contractors? I mean seriously, if Snowden got a SC, who else did and how and why? Do you really feel “safer” now?

First of all while most of these Jihadist or Jihadist wannabe’s like the Boston Bombers are quite simply not all that bright. But I’m also fairly certain that even they, if not exactly brain trusts already know that their cell phone calls, emails and internet activity can be tracked in real time. The very few terrorists who do manage to pull something off on our soil, it is not due to their brilliant strategy or highly sophisticated methods (the 9/11 plot was brilliant if only in its stupidly brilliant simplicity and their shear stupid luck they had in pulling it off), it’s most often dumb stupid luck or our own ineptness to acknowledge from where the real dangers emanate – our unsecured boarders and political correctness and refusal to deal with the threat of Islam. Most of these Jihadist wannabe’s are more likely to blow themselves up than they are to harm any of us.

It should be noted that I as the daughter of an immigrant am not anti-immigration but why in the name of common sense would we allow Visas or student Visas to people from countries with well known terrorist ties into this country at all or at the very least without serious vetting, anal probe vetting and close observation. Yea, I know “profiling” is wrong unless you are a native born American who is Christian and or a Tea Party member. s/

Secondly, the massive collection of, if even only metadata and not the content of all communications which I am not convinced is not happening, is completely useless unless we already know who to pick out for listening and that sort of thing is only found by covert operatives (selective covert boots on the ground), infiltration of true terrorist organizations like CAIR and not domestic political opponents via harassment via the IRS, aka the Tea Party Orgs and other such similarly minded conservative political or religiously based groups, and the cooperation of other countries who share a similar self interest in rooting out terrorists. But as with the Boston Bombers, we knew all about the Brothers Tsarnaev long in advance thanks to the Russians whose warning we chose to ignore. We could have most likely prevented the Boston Marathon Bombing just as we could have most likely prevented 9/11 if we had ever been serious about National Security. Hint - neither the 9/11 terrorists nor the Brothers Tsarnaev should have ever been let into this country in the first place and in both cases, we had the warnings and many people raising the red flags, all which were ignored until it was too late.

Next when I consider that twice as many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as were killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and that we helped the regime in Egypt to fall only to be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood; just as we (Carter) helped cause the fall of the Shaw of Iran to be replaced by the Imans and the Nazi sympathizer Ahmadinejad and the enemies against our only true ally in the region, Israel; that we ousted Saddam Hussein, who I have come to believe, while certainly not a very nice guy and in fact a bloody tyrant within his own boarders, was much less a danger to US interests that what we have now in Iraq. And I now see that we are negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan and are about to arm the Syrian “rebels”. We need also to remind ourselves that we funded and funneled arms to the Mujahedeen and to Bin Laden via Pakistan during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Looking back and realizing that hindsight is always 20-20, we should have sided with the Soviets to stamp out the rise and further influence of radical Islamism in that region as that was more in our mutual self interests instead of us throwing in behind China and Saudi Arabia. We helped create and further train the monster that was Bin Laden and is Al Qaeda.

The prolonged Soviet war in Afghanistan may have helped propel the fall of the Soviet regime but then I have to now ask, to what end? Sure I was happy to see the Soviet Block fall, but first of all, did Communism ever really go away? And are we really safer now with a fractured Soviet Block? Sure the Soviets were our “enemy” but then we knew who they were and in some ways it was a “gentlemen’s” chess game. Now we have former Soviet Block countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Chechnya under the control of Islamists…the USSR kept an iron boot on and limited the ethnic and Islamic factions and granted in some not so “pretty” ways but with the fall of the Soviet block, are we really better off with these factions not being contained and restrained even by the Communists?

Lastly we need to understand that a highly motivated person or persons, be them foreign or domestic, a terror cell or a lone nut job, with or without a lot of brains or sophistication and with some good luck and good timing, can pull off a terrorist attack or a murderous rampage. While a terrible event for those involved and I sincerely feel for the victims who lost limbs and whose lives are forever changed, the Boston Marathon Bombing killed a total of 3 people – count them - 3.

So was this really worth locking down an entire city for several days and allowing local and federal LEO’s to forcibly enter homes without warrants all in the name of “security” while hunting down some idiot teenager with a gun and possibly a pressure cooker? FWIW, I lived most of my life in Baltimore City – three people dead? Were I came from we called that a relatively peaceful Saturday Night.

And as I noted previously, this didn’t need to happen in the first place if we truly wanted to protect our National Security, but does this the type of event justify the limitless snooping by the NSA into all our communications? No. The Colorado Batman Movie nut job and the Sandy Hook Elementary School killer used guns to murder many more people than the Tsarnaev brothers, but does that justify further eroding of our 2nd Amendment Rights. Oh Hell No!

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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