Posted on 06/13/2013 3:04:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
The equivalent I see to the NSA spying is as follows:
Imagine the cops coming to your house, completely searching it from top to bottom and catalog everything...all your clothing, furnishings, papers, prescription drug bottles, food, appliances, scan all your hard drives on all your computers, look behind the walls, above the ceilings, go through the attic, and the whole 9 yards.
When you ask to see their search warrant, the lead detective tells you that he doesn’t have one. “But don’t worry, we’re just going to take this inventory and store it at the precinct. We won’t actually look at the inventory unless we have a search warrant.”
“You should be happy because this will save us a whole bunch of time and you a whole lot of inconvenience if we ever suspect you of a crime in the future.”
I can’t imagine anybody feeling comfortable with that.
But yet libtards are perfectly OK if the government does a cyber-version of this and store the data at a yottabyte-sized data warehouse in Utah.
Idiots.
It may not be illegal, but it politically obtuse.
Mr. Barone, what part of the word "unreasonable" don't you understand?
The 1979 Smith v. Maryland decision you cite allows for the connection of a device to a telephone line to record the phone numbers of any calls made on that line without a warrant.
By its very nature (the limits of the technology), that device could only monitor a single telephone line.
The Smith v. Maryland decision has been used to justify the sort of massive all-inclusive monitoring that modern technology allows.
That decision might give you the legality you seek, but it sure doesn't give you the reasonability that the Constitution requires.
To use your post office analogy, of course they have to be able to read the address.
But to do what the NSA requires, they would have to record every address (delivery and return) on every piece of mail (billions per year) that they handle, including mail class, weight, date mailed, postage paid, and insurance information, and then turn that information over to a law enforcement agency.
Is that reasonable according to the 4th Amendment?
No way.
Michael Barone will be repeating the Gentleman meme right up until the Obama regime slides the blade between his ribs.
Obama does not play by the rules. We have already seen the definition of terrorism and religious extremism morphed to fit their objectives.
Each time there is a shooting/bombing, the liberal media scream it was the Tea Party, until they are proven wrong.
The Obama regime and the corrupt media desparately want their Reichstag fire so that the persecution of political enemies can begin.
Michael Barone has joined the useful idiots.
We've got military people shooting up bad guys from miles away using a joystick, f'rinstance.
So a geek who understands some of the flow chartiness of the workings of "programs" has a core set of values and ...
What?
We frickin' PAY you ... !
Snowden's a hero.
That’s because they think it’s directed at us.
Just because congress has not passed any laws specifically prohibiting this kind of privacy intrusion does not make it legal. It was and is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land.
Barone is another beltway idiot who has no concept of limited government.
Yeah, I'll call bullshit on this one. Says who...? The the bureaucrats and politicians who were just cought lying to congress and the american people? The clown who wrote this should change is job title from columnist to government stenographer.
Another Big Government Republican propagandist heard from. Fox News was so ridiculous this morning that we turned off Fox & Friends. Brian Kilmeade was incensed that Snowden told the Chinese that we were spying on them. I’m sure theChiComs never suspected that.
The NSA spooks must have an interesting dossier on Roger Ailes.
Stick around until someone with an "r" next to their name is in the white house so what passes for "conservatives" these days can tag out the liberals and take their place in the ring making excuses for things like this.
michael is showing what he always was... a lying dim operative of the progressive party.
LLS
barone and carville... no difference.
LLS
What the hell has Barone been drinking or smoking lately? I guess he’s gotten so brainwashed that he’s forgotten we still have a Constitution
The republican party is already dead... it may be revived as the new Republican Party but it also my be replaced. What is there now will assume room temperature.
LLS
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/442/735/case.html
Smith v. Maryland. I disagree with the majority, but the case is described at the above link. We do not have a legitimate expectation of privacy on the phone numbers dialed - according to the Supremes. Therefore, the feds are permitted to collect all of those numbers. The Supremes were wrong on Dred Scott v. Sandford, on Plessy v. Ferguson, on Roe v. Wade, and on National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, and they were wrong on Smith v. Maryland too. I just hope the are willing to admit their mistakes in time.
Exactly, not illegal because congress passed an unconstitutional law making it legal. Unconstitutional= illegal in my book. These talking heads who support the patriot act stick it. I would rather fight these terrorists in the street than give the government these powers to potetially abuse us with. If these powers don’t exsist then there is a clear defining line were the government would be abusing its authority.
I have a small question
What do people want to do?
There are bad guys out there, we don’t know who they are, or what they are up to right now.
Given that this is true, and given that stopping them before they act is (at the risk of going way out on a limb) A Good Thing. Given Signals Intelligence is the best way to stop them...What do people want to do?
Please reality based ideas only.
Info gathering has a cost. When the cost drops, as is the case with computer sniffing, the balance between liberty and security needs to be reexamined.
Resource limitations, not Constitutional principles, is what prevented widespread snooping of this sort in 1979. Metadata analysis was not technically possible before the computer revolution, so its implications could not have been considered.
In 1979, the telephone system kept records of which line cards in a switch connected with other line cards in that switch or other switches. It was called SMDR (station message detail recording)and boiled down to essentially a record of circuit switching in the network .. this line card associated with the phone number XXX-XXXX connected with that line card with phone number xxx-xxxx. You couldn't know from that information the specific individual who placed the call, just that a call from that number happened at this specific time to this other number.
The metadata captured now from smart phones is much more involved, and given the nature of cellular and smart phones as personal devices tied to one individual, the data essentially shows your location at all times regardless of whether you are on a call or not, and all inbound and outbound communications whether voice or data are logged as well.
So the idea may be the same in principle but the type of data collected is much more personalized and involved.
Snowden is no Herbert Yardley.
When Herbert Yardley headed the American Black Chamber, there was no NSA or even laws forbidding such things.
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