Issue 102 Spys, they see you June 19, 2013

As I'm sure most of you are aware of the scandal going on with respect to the NSA and its data collection. I did not address this issue when it first broke because I knew there would be even more information leaking out. And as a matter of fact more information is still coming out. But for those who don't know, the NSA is an intelligence asset used by the United States to conduct electronic surveillance such as through computers and telephones and they thanks to a "leaker" were found to be spying on the rest of the United States population.

How this is bad: It is bad because this violates the fourth amendment to the United States constitution which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures by government without the rule of law. Aka, they should not do this without a warrant given by a Judge which is only supposed to be given out if evidence suggests that the alleged person in the warrant is a suspect in a crime and the initial evidence leads one to believe that suspect committed the crime with evidence to be obtained through the warrant leading to an arrest. Sorry for the long sentence, but in short, if it means you can arrest the suspect after the search is complete because the evidence says they are the bad guy, then and only then is the warrant given. With respect to intelligence collection, it works in much the same way, just that the justification is that the suspect is believed to have or is plotting to aid and maybe carry out a terrorist plot.

What they did: In the case of the recent events however, there was no warrants issued. The collection of data was handed over by companies like Verizon, Facebook and others simply by the government asking. Why did they hand over phone records, search history data, and other types of information? Well when the government can tax you into oblivion and even force you to comply by other more unethical means then of course you would. So I don't blame them. But, the collection also was carried out by simply taking data by covert means as well and now the government has a bunch of pentagon sized buildings holding all this data on everyone in the United States. Let it be known that no conversations or emails were taken without an official warrant (that we know of). Also, it is unclear if that data was given to political opponents like in the case of the IRS (internal revenue service...the tax collector) targeting Tea Party groups, pro Israel groups and others that run counter to the current administration. But there is more information to come and things look about as bad as it did with President Nixon with Water Gate.

Conclusion: It is unacceptable for any government to take such information without following the rule of law. No President (that is if President Obama actually had a hand in the decision) should be allowed to carry out such an obscene act. The national defense is not a justification to destroy our right to privacy. Some of you may be saying that this is ok, especially as phone companies, and search engines store this data anyway to be used to sell ads and provide for better content and services. But this is our private information being used without our consent by government, we know that Verizon collects our data, but we did not know government had access to it. While in the United States all people are protected by the constitution, both citizen and non-citizen alike, due to tacit consent. Those outside the United States have no such luxury and as such are not subject to the United State's constitutional protections (as such we can listen to whatever we want from a caller over seas again due to tacit consent). This issue will not go away anytime soon and is a disturbing trend. Our society may end up as a panopticon (envisioned as the ultimate prison) but it is up to us the people to keep the government in check.