Utah NSA data center
Via Raw Story:
Three National Security Agency whistle blowers told Viewpoint host Eliot Spitzer on Monday that the agency was gathering information on every person in the United States.
The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008 gave the NSA broad powers to monitor international phone calls and emails, and granted legal immunity to telecommunication companies that had participated in the Bush administration’s wiretapping program prior to 2008. But former senior official Thomas Drake, former senior analyst Kirk Wiebe, and former technical director William Binney said the NSA was not only monitoring international communications — the agency had been spying on “the entire country.”
Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”
Widespread domestic electronic surveillance without a warrant violates the U.S. Constitution. The secret FISA court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act may issue warrants, but the Constitution clearly prohibits the issuance of blanket warrants.
The Fourth Amendment states, “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.”
The NSA simply does not have the authority to do what they are doing. Who can stop them?
UPDATE: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals answered my question. The warrantless surveillance of Americans is accountability-free. Even if you can prove you were under secret government surveillance (which is almost impossible), your case can still be thrown out of court using the so-called “state secrets privilege.”
#1 by Nathan Erkkila on July 24, 2012 - 1:35 pm
Of course they have the authority. It’s called doing whatever the fuck they want.
#2 by Tim Carter on July 29, 2012 - 7:40 pm
Richard
I’m glad you are keeping this out there. It still amazes me tea partyin’ constitution luvin’ Utahns have no problem having Stasi head quarters built in their backyard. The only conclusion I can come to is that at some point in the future they will somehow combine the spy center with the vast geneology library already here so that future generations will not only know who their ancestors were, but what they were doing, saying at all times…..:)
#3 by ironic on July 29, 2012 - 9:58 pm
In violation of the 4th. This is not your Dad’s country anymore.
Progressives in the US do not see the synergy of fascism of the left amalgamating with the fascism of the right.
We’ll be goose stepping any minute now…
#4 by cav on July 29, 2012 - 10:15 pm
Burt, aren’t they ‘Public Sector Employees’ – Public Servants, on the job at our behest?
#5 by ironic on July 29, 2012 - 10:33 pm
If so then we be a stupid lot for giving them the idea that this is somehow something we want…300 drone strikes under bama, bush shot 90. Amazing we still have morons supporting obama, he is bush light, but on steroids.
#6 by Richard Warnick on July 29, 2012 - 10:37 pm
Ought to be a political issue that gets debated in public. Is the government going to abide by the Constitution, or not? Unfortunately there is a consensus among Washington politicians, so no debate.
#7 by ironic on July 29, 2012 - 10:43 pm
And people wonder why Americans are lining up in droves to buy weapons…
#8 by Shane on July 30, 2012 - 8:59 am
Because people like you actually think a gun will protect you from drones and information warfare?
#9 by ironic on July 30, 2012 - 10:25 am
Seems to be working for Afghans…
There is a visceral understanding that there are only so many drones. There are 4 million law enforcement and military, the bulk of them standing guard in the foreign empire, if they must return, bye bye empire. They are sworn to protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. Many will side with that as push comes to shove and the federal tyranny grows, it is like cancer. There are 326 million citizens. With any luck all of them who wish to be, shall be armed.
As far as info war goes, we A Scanner Darkly, but that comes to an end as well if people refuse to submit.
“Live free or die, for death is not the worst of evils”.
Since the constitutional violations are already in place, and no one, including messiah obama has done fuck all to remove them, in fact has only increased them, we can deduce that voting for a politician to restore our inalienable rights is pretty useless.
..and yet..you wonder why Americans are lining up in droves to buy guns. You have to be willfully stupid, or simply don’t know where you live. come on out of the bubble Shane.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Solzhenitzhen. The Gulag Archipelago.
Works so much better with Mossberg than a frying pan.
I suppose you are about ready to lay down then, huh Shane?
#10 by cav on July 30, 2012 - 11:22 am
So is the government small enough to drown in a bathtub yet? And take its arsenal and banker and spying class down the tube with it?
Somehow I don’t feel as though we’re getting the full story here.
#11 by Shane on July 30, 2012 - 12:20 pm
Remember cav, the real irony is that the only part of the government the tea-baggers don’t want to shrink is the part they also think they can lead an armed revolt against, despite the fact the fund it at levels that dwarfs the rest of the world combined.
Best not think too hard about that. Heaven knows they don’t…
#12 by Richard Warnick on July 31, 2012 - 4:13 pm
No time to make a post out of this, but Jason Linkins does it better than I can anyway:
Secure America Now Says We Are All Probably Going To Die … Because Obama
Seriously, some right-wingers are still trying to play the fear card. Obama killed OBL and thousands of other people, many of whom may have been terrorists, wannabe terrorists, or associated with or related to somebody the U.S. government believed was a terrorist. Our Bill of Rights has been run through the shredder multiple times, what with NSA surveillance, the USA PATRIOT Act, and Obama’s presidential assassination program. What else do they want?
Oh yeah, the lady in the ad is steamed because she heard we’re not torturing people anymore, and that Obama closed the CIA “black sites.” But those decisions were made by the Bush administration before Obama took office.
#13 by Richard Warnick on August 8, 2012 - 10:56 am
UPDATE: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says the warrantless surveillance of Americans is accountability-free. Even if you can prove you were under secret government surveillance (which is almost impossible), your case can still be thrown out of court using the so-called “state secrets privilege.”
#14 by Tim Carter on August 28, 2012 - 5:23 pm
Hey Richard, I came across this mini – documentary in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html?_r=1
“It took me a few days to work up the nerve to phone William Binney. As someone already a “target” of the United States government, I found it difficult not to worry about the chain of unintended consequences I might unleash by calling Mr. Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency turned whistle-blower. He picked up. I nervously explained I was a documentary filmmaker and wanted to speak to him. To my surprise he replied: “I’m tired of my government harassing me and violating the Constitution. Yes, I’ll talk to you.” “