Thread: Judge: Wiretapping surveillance program unconstitutional

Originally Posted by Ladydrake

I asked because you called the easily demonstrated principle of law an "opinion."

I called your interpretation of the law an opinion. Let me clarify. It's law that "one's rights may not disparage another". That's the principle. It's interpretaion (opinion) of that law that may say "warrantless wiretapping does not disparage another's rights" while it's still another interpretation (opinion) that says "the heck it doesn't disparage our rights!"

[quote:2sndvjmf]You seem to be hung up on this "opinion" thing. Not every statement is an opinion. Some are emprical facts. Others are practical facts. Others are facts of law.

Opinion is what this is about. People's opinion on whether they are for or against warrantless wiretapping. It's why people are debating over anchor babies ... their interpretaion of law (i.e. opinions) are different.

What I offered was a fact of law. No judge, attorney, or law professor in this country will argue with the principle that the exercise of a rights cannot be used as an excuse to disparage another.

You cited law (fact) and offered your interpretaion of law (opinion).

Your gainsaying is growing tiresome. You don't appear to have a valid defense for your position, so you stoop to gainsaying and absurdly calling every comment an "opinion" so that you don't have to factually rebut it.

Good grief, you just couldn't resist. Oh well.

But hey, over all we are on the same team here. We both think that government can't be trusted. We both want to curb illegal immigration get the illegals who are here back on the correct side of the border. If we could just agree that the government is sufficiently untrustworthy that its feet should be held to the fire and that the last thing we need to do is give those dirtbags license to violate our rights, we could crack open a couple of beers and call it a good day.

I do agree they should be held accountable, and to the highest sense possible.

Cheers! [/quote:2sndvjmf]
Close, except the "interpretation" of the law that I offered is the standard one that is used in courts across this land, day in, day out. There is no question that tapping a line without a duly obtained warrant violates both the letter and the spirit of Article IV of the Bill of Rights. There is a question (and a serious one) whether there is any way that the government can claim that tapping phone lines without warrants constitutes the exercise of any "right."

Now, there may be other issues that determine whether rights may be set aside. Typically, a declared war allows the President as Commander in Chief to set aside rights as necessary to prosecute a war. We do not have a declared war in this case, but merely a joint declaration allowing "military action." Martial law or a declared state of emergency may allow rights to be temporarily be set aside. Again, that's not what we're dealing with in this case. If the President really felt that this program was essential to national security, he could declare a state of emergency and TEMPORARILY use the power in question. That doesn't appear to be what Bush wants to do. Instead, he is attempting to establish the ability to snoop on citizens without warrants or oversight as a standard power to be exercised at any time. There is no justification for this premise and it can be nothing but a usurpation.

Don't you think that there's a reason that this power (to tap phones without any warrant whatsoever) has never been claimed or exercised (at least not lawfully) by any prior administration?

Close, except the "interpretation" of the law that I offered is the standard one that is used in courts across this land, day in, day out.

True as that is (and I do agree with it), if/when the accepted/standard interpretation (opinion) changes, so too does the legality of the issue at hand.

Don't you think that there's a reason that this power (to tap phones without any warrant whatsoever) has never been claimed or exercised (at least not lawfully) by any prior administration?

Of course there's a reason for it. As you said the accepted/standard interpretation of the law does not give them that power. As I said above, I agree with you on that.

I think they (the government) is playing off the fear of terrorism (or whatever happens to be the convenient hot topic), convincing people to rethink or question the law and what's legally allowed. End result: The accepted standards get changed, and then what was once illegal becomes legal.

(edit) Quote tag again, lol.

Something that really worries me is that if the Dems win in 2008.....quite honestly.........I just don't trust them to handle the Middle East. We all KNOW how they would handle illegal immigration. I want to know Dman WOULD YOU PREFER Hillary or ANY of the Dems to GWB knowing what we can expect on illegal immigration ???

What? I don't want any of them in power. I want both the Dems and Reps out of office. Both parties are beyond corrupt and need to go. I trust most politicans about as far as I can throw them.

So what are we going to do when the time comes to vote ? Can we still hope that Tom Tancredo might run as an Independent ? We haven't heard too much about whether or not he will do it lately.

What if there's nobody to vote for ? We just don't vote ? That's not going to help either.

Come on Dman, you know I respect your opinion.....give me some advise !!!

After ignoring this thread for the last few days because it was obvious to me that a judge FINALLY got it right for once, I decided this morning to actually read it to see for myself how it could have grown to 4 pages.

I'll try to state my OPINION without insulting anyone else. That may not be easy to do, so bear with me if you will.

1. If the NSA wiretapping was effective in fighting terrorists, why can't they go to the FISA court for a warrant? They have the ability to tap for 72 hours BEFORE going to FISA, allowing the NSA plenty of time to gather their PROOF in support of their warrant. In FISA's 20 year history, they've approved about 20,000 warrants while denying only 5. Most people would call that record a 'rubber stamp'.

2. Anyone involved in the fight against illegal immigration KNOWS how duplicitous our 'leaders' are, having watched them talk out of both sides of their neck time after time. How is it that you'll then turn around and TRUST them on warrantless searches?

3. Anything that infringes on the Bill of Rights needs to be adamantly OPPOSED on principle. Our rights were paid for with the blood of Patriots. To allow those rights to be usurped FOR ANY REASON amounts to an abrogation of our responsibility as Citizens to jealously guard those rights.

4. ALIPAC's archives contain THOUSANDS of articles about NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, SPP, CFR, NWO, Agenda 21, Skull & Bones and Rex 84. The Rothschild's, Bilderberg's, Rockefeller's, Morgan's and Bush's. Halliburton, KBR, The Carlyle Group and countless other corporate profiteers with the same Globalist Agenda. The info is out there.

KNOWING all of this, it amazes and disappoints me that some people would allow THESE SAME PEOPLE unfettered access to their own PERSONAL lives, without even a modicum of oversight.

This is NOT our government. We have been HIJACKED, and not by terrorists with box-cutters, but by Globalists with $$$$$$. We, the Citizens of the United States, are under attack. That attack is coming from our Courts, our Congress and the White House.

Look behind the curtain, Dorothy!!!!!!

What if there's nobody to vote for ? We just don't vote ? That's not going to help either.

If it came to it, I'd rather not vote at all then continue to vote for the same trash that the NWO continues to parade our way and hope that we can somehow by some miracle change them. I refuse (by any justification no matter how lame) to give my rubber stamp to these anti american, anti freedom traitors.

2. Anyone involved in the fight against illegal immigration KNOWS how duplicitous our 'leaders' are, having watched them talk out of both sides of their neck time after time. How is it that you'll then turn around and TRUST them on warrantless searches?

Thank you. Again a question I've posed myself several times that has gone unanswered.

So what are we going to do when the time comes to vote ?

Decide who to vote for or not vote.

Either way, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent even more/again. We cannot allow whoever gets into office to forget they are not exempt from law and they chose to apply for servitude to the American people.

Originally Posted by nittygritty

dman1200
Do you have proof there are records where they were spying on everyday Americans? Just for the record, I would like to know what W. thinks about this, What do you think W.? Do you think the government is listening to what the Americans are saying about the illegals?

Nitty,

I'm sorry I did not see your question before. Sometimes it is best to PM me a link to your questions if they are for me since I cannot read the boards as much as I would like.

Yes, I believe that the government scans most calls made in America through a program called Echelon. I believe the computers scan the calls for keywords and encrypted information. If keywords are detected or encrypted information, then the call is stored until a human agent can look at it.

In the 1970s, there was a big scandal when the public found out about Operation Shamrock. It was discovered that the NSA was using computers to scan all telegraphs sent in the nation. Upon exposure, the program was shut down and new laws were put in place to protect the American public from the government spying on our citizens.

The way echelon works is this... It has been illegal for the CIA and the NSA to monitor our own citizens. That duty has been with the FBI and they have had to secure warrants in the past for electronic eavesdropping.

The Echelon system allows the NSA to bypass these laws because while it has been illegal for the NSA to monitor all calls and e-mails in the US, it is not deemed illegal for Great Britain to eavesdrop on all e-mails and calls. It is also not illegal for Great Britain to share intelligence about American citizens with American governmental agencies.

So England monitors us and we monitor them and then we exchange the information when something trips a wire.

Now there is a very good reason that privacy rights were built into the US Constitution. It is because the old way prior to the Democratic movements in Western Europe involved secret police and tyrannical powers monitoring their own populations and using that knowledge / power advantage to subdue and enslave their populations.

Privacy and freedom go hand in hand. A prisoner has no privacy.

With the emergence of new technologies and biometric devices, Americans are quickly becoming prisoners in their own homes where their communications can be monitored.

Each of us and all of us collectively may end up powerless in the face of our own government which can obviously be controlled by special and foreign interests.

We can fix our security problems with terrorists and our illegal immigration problem without volunteering to live in electronic fish bowls for the rest of our lives and subjugate our children to living in a world where they are watched and tracked from birth to death.

George Orwell's 1984 is here and now.

The main problem I have is that these new technologies establish an electronic omnipresence in our lives.

There is only room for one omnipresence in my life and it will not be an agency, a computer, George Bush, or Chertoff. God should be the only omnipresent force in my life.

W

I don't think I really can add anything to this - but that has never stopped me before.

When someone mentions the President fighting the 'War on Terror' - I always ask 'When do we start?'

For me, if you are fighting a war, especially a war against people without a country, essentially, there are some prudent things you do.

First, you close your borders and clean house. Anyone who is here and should not be - send them home. Send them home immediately and let the courts come in at a later date. Actually, if you should not be here, I don't th ink you deserve a day in court.

Then take a look at those who are here legally, whether on visa, naturalized citizens, or natural born citizens, who intend us harm. That might take longer and more investigation - but you begin.

I never understood the President's thinking in making all airport screeners federal employees - then waiting quite some time before checking their status. That just makes no sense and so far no one has given me a good reason. There was plenty of reason to believe some were illegal aliens - so why would you make them federal employees? They could have been checked out without that.

Yes, I supported going into Afghanistan - because I believed that Al Queda and Bin Laden did the deed on 9/11. When suddenly it became 'Bin Laden, who?", I became concerned.

This President knows how destructive the illegal immigration issue is to this country. Yet he continues to keep (yes, folks, keep) the border open for anyone and everyone to come across and bring whatever they like. If they can bring hundreds, thousands of pounds of drugs across, they can surely bring enough biological weapons across to do great harm, or lots of other weaponry.

If it is easy enough for small children, 8 1/2 months pregnant women, the elderly needing heart surgery, to make it across that border, you know terrorists can, and it would be no stretch for them to blend in with the Mexicans coming across.

So knowing his refusal to protect us in even a fundamental way in this war on terror, how does anyone support any of his actions? I am puzzled by that.

So, he is destroying us, deliberately, with illegal immigration. He is literally allowing Americans to be killed, maimed, raped, etc., while refusing to change things. He is allowing our education system, our social services system, our legal system, and the very fabric of our country to be destroyed, yet he will protect us from terrorists who MIGHT harm us?

As to why we have had no attacks, I don't know. One thing I believe with all my heart, if they haven't attacked, it is because they are not ready. There is nothing to keep them from walking across that border and bringing murder and mayhem with them or making use of things readily available here.

Terrorists might attack us. They might destroy part of this country. They might kill people. We can come back from that. Illegal immigration WILL destroy this country - and it will kill Americans, through violence, disease, etc., and in a way we will never be able to come back.
One is a definite possibility - the other is a definite.

So my thoughts - if this President has not done the most basic things to protect us , why would we allow him to trash the constitution to do it?
I won't willingly give up any rights for his brand of 'war'.