Bricker
November 29, 2010, 12:37am
16
Alessan:
The U.S. Constitution is not a universal document. It is the law of the land , and does not apply to any actions taken outside U.S. borders. It has nothing to do with citizenship. Does a non-U.S. citizen within the borders of the United States have a right to due process? Of course. Conversely, is a U.S. citizen abroad entitled to the protection of the Constitution? I’m not so sure.
Yeah, you’ve done no research whatsoever before making this claim, have you? NOt even read the previous thread on the subject, in which you would have found this post :
I assume you didn’t actually research this confident claim. Because it’s simply wrong.
If you had, you might have read about the case of Wadih EL-Hage, a US citizen living in Kenya in the late 1990s. Believing that he was involved in terrorist activities, US authorities wiretapped his Kenyan telephone for a year. This was done without any warrant. They also broke into his house and searched it, again with no warrant.
Evidence gained from that wiretap and search was used to convict El-Hage in criminal court in the United States, of conspiracy to murder United States nationals; conspiracy to murder internationally protected persons, United States officers, and employees engaging in official duties; and conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States, all related to several embassy bombings.
On appeal, El-Hage made the same argument that you just did: the Constitution forbids the introduction of warrantless wiretap evidence and warrantless search evidence against him, even if the evidence was gathered while he and the phone in question were in Kenya.
The court disagreed:
126 F. Supp. 2d 264 S.D.N.Y. 2000:
(“Warrantless electronic surveillance has been used by the Executive to collect intelligence information since at least the mid-1800s … Warrantless physical searches have been used for a much longer period of time.”). Congress has legislated with respect to domestic incidents of foreign intelligence collection, see FISA, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801 et seq. (1978), but has not addressed the issue of foreign intelligence collection which occurs abroad.
There are some broad Constitutional principles, such as reasonableness, that may apply, but what you said is wrong: the Constitution as a whole does NOT apply to US citizens anywhere in the world.
Where did you get the idea that it did?