In other threads you’ve made a big deal about how important it is that we are not a democracy but a republic.
In a republic, though, the government’s decisions are manifestly not the people’s decisions. They are the decisions of a group of people who were elected, but they were elected precisely in order to take the burden of decision-making mostly away from the people.
And the American people have elected representatives and leaders who have decided on our behalf that it’s best that the government keep secrets. This is the will of the people. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t elect those people.
This is a little disingenuous, isn’t it? They haven’t been able to prove it because whether they are being spied on is a secret. You seem to be suggesting that because no one could prove it, that means no American was being improperly spied on. The far more likely truth is that many Americans are being illegally surveilled but that no individual has been able to prove it to the satisfaction of more than four Supreme Court justices.
As it turns out, Snowden’s revelations might change that.
They can’t very well say, “Richard Parker, the guy we have underground in the Kremlin, is now in danger because of Mr. Snowden.”
OK, now it’s in large underlined bold italic dark red. Don’t make me ask the management to enable blink tags…
I think you’ve misread **Ravenman’**s comment, which was about damage to Americans caused by the NSA’s programs.
I agree that both sides are bit hamstrung in proving harm from the actions of Snowden and the NSA, respectively.
I disagree. (Not my original words…) “What Americans used to commonly refer to a as a right to freedom is now more commonly being refered to as a rights of privacy.”
Seems to me that if citizens are demanding a right to privacy from excessive or unwarranted gov’t intrusion, the right to freedom has already suffered; I’m going to argue that’s demonstrable harm.
The Constitution does not provide for a “right to freedom”, and such a notion is so abstract as to be utterly meaningless in the first place.
The Constitution provides a right to privacy as an extension of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure; however, merely collecting metadata automatically is not a search if nobody ever looks at it. That’s all the NSA was doing - collecting and archiving data so that, if they had a reason to suspect someone of plotting against this country and had a warrant, they could then review that evidence without having to invent a time machine. It’s perfectly legal and you have in no way been harmed by it.
I know how much you love analogies…
Was it the will of the people that Nixon and his croanies commit the Watergate scandal?
Was it the will of the people that Reagan and his croanies commit the Iran-Contra scandal?
I mean, it must have been. The people in their infinite wisdom voted for them, right?
This is breathtakingly wrong.
Metadata gets no privacy protection at all. NSA is collecting it and FBI or DEA can see it without any legal process at all.
Content, like the body of an email, is also routinely collected without any legal process except for FISA court approval of the generic procedures. That content then gets retained if it meets any of many criteria, including merely discussing someone targeted pursuant to FISA court rules (which is done without any judicial review of the individual targeting decision, much less a warrant). And if that data is scooped up along with, say, a whole email conversation thread that doesn’t otherwise meet the criteria, it still gets retained. And then this retained data can be reviewed for a whole host of reasons, none of which require a warrant.
So in other words, it’s collected lawfully in accordance with a lawful process.
I stand corrected; I should have been more careful and said, “right to freedom of speech”.
Having said that, what is your understanding of this interpretation of the First Amendment?
Specifically:
To wit, if my communications (yes, including meta-data) are being recorded, is it unnatural for me to feel like my freedom of speech is under scrutiny?
How does the mere act of recording your communications threaten your freedom of speech? Is the fact that this thread is searchable via Google and could theoretically be read by a government official a threat?
Yes. It can, actually. I’m a SharePoint administrator and if I wanted to apply for Snowden’s job, this post would certainly cast a light of suspicion on me.
That’s not a threat to your freedom of speech.
Something he said or wrote would prevent him from having a job, if I understand correctly.
Not being hired by a private corporation because you’ve publicly expressed sympathy for a man who manipulated them and used their resources to commit espionage and treason isn’t an infringement of the First Amendment.
It’s just good business sense.
Freedom of speech is not what the gov’t allows you to say. It’s how the gov’t treats you once you’ve said it.
Here’s one more analogy for you…
Despite what some people in the west believe, in Soviet Russia citizens were permitted to say whatever they wanted about the gov’t and it’s policies. The gulags were full of those who chose to exercise that right.
Great. Blast me a tweet once anything you’ve said in this thread lands you in gulag.
Booze Allen would hire me readily with my skill set and experience. I didn’t say I wanted a job with Booze Allen.