My fellow Americans... How do you feel about losing the 4th Amendment?

I’m just going to copy and paste what I typed on Hacker News..

We elected Bush in 2004 when he had Tom Ridge upping the terror alert every week before the election. It never seemed to go down. But it always managed to go up to red every week.

I think we have hit the point that you can’t really roll anything back. If you do and 9/11 v.2.0 happens you are politically screwed. And, unfortunately, it is all about the next election and soccer moms.

The Fourth Amendment was on it’s way out with the Patriot Act. It’s also been challenged by the expansion of technology since the birth of technology.

Someone asked in another question about crying over humanity, well I’ve been weeping for a few decades, as I understand history. It turns out we actually lost WWI and WWII, and the aftermath of 9/11 was just another nail in our coffin. For we now do what we fought to prevent others from doing, and our fears just give the terrorists the thrills they’ve been seeking.

So, makes me angry.

Everyone who fought and died in defense of America and her freedoms has died for nothing.

The Fourth Amendment reads:
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.

If the NSA is keeping records of our websearches, texts, and phone calls, it doesn’t exactly violate that amendment. I agree that in this age of Big Brother it is worrisome, but I understand the need to prevent more terrorist attacks.

Are you saying our technology trail should be listed as our effects?

Web searches, texts and phone calls are my “effects”. And please don’t tell me there is any difference between a “paper” and a text.

edit: I worded that really poorly. I’m going to nuke it until I can respond without looking stupid.

Fuck the Constitution. They’re covering their investment ass in the $2 Billion data center in Utah. Add another $2 Billion for “computers, data storage, software maintenance or secure communications systems.

It’s a million square feet in size. This isn’t about protecting America. It’s about protecting their investment. A lot of folks would lose a lot of money if the NSA was prevented from spying on US Citizens.

Your grandmothers rights have just been have just been reduced to a cave dweller in Afghanistan. And it will cost $40 Million per year in power bills just to ensure that.

Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the Military–industrial complex.

He was right. And I agree this is more about putting the taxes I pay into the pockets of people that pay for lobbyists to get lucrative contracts for shit we don’t need.

I’m with @filmfann, I accept that my privacy may be violated in an effort to keep all of America safe. A lot of my family members are military, so I understand @mrentropy, too, but I disagree. Sacrificing our personal rights in the name of God, Country & Family, is a sacrifice i am willing to make.

On the other hand, liberals should take note that Obama is leaning more and more to the right, so think about that next election. :)

I have a suspicion that votes like these are worked out in advance. They’ll let Obama take the responsibility for pushing this through because it’s his last term. The D Caucus can “defy their president” and claim they were against butchering citizen rights. They got just enough Republicans to go along with to defeat the bill… probably those who are most indebted to the NSA data center funding.

@KNOWITALL Can anyone name a single terrorist attack the NSA has prevented by illegally wiretapping every American citizen?

IT’S A LIE!

Gen Alexander’s testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program helped thwart ‘dozens’ of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods,

“We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence,” they said in a statement released on Thursday ahead of a widely anticipated briefing for US senators about the National Security Agency’s activities.”

“When you’re talking about important liberties that the American people feel strongly about, and you want to have an intelligence program, you’ve got to make a case for why it provides unique value to the [intelligence] community atop what they can already have,” Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, told the Guardian in an interview on Thursday.

“Wyden said. “If a program provides unique value, the people running it ought to explain it. I’m certainly open to doing that in a classified setting, and I know of a program where they haven’t done it.”
Wyden said he could not elaborate on what that program is, citing its classified nature.

“Sen Udall hopes he and his colleagues get specific answers out of Gen Alexander on what appears to be a discrepancy between what he told the appropriations committee yesterday [Wednesday] and the information previously provided to the intelligence committee.”

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I see your point, but unless you are privy to National Security issues, you will never know about them more than likely. :(

I’m not worried. Whatever technology is available for spying, there is an equal amount of technology available to stop spying.

@KNOWITALL Careful there. Not only will you allow spying on your fellow citizens, their families, their small business, but now we’re expected to have it done by an agency which is unaccountable to anyone? That’s Totalitarianism.

The Senator agreed to a confidential meeting behind closed doors. The NSA refuses.

Who is to watch the watchers? The NSA spies on its own citizens with the position that everyone is a suspect? No.

@tomathon Can you point to the “equal amount of technology” that you purport exists somewhere? It will need to be 1 million square feet of servers at a cost of four billion dollars. Where can I find that?

That is not what I meant. NSA builds huge complexes because they apply their technology on a national level. You, however, can use sophisticated anti-spying technology to protect yourself on an individual level. You don’t need huge complexes to do that. I’m not going to share anything else for what should be an obvious reason, but I will say it exists, it is not too expensive and it does the job. Covers the house, covers the services, the products, etc.

The only people that will be screwed are those who can’t afford it.

“The only people that will be screwed are those who can’t afford it.”

Are you kidding me?

Newsflash, there is no system which anyone can afford to protect them from all directions the NSA will come at them. It will not matter if a few richer tech savvy folks thwart a few spying sessions. We’re all screwed.

So John Q Public wants to run for local office. He wants to build a campaign and needs privacy to prevent competitor from undermining his campaign. He deserves that privacy.

Mr. John Q Public wants to patent an item that will revolutionize fuel economy. He deserves the privacy needed to prevent corporatocracy from intervening unethically.

We deserve our privacy. We should instead be demanding more transparency in government.

It’s a four billion dollar program… Just for startup!

Laughable if anyone thinks a little plug-in or secured server certificate is going to combat that monster.

Ok, so you live in the stone age, what can I tell you. I know plenty of people that don’t even know how to use a computer in this day and age, so it doesn’t surprise me that you’re unaware of where to buy counter-surveillance equipment and how to use it.

You seem to think they’re going to dedicate their entire complex on 1 user. That is not how it works unless there is a red flag.

I’m one of the minority that is actually okay with what the NSA was doing. As I understand it they were doing a statistical aggregation on phone numbers called and then using complex Bayesian statistical analysis to try to identify outliers.

Seriously, the NSA won’t confide any success stories to congress even behind closed doors. They lied to congress already stating they were not surveilling US citizens.

And you guys believe that you know how it works?

The way it’s supposed to work is that government doesn’t pry into the lives of citizens UNLESS SUSPECTED of a crime.

Define “red flag”. Define “outlier”. And then tell me why monitoring intimate messages between me and my SO is necessary to identify that. Why must texts between grandma and the kids be under scrutiny?

“In March 2011, the Russian security service sent a stark warning to the F.B.I., reporting that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “a follower of radical Islam” who had “changed drastically since 2010” and was preparing to travel to Russia’s turbulent Caucasus to connect with underground militant groups. Six months later, Russia sent the same warning to the C.I.A.” HERE

They can’t even stop “terrorists” when warned in advance. If that’s not a “red flag” pointing to “outliers” then what the fuck is?

Were they too busy browsing Mom’s cookie recipe to notice the real threat?

“F.B.I. officials have defended their response to the Russian tip, which prompted agents to interview Mr. Tsarnaev and his parents and check government databases AND INTERNET ACTIVITY. The bureau found nothing.”

“You have Russian intelligence services contacting two agencies within our federal government responsible for our national security, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.,” he said. “They tell us, ‘We believe you have a radical Islamist in your midst.’ ” Despite the warning and the F.B.I.’s initial follow-up, Mr. Graham said, Mr. Tsarnaev was able to visit Dagestan and return unnoticed, and DISCUSSED KILLING AMERICANS OPENLY ON THE INTERNET UNDETECTED. HERE last paragraph first page

Page 2 top – NYTimes

Jimmy Gurulé, a former counterterrorism official who teaches at Notre Dame Law School, said the alert about Mr. Tsarnaev’s travel plans should have prompted new attention, since it appeared to give weight to the Russian warning. He said that the authorities should have sought a court warrant to monitor his cellphone and e-mail while he was in Russia. “When he came back to the United States, they should have pulled him out of the Customs line, inspected his belongings, looked at his laptop and cellphone and questioned him about what he had done in Dagestan,” said Mr. Gurulé.

But law enforcement officials said it was unrealistic to expect the F.B.I., which had already taken a hard look at Mr. Tsarnaev, to reopen the case merely because of his travel. The TIDE database has roughly 700,000 names in it, a senior law enforcement official said, and Customs officials get 20 or 30 alerts every day about travel by people in various databases.
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So they can’t follow up on specific targets because there are already too many names on the list, and too many alerts every day. BUT THEY WANT TO ADD MORE?... WITH THE PROMISE OF SECURITY?

BULL SHIT… They’re protecting their investment and the money grab made possible by the Sheeple of the United States of America.

I’m a sheeple. First to admit it.

HTFC.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

James Madison
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Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis
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When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Robert A. Heinlein
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Edmund Burke
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Charles de Montesquieu
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Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson
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Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Plato
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If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

James Madison
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There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.

Walt Whitman
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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Edmund Burke
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The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

Maximilien Robespierre
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There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

Charles de Montesquieu
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The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Edmund Burke
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Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.

Malcolm X
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A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.

Robin Morgan
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There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.

Frederick William Robertson
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Death is softer by far than tyranny.

Aeschylus
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The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

Hugo Black
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I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.

Zell Miller
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When more Americans prefer freebies to freedom, these great United States will become a fertile ground for tyranny.

Allen West
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It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

James F. Cooper
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Tens of thousands of brave Americans died to break the chains of British tyranny so that the principles of our Declaration of Independence could take fold and flourish in the birth of a new nation.

Jim Gerlach
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The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Wole Soyinka
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A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.

Crystal Eastman
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Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

William Pitt
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Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Henry Fielding
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All tyranny, bigotry, aggression, and cruelty are wrong, and whenever we see it, we must never be silent.

Ingrid Newkirk
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Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history’s most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

Michael Johns

I’ve already done my Kübler-Ross shuffle, so I’m over all the disappointments that just seem to keep coming.

Where this has all led me is to discovering a refuge in the energy of one’s heart and one’s connection with (the) light. To quote my medium’s channeled response, “the evil you speak of will not win the day. It is a much weaker energy that cannot sustain itself and cannot line intuitively to higher energy as it is not light and is not the work of many who understand what mind is and what soul is. The two are separate and the mind can manifest but the soul can love, and junk of mind can make you believe evil is winning… darkness is a doorway to dense energy that pretends to be alive but holds you captive… and illness of darkness has no purpose on you… so, must quiet mind and voice your truth only from your soul.”

When the Grinch takes away your Christmas presents, you can still sing like a Who.

While I appreciate what you suggest @serenade, more than you know, consider “that voicing my truth only from my soul” may be more soulful if directing the “Who’s song” as a letter or phone call to your Senator.

That way, the truth in my soul won’t be so wrought with guilt of not doing anything to protect the future of my children from tyrannical rule. I don’t want the ugly truth of apathy weighing my soul down that much.

The article posted above (I read it) posts things that I was already aware of. My question is why the big fuss now over losing our Fourth Amendment rights? Geez the Fourth Amendment was tossed in the waste basket several decades ago during the war on drugs. When I look back at how it was common place to violate peoples rights on a regular basis due to the war on drugs, it still makes me wonder how people turned a blind eye to severe violations of good faith exception laws, drug checkpoints, very unreasonable seizures of property, etc.

Damn, these violations were being demonstrated to us right in front of our faces on the various law enforcement tv shows such as Cops and American Detectives. I’m not even going to bother posting links and cases supporting my point, since they’re rather easy to find, and there’s just too many of these examples. We even allowed military intervention in civilian drug enforcement procedures. We were seizing people’s cars because they found a roach in the ashtray, or sending a few platoons of heavily armed officers to make arrests for minor drug violations. Where were the voices then that ultimately led to this sad state of affairs?

I’ve always kept telling self-proclaimed conservatives that their lack of concern dealing with First and Fourth Amendment violations would ultimately bring down their cherished and beloved Second Amendment. It’s usually the same old same old concerning the demographics that typically oppose authoritarian measures like these, such as more libertarian minded conservatives and the more liberal sect of Democrats. When there are exceptions to the latter type of politicians I’d mentioned opposing laws such as these, they’re usually just playing politics.

The 4th Amendment was history when President George Bush signed into Law the PATRIOT ACT and it has all gone downhill from that point. Now, with President Obama’s war against the ‘Whistle Blowers’, it will continue to go downhill now. We are only a few steps away from living in the world of “Big Brother”, a truly fascist country.

This is actually brilliant. Keep us talking about the NSA reading our emails while the CEO of WalMart makes 30 million a year and they have people in the stores teaching employees how to get food stamps.

Poor people scare me way more than terrorists.

Welcome to the club.

Non-Americans have never been protected by the 4th amendment. The National Stasi Agency (NSA) ignores privacy laws of other countries, even in countries considered as friends. They don’t ask a German judge for example before they observe what law-abiding citizens are doing on their computers. People don’t have to be suspects. Nothing is private anymore. Even the East German Stasi couldn’t go that far lacking the means.