THE 4TH AMENDMENT: THAT’S NOT FUNNY
Sep. 26th, 2009 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogI’ve seen quite a few people circulating the story of Senator Al Franken reading the 4th Amendment out loud to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Amusing as the story is, it’s worth remembering the context in which the story took place: the reauthorization of expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act regarding wiretaps, which – you may like to know – Team Obama actively supports.
Threat Level has a good rundown here of which provisions are expiring, the revisions of the provisions beiong proposed by Sen Russ Feingold (a.k.a. the only member of Congress who had the sense to vote against the Patriot Act in the first place) and why all this matters:
Some additional context for you: Wired.com reports that the FBI has been building a huge data-mining system containing tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, all with no Congressional or public oversight. The system is supposed to be used for terror investigations but has been used for other purposes.
So naturally, the conservatives currently freaked out over Obama’s plan to dismantle the Constitution and turn the country into Cuba are focused on jackbooted census takers with GPS-enabled devices who are geotagging houses on GoogleMaps in advance of next year’s census so Obama can use the coordinates to enable New World Order Predator drones to launch missile attacks on “undesirables”.
No, really.
Not that I’m saying the Patriot Act and the FBI NSAC are part of a conspiracy. They’re not. They’re just really bad ideas born out of politics and fear that contribute to the erosion of civil liberties and make it easier for govt entities to abuse their power without even giving us the tradeoff of making the country safer from terrorism.
So would it kill the teabaggers claiming to be against intrusive govt power to actually call attention to something that’s actually happening instead of weird batshit fantasies about Obama der Fuhrer sending drone missiles to yr fucking house?
Of course, that would require admitting that these things were thought up by conservatives in the first place (though most Democrats didn’t exactly oppose them). Which is awkward, I know. But c’mon – the guys at Fox News contradict themselves all the time. Why can’t you?
Search and seizure,
This is dF
Amusing as the story is, it’s worth remembering the context in which the story took place: the reauthorization of expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act regarding wiretaps, which – you may like to know – Team Obama actively supports.
Threat Level has a good rundown here of which provisions are expiring, the revisions of the provisions beiong proposed by Sen Russ Feingold (a.k.a. the only member of Congress who had the sense to vote against the Patriot Act in the first place) and why all this matters:
A 2007 Inspector General Report showed that the FBI circumvented that law to acquire access to records “that weren’t relevant to any authorized FBI investigation.”
What’s more, a July report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts showed that just three of 763 black-bag searches authorized by the Patriot Act involved terrorism. A black-bag search in this context means the target may never get notified that the search took place. About 65 percent of those warrants involved concerned drug cases, the report said.
What’s more, a July report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts showed that just three of 763 black-bag searches authorized by the Patriot Act involved terrorism. A black-bag search in this context means the target may never get notified that the search took place. About 65 percent of those warrants involved concerned drug cases, the report said.
Some additional context for you: Wired.com reports that the FBI has been building a huge data-mining system containing tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, all with no Congressional or public oversight. The system is supposed to be used for terror investigations but has been used for other purposes.
So naturally, the conservatives currently freaked out over Obama’s plan to dismantle the Constitution and turn the country into Cuba are focused on jackbooted census takers with GPS-enabled devices who are geotagging houses on GoogleMaps in advance of next year’s census so Obama can use the coordinates to enable New World Order Predator drones to launch missile attacks on “undesirables”.
No, really.
Not that I’m saying the Patriot Act and the FBI NSAC are part of a conspiracy. They’re not. They’re just really bad ideas born out of politics and fear that contribute to the erosion of civil liberties and make it easier for govt entities to abuse their power without even giving us the tradeoff of making the country safer from terrorism.
So would it kill the teabaggers claiming to be against intrusive govt power to actually call attention to something that’s actually happening instead of weird batshit fantasies about Obama der Fuhrer sending drone missiles to yr fucking house?
Of course, that would require admitting that these things were thought up by conservatives in the first place (though most Democrats didn’t exactly oppose them). Which is awkward, I know. But c’mon – the guys at Fox News contradict themselves all the time. Why can’t you?
Search and seizure,
This is dF
