What you say, what you write, with whom you associate—increasingly troubling and continuous reports of the National Security Agency (NSA) invasion into our lives continue.
In just the last week we learned that with the aid of technology the NSA is now tracking hundreds of millions of mobile devices to determine where people are at all times. In addition, the agency busted the encryption that supposedly protects our communications and can now listen in to our calls or read our texts at will.
Fortunately, this week a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the NSA phone data collection scheme was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The judge, quoted in the Washington Post, wrote “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.” But the story is not near over as he stayed his action pending a government appeal.
Some have argued that the current and future ObamaCare troubles are the best example of the dangers and failures of big government. Others fret over ongoing rampant federal government spending and the recent rethinking of the sequester cuts. But neither of these concerns are as constitutionally problematic as unlimited government spying on its own citizens.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees, “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.”
The NSA actions pretty clearly violate the spirit if not the very letter of the amendment, and at least one court has agreed. Alarmingly, the NSA had been allowed to operate in this fashion for years, often simply through deception.
Yet, some people argue that since they “have nothing to hide” then it is fine if the government keeps tabs on them, and by extension, all law abiding citizens. They have apparently never paused to understand exactly what it is that they are saying.
First, such actions by the government violate the rule of law, which virtually every aspect of our society depends upon. Second, if the Fourth Amendment can be ignored solely by the judgment of an executive branch agency, then what about other rights? Can an agency ignore freedom of speech or engage in cruel and unusual punishment?
The violation goes to the very foundation of the nation. The Founding Fathers understood the threat of government, having lived under and observed the breadth and depth of government reach. Their very philosophies, as enshrined in the Constitution, were that government was to be limited and that administrative power belonged to the states, not in Washington DC.
As Congress has offloaded its responsibility and authority over the years (for an excellent perspective on this, see Imprimis), federal administration has grown to the point that our elected leaders now routinely claim to have had no knowledge of the workings of large parts of the government. Grown so much in fact that the all-powerful, malicious government running and all-controlling fictional agency B-613 on the hit show Scandal now seems believable, if less capable, than the very real National Security Agency.
We live in a time of unparalleled advances in technology, but technology is merely a tool that can be used for good or evil, to empower the state or empower the people. We must decide as a society what we want—expanded individual opportunity or expansive government control. What say you?
December 19, 2013