Pre-9/11 NSA Memo Pushed to Rethink 4th Amendment

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/17848-pre-911-nsa-memo-pushed-to-rethink-4th-amendment

The National Security Agency pushed for the government to "rethink" the Fourth Amendment when it argued in a classified memo that it needed new authorities and capabilities for the information age.

The 2001 memo, later declassified and posted online by George Washington University's National Security Archive, makes a case to the incoming George W. Bush administration that the NSA needs new authorities and technology to adapt to the Internet era.

In one key paragraph, NSA wrote that its new phase meant the U.S. must reevaluate its approach toward signals intelligence, or "SIGINT," and the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

"The Fourth Amendment is as applicable to eSIGINT as it is to the SIGINT of yesterday and today," it wrote. "The Information Age will however cause us to rethink and reapply the procedures, policies and authorities born in an earlier electronic surveillance environment."

Americans learned about one upshot of NSA's philosophy this week when Washington acknowledged two of its subsequent surveillance programs: One that tracks the phone records of millions of Americans and one that accesses the servers of several major Internet companies, including Facebook, Google and Apple. The revelations were first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post.

[dkf]

1. government has had to develop new ways to include privacy protections by reworking legal theories

As it has gathered ever more data, the government has had to develop new ways to include privacy protections by reworking legal theories and harnessing the same type of data-analysis technology to monitor how the information is used, said officials familiar with the programs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323495604578535290627442964?mg=reno64-wsj.html?dsk=y

[WinkyDink]

2. The govt looks upon the Constitution as suggestions, not law. And the SCOTUS has been a criminal

enterprise since 2000 (at least).