It's not Obama's fault if people haven't paid attention [View all]

[struggle4progress]

I've never been particularly happy about having secret FISA courts, but they were originally intended to provide both legislative and judicial branch oversight of executive branch intelligence activities. Obama was only sixteen or seventeen in 1978, when the FISA courts were first established, so even if you're only just now noticing that they exist, it's not Obama's fault

And I wasn't particularly happy to learn about the Supreme Court decision in SMITH v MARYLAND, thirty some years ago: I thought and still think police should have to get a warrant to collect telephone records. But it's been the basis of a lot of law enforcement thinking since then. But the case was decided before Obama turned eighteen -- so the idea, that collecting telephone records isn't really intrusive, wasn't Obama's idea, and the fact that the US government can do it without blinking much isn't Obama's fault

SMITH v. MARYLAND: 442 U.S. 735 (1979)

... This case presents the question whether the installation and use of a pen register constitutes a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment ... Petitioner was indicted .. for robbery. By pretrial motion, he sought to suppress "all fruits derived from the pen register" on the ground that the police had failed to secure a warrant prior to its installation ... The trial court denied the suppression motion, holding that the warrantless installation of the pen register did not violate the Fourth Amendment ... The Court of Appeals affirmed the .. conviction, holding that "there is no constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed into a telephone system and hence no search within the fourth amendment is implicated by the use of a pen register installed at the central offices of the telephone company" ... Consistently with Katz, this Court uniformly has held that the application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a "justifiable," a "reasonable," or a "legitimate expectation of privacy" that has been invaded by government action ... Since the pen register was installed on telephone company property at the telephone company's central offices, petitioner obviously cannot claim that his "property"' was invaded or that police intruded into a "constitutionally protected area" ... Telephone users .. typically know that they must convey numerical information to the phone company; that the phone company has facilities for recording this information; and that the phone company does in fact record this information for a variety of legitimate business purposes ... This Court consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties ... When he used his phone, petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In so doing, petitioner assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers he dialed ... We therefore conclude that petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed ...

I'd be happy to scrap the FISA courts, and I'd be happy to see SMITH v. MARYLAND overturned. But the Administration is operating within the law and actually got a warrant (such as it is) -- and that's more than Nixon or Bush used to do