Many Of You May Be Interested In What THIS Guy Has To Say, Re: FISA/NSA/Snowden...

[JDPriestly]

116. I will ask you as I asked another DUer, how much background do you have in constituational law/

What courses have you taken? What decisions have you read?

Are you trained to judge these things?

This is not a political issue. It is a legal one. Lawyers will have different views, but the problems with the surveillance and the secret courts are so many and amount to such serious violations of the Bill of Rights and the fundamental concept of separation of powers that it really would be hard for any serious, honest student of the Constitution to defend what Snowden says is being done. It is nearly impossible to even defend the collection and analysis of metadata in this day of computers of huge capacity.

This has nothing to do with Obama. This has to do with the NSA. Obama should not be defending it, but I should think he would like to survive his presidency. I would like him to.

This is not just Obama's problem. It is the problem of all of us. How far do we want our government to intrude into our personal business, our private lives?

When does simply watching turn into influencing, interfering, intimidating, silencing? It does turn into those things, but at what point. That is a legal issue.

How much surveillance, how much collection of metadata does it take before people abridge their speech based on its political or religious content? How much surveillance does it take before people decide to avoid using the internet to check their medical records? to call a child who may be going through a rebellious period and be in trouble? to avoid e-mailing a colleague about a controversial discovery concerning the environment or a medical issue?

When is the line crossed?

And why should a court have privacy with regard to its rulings on mass surveillance while the people under surveillance are deprived of any privacy with regard to their metadata and that of their friends, clients, patients, employers, employees, doctors, customers, fellow inventors, competitors, colleagues, spouses, children, parents, friends, lovers, etc.?