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

[JDPriestly]

163. The Constitution is pretty clear about the rights of the accused.

Surveillance of this kind in this computer age makes a mockery of the rights of the accused to confront his accusers.

The Constitution is pretty clear about not abridging the right to freedom of association, the right to free speech, the freedom of religion, etc. This surveillance chills speech, association, free exercise of religion and everything else that the constitution protects.

The surveillance will be abused just like everything else that human beings who are power hungry find useful. It is unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court's past rulings were always correct, there would be no need for Supreme Court Justices and their many clerks. But we do need them because we have a living Constitution.

Many are the laws that were considered unconstitutional for generations but found constitutional under FDR.

The internet we have today and the capacity to use it for universal surveillance did not exist in the late 70s when the Maryland case was decided. That decision applied to requests to phone companies for specific records in specific cases. It did not state that the massive all-encompassing acquisition by agents of the government of millions of records of communications each month might be constitutional. This program is way overbroad. Whatever the Supreme Court may say, Madison and all the others who worked together to amend the Constitution to include the Bill of Rights would be horrified to think of the massive surveillance in the country today.