Snowden's Dad: If Edward Would Have Stayed In the USA: "He would have been buried under the capital"

[JDPriestly]

119. And here is why I object to the surveillance programs no matter who runs them

no matter what.

The Bill of Rights is not negotiable. The Bill of Rights drew a clear line between what the government can and cannot do, which rights can be negotiated and which not.

We are entitled as a part of our birthright to the total protection of the Constitution.

That a bunch of partisan, mealy-mouthed judges managed to politic, bribe and sway their ways onto the Supreme Court does not make them right, does not really put them above the Constitution. John Roberts nominates every judge on the FISA Court and as I understand it, all but one of them are Republicans.

If the representative of the people is chosen by the ACLU or by the defense bar, then maybe this idea will work. But if the appointees to this post are chosen through any structure that allows the president or the Supreme Court or Congress or any other partisan body to appoint that person, then this is worse than what we have now.

I have seen courts in which the public defenders were kind of part of the hack courtroom team, pretty much always assigned to the same judge. The case outcomes were predictable. The defense lost most of the time. One public defender assigned to the courtroom of a judge who had previously been a prosecutor announced one day that she was going to quit and work for the Post Office. Walking miles in the Los Angeles heat and glaring sunshine every day was preferable to her than the predictably unfavorable verdicts her clients were assured in that courtroom.

And this system does not alleviate the many problems with the surveillance
-- the chilling of the speech of Americans
-- the potential and undetectable abuses due to secrecy
-- the horrifying fact that only a few people at the NSA and their private contractors are able to decide what really happens to our metadata and stored data and have the total knowledge about any one of us that they select, perhaps at whim.

So what if we trust the Obama administration? Most of us here on DU trust and like Obama as a person.

But what if someone we did not trust or like, someone like Cheney or Rove or Sarah Palin, or a mouthpiece like Reagan or a forgetful, confused but revered senior like McCain or a traitor like Oliver North managed to wiggle his or her way into the White House?

Who is General Alexander? Why should we trust him with a list of our calls that reveals how long we talk to our friends or family or acquaintances?

Why should the NSA have a phone bill that reflects how many collection calls (mostly bogus) some couple in New Jersey get per month?

Why should we have to answer for the crimes or sins of all the telemarketing companies that keep us busy answering non-calls all day long?

No. The NSA surveillance stinks.

And my biggest objection is that it potentially puts infinite knowledge about every aspect of our lives in the hands of a few at the NSA, whether we are journalists, lawyers, teachers, writers, scientists, gun enthusiasts, collectors of war paraphernalia, legislators, mayors, governors or most importantly and we know already wiretapped, journalists. And if the NSA and intelligence agencies aren't perusing all of the data all the time right now, they will soon have the technology to do precisely that. But by then it will be too late for us to do anything about it.

We are relinquishing an enormous portion of the freedom our ancestors fought for. I oppose the NSA surveillance system -- all of it.

If the NSA wants to spy on terrorists, let them get appropriate warrants.

The NSA can read the Constitution, and if they can't, they can hire honest lawyers who defend the Constitution and tell them what it says loud and clear instead of the evasive, Ivy League pipsqueaks they hire to do their bidding and rationalize their excesses at this time.

Stop the NSA surveillance. Let them spy on criminals and terrorists and leave the rest of us alone. And make the process for obtaining warrants transparent. Stop the snooping on American citizens. And I do not want my government obtaining my personal data or phone or electronic communications data from other countries either.

They don't seem to be able to locate all the millions stashed in tax havens by the extremely rich in spite of the surveillance system. Makes me wonder just what they are looking for. Those tax cheats helped along by criminal bankers have done more damage to our country than the "terrorists" have thus far.

This is my response in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3452129