The government has the right to keep secrets, but not the right to keep the secret that it is violating our constitutional rights.

In our country, the Constitution and our laws and treaties are the supreme authority. The NSA is subject to the constraints the Constitution places on all of our government. The NSA cannot just do what it will, violate our individual rights to privacy which are protected in a number of the provisions of our Bill of Rights.

Remember. The Bill of Rights does not GRANT us rights. It prohibits the government from STEALING or TAKING our innate rights, the rights that we are born with. We are born with a right to privacy. The Bill of Rights limits the legal authority of the government to violate the right to privacy that we are born with.

The surveillance programs to the extent that they violate the rights of law-abiding Americans violate our innate, constitutionally protected rights to privacy in our communications and associations with others. Remember that often forgotten little phrase in the First Amendment about 'FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION"? That part of the First Amendment has not gotten much attention until now. But when the government studies and analyzes your communications, the lists of those who e-mail you, those you call on the phone, it is violating your right to freedom of association.

There is so much wrong with the NSA's surveillance programs that I cannot discuss it all in one or even dozens of posts. It is a very, very sick program.

It is the equivalent, if you put it in terms of the society at the time of the American Revolution of placing a guard at every intersection of every country road across America so that the guard can take notes on which roads Americans take to visit friends and relatives. It is the equivalent of watching every inn to see who sits at whose table to talk politics, love, business or family issues.

This program poses a great danger to the fabric of our democracy. I think that people don't get it because they haven't really read much history or law. This is a dangerous program. We need to stop it now. And we need to make it impossible for foreign nations to eavesdrop on us too. We need the technology for that, and we need it soon. And if it means that our corporations cannot find out as much about us, well, too bad.