NSA Wiretapping Ruled Unconstitutional. Congressional “Caine Mutiny” Hearing to Follow?

obamabigbroRemember all of Obama’s Domestic Scandals, beside Obamacare? Well, regarding the one involving the NSA, it is possible that, to paraphrase Obama’s Former Pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,

Obama’s chickennns…are coming home…to roost!

Yesterday, wsj.com reported that…

President Barack Obama, facing growing pressure from Silicon Valley, will meet Tuesday with executives from Google Inc. Facebook Inc. and other technology and telecommunications giants to discuss their concerns about America’s surveillance operations.

According to the White House, Mr. Obama will also meet with the executives to talk about progress with the troubled online federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov, and ways the government and technology industry can partner to boost economic growth.

The meeting comes a week after a group of technology companies jointly penned a letter to lash out at the Obama administration for collecting information on Americans. The companies said they wanted to see greater oversight of the government’s surveillance operations and limits on the government’s authority to compel companies to disclose data about their customers.

The letter followed a wave of disclosures about U.S. spying operations by Edward Snowden, a former government contractor now in Russia. The president will also talk about the national security concerns prompted by the leaks and their effect on the economy.

The administration has been reviewing U.S. spying operations and considering steps to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Last week, a presidential task force submitted to the White House more than 40 recommendations to overhaul the National Security Agency. Mr. Obama’s chief spokesman, Jay Carney, said the White House was reviewing the report and would make public the full report in January.

This news comes on the heels of a ruling by a Federal Court Judge that telephone surveillance of Americans that has been conducted ad infinitum by the NSA, violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution…

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

The preliminary injunction Leon granted Monday does not require him to make a definitive ruling on the constitutional questions in the case, but does take account of which side he believes is more likely to prevail.

Leon’s 68-page opinion is the first significant legal setback for the NSA’s surveillance program since it was disclosed in June in news stories based on leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. For seven years, the metadata program has been approved repeatedly by numerous judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and found constitutional by at least one judge sitting in a criminal case.

The very fact that the  National Security Agency (NSA) even existed, was not revealed for more than two decades after its establishment in 1952.

Of all the US intelligence services, it is has,for a long time, been the best hidden, and has prided itself on having the fewest leaks – at least until Edward Snowden came along.

When Harry Truman set up the NSA, its mission was to monitor communications abroad. However, what politicians and civil rights organizations have know, since the Senate unveiled it in 1975, is to what extent its ferocious appetite for data has encompassed American citizens.

As technology has evolved, so has the NSA’s capacity to intercept Americans’ communications. Satellites intercept calls and emails in the ether and beam the information back to earthbound receiving stations. One estimate suggests that each of these bases hoovers up roughly one billion emails, phone calls and other forms of correspondence every day, and the agency has up to 20 bases.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows…

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The actions of the NSA, are, of course, nothing new. as far back as Prohibition, government authorities have tapped American’s phones, if they felt that they were involved in “suspicious activities. However, those incidences of “wiretapping” were always done under the Rule of Law, with those doing the tapping have a warrant from a judge in their hand.

What we are dealing with here is nothing less than a usurpation of power, am old Soviet Union-style spying on one’s own countrymen, by an out-of-control NSA, whose petulant, didactic Commander-in-Chief, in his zeal to wield the power of the Oval Office, has pushed our Constitutional Republic in the direction of a Socialist Police State.

Through his use of such Government Agencies such as the NSA and the IRS to intimidate and harass his political opponents, President Barack Hussein Obama has exhibited a fearful paranoia that makes President Richard Milhous Nxon’s Watergate Scandal appear as inconsequential as a deck chair on the Titanic, and Obama as unstable a leader as Captain Queeg, so brilliantly played by the late, great Humphrey Bogart in “The Caine Mutiny”.

If Obama is ever brought before Congress to testify on his scandals, his prevarication and eventual meltdown will make Captain Queeg’s unraveling pale in comparison.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

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