Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment

 by

       M. Richard Maxson


      The U.S. considers itself the most democratic country in the world. At the same time, the country is a leader when it comes to surveillance of its own citizens. Recent passage of the government funding bill, the law that authorized the government to spend more than it will collect, was a part about funding for the 16 federal civilian intelligence agencies. Hidden in that was a clause authorizing the National Security Agency to gather and retain nonpublic data for five years and to share it with law enforcement and with foreign governments. "Nonpublic data" is the government's language referring to the content of the emails, text messages, telephone calls, bank statements, utility bills and credit card bills of nearly every innocent person in America -- including members of Congress, federal judges, public officials and law enforcement officials. I say "innocent" because the language of this legislation -- which purports to make lawful the NSA spying we now all know about -- makes clear that those who spy upon us don't need to have any articulable suspicion or probable cause for spying.

      This is a direct violation of the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. It was written to prohibit what Congress just authorized. That amendment was a reaction to the British practice of rummaging through the homes of American colonists, looking for anything that might be illegal. It is also a codification of our natural right to privacy. It requires that if the government wants nonpublic data from our persons, houses, papers or effects, it must first present evidence of probable cause to a judge and then ask the judge for a search warrant. According to Constitutional law professor Judge Andrew Napolitano, "Probable cause is a level of evidence that is sufficient to induce a judge into concluding that it is more likely than not that the place to be examined contains evidence of crimes. In order to seek probable cause, the government must first have an articulable suspicion about the person or place it has targeted. Were this not in the law, then nothing would stop the government from fishing expeditions in pursuit of anyone it wants to pursue." In the past,when the FBI used warrantless surveillance to wiretap and intercept the mail of anti-war radicals, those who did so were charged, tried and convicted.

      So what's going on here? Is our government trading away our freedoms? If you have read our blog then you know that our government is infected with Democratic Corporate Socialism. The Democratic party has a full blown case, which includes the Communists, and the Republican party is about to go critical. The driving forces behind the infection are the Western elite. They are the rich Leftists who set policy.

       So today, we live in a country that is a leader when it comes to surveillance of its own citizens. Every day, hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras record faces entering the metro and various buildings, as well as license plates of passing cars, and drones with high-definition cameras may appear in the sky. Other aspects of everyday life in Amerika today are:

• Cameras installed at every street corner in the United States scan license plates, and tracking the movement of any car and so-called "smart" lights are being installed that can take pictures of people, record video and listen to their conversations. Typically, they are installed in major U.S. cities.
• The U.S. government is also using microarrays RFID that can independently identify the owner. These chips are integrated into bank cards, so every American who uses a bank card can always be identified. (Have YOU received your "new" charge cards yet?)
• The U.S. is also implementing a system that allows fingerprints scanning at a distance of 20 meters. This is a very convenient system that can identify a person quietly in a public place. A person walks by a camera that reads her fingerprints and runs them through the database.
•  The U.S. company Raytheon created a program used for watching people on social networks. The U.S. authorities have been using it since 2010, tracking information on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. The program can also view pictures of the users and identify where they were taken. Each person's location can be followed, including the places they go and even what they eat. This information can help intelligence agencies to predict human behavior.
•  Predator drones , originally intended for military operations and the fight against terrorism, will now track movement of civilians. According to their characteristics, these drones should be able to determine even at night whether a person is armed.Using mobile phones frequency, these devices will be able to clearly identify the location of a person. The U.S. government has legalized the use of drones on its territory, which aroused a storm of outrage from human rights groups.
• The U.S. government is creating a cyber-security center to keep track of all citizens. The center will collect and store information on nearly any person on the territory of the U.S., including phone conversations. The U.S. government intends to spend $2 billion to establish the center. The center will be located in two hangars with a powerful server that can store the volume of data that is two hundred thousand times greater than that of all human knowledge. The above technologies allow figuring out the personality of nearly any person within a few seconds.
  
  
  
     The powers that be have used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to guarantee any surveillance the government wants without probable cause. When President Nixon’s men illegally wiretapped a few of his political opponents -- and they went to jail for it. This administration spies on millions and gets away with it.
  
      How can Congress defy the Constitution, you might ask? Hasn't every member of the government taken an oath to uphold the Constitution? It seems that this U.S. government is not overly concerned about violation of the rights of its citizens. The belief of most of those in government that they can write any law and regulate any behavior and ignore the Constitution they have sworn to uphold whenever they want and with the help of the media, the populace will follow like sheep.
  
     At question is the democracy in the USA, which allows intelligence agencies to check all electronic communications of people located in the country without a court order. The U.S. government continues to violate the rights of their citizens. In the U.S., there is no anonymity, the last remnants of private life gradually dissolve in the ocean of high-tech devices. These systems are controlled by people who want to control the society and establish a form of Socialist dictatorship, slightly covered with a thin veil of democracy.