www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Kelli Ballard via LibertyNation.com,
How private is your personal life?
If you answered, “not very,” you would still be far from the truth. The
fact is, with the invention of the internet and social media platforms,
privacy is almost extinct. Some of this is because we put all of our
personal information out there for the world to see. Going on vacation?
Sure, let’s tell all our 300-plus friends on Facebook and broadcast it
to burglars that our home will be vacant while we sip Mai Tais and catch
some sun rays. But, constitutionally, by way of the Fourth Amendment, we do have a right to privacy, and according to the courts, Big Brother has been taking advantage of that.
“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.”
In 2018, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court ruling
found that the FBI had been searching records that had been collected by
the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program. The now recently redacted documents
say American citizens’ constitutional rights may have been violated
because the FBI searched millions of records without warrants.
The NSA’s program, which has been in play since 2008 (and made known
to the world by Edward Snowden in 2013), was supposed to capture
communications between Americans and foreigners, but only as long as the
foreigners are the main ones under scrutiny. The agency is supposed to
target data once it leaves the country, but in so doing much of our
domestic communication is captured as well.
An update in 2018 to the act makes it so that the FBI is required to
obtain a warrant whenever it wishes to use data in connection with a
criminal investigation, as that apparently hasn’t been happening. In
2017, the FBI ran approximately 3.1 million searches on American
citizens and foreign nationals residing in the US, and then the NSA and
CIA conducted 7,500 searches.
To make matters worse, many of the searches were not even related to ongoing criminal investigations. In
fact, in one example, the agency apparently searched for data
associated to 70,000 people related to the FBI, which essentially means
spies were spying on each other. Another instance claims an agency
contractor actually conducted a search on himself and relatives, and at
other times, staff routinely searched for potential witnesses and
informants who were not even involved in any criminal cases.
The FBI doesn’t appear to agree that what they are doing is
considered abusing the system and refer to the actions as “fundamental
misunderstandings” of the FISA. It also claimed that having to
justify each warrantless search would “hinder the FBI’s ability to
perform its national security and public safety missions.”
The ruling suggests that the FBI was using the NSA’s database to spy on people first to
see if they wanted or needed to get a warrant to get the information
they already have as well as look deeper. To most, this isn’t really
surprising; there’s a reason the government is referred to as Big
Brother. The deeper question is: Now that the courts have ruled
and apparently found them guilty of violating the Fourth Amendment, will
anything be done about it?
沒有留言:
張貼留言