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July 10, 2008: FISA 2008: The British Are Coming
I used to be a republican. Now, like most of the country, I fail to identify
with any party. Politicians are so far out of touch with the people,
groups that I once considered to be nutjobs, like the libertarians, are now
starting to look like the only somewhat-normal party around.
HR 6304 (FISA 2008) was passed by the Senate on July 9th, including my own treasonous
representatives from NH (Sununu and Gregg, who I will be voting out next term).
Yet FISA strikes at the very heart of what the 4th Amendment was designed to
prevent. At the time, the British used "writs of assistance" to search people's
property for evidence of any possible crime, even without any knowledge that
a crime had been committed. This allowed the government to go snooping around
in people's homes for charges they could drum up against them, such as smuggling or
other crimes that the government considered "security" risks. It was an
egregious abuse of the people, which the advocate-general at the time,
James Otis, condemned as "an instrument of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other".
The 4th Amendment was put in place to protect the citizens from exactly what
FISA does, and insisted that warrants be issued based on probable cause, supported by oath, and to be detailed in its criteria.
As a result, today's warrants have to be specific in the kind of evidence
they are justified to look for, and a judge must determine probable cause.
FISA fails to adequately deliver on either of
these accounts, but more importantly it puts this new form of writs-of-assistance
under a shroud of secrecy so the people won't see to just what extent the
system is being abused.
When 9/11 happened, everyone was shocked - and it turned a new page in both
the history and social atmosphere of our country. What it also did was show us
that the government couldn't protect us. While many of us became more
self-reliant, the administration (namely, John Ashcroft) took this as an
opportunity to embrace much heavier police powers so that the government
could insist that they can indeed protect us - and if not us, then at the very
least that they could protect themselves. Of course, in today's welfare
society, he had no problem finding enough people who were already dependent
on the government, and so the mindset of depending on them for protection was
an easy illusion to feed into. Even today, many have the mindset that a call to 911 in the middle of the night will somehow prevent any harm from befalling you.
The FISA bill is sadly only one of the many ways in which constitutional
rights have been suspended to cater to an adminisration that insists on
the control of the populous for the sake of "security". I won't even
mention the scanning of people's naked bodies at the airport, or the massive
data mining efforts underway to create an encyclopedia of citizens' private
data. It used to be much simpler - banned books to sanction thought, but
back then the fear of terrorism was of little impact.
Today the fear has increased, even where it's unjustified, and our welfare
nation depends on the government to fix things they really have no
conrol over. As a result, the
government's job is monitoring communications of - well, anyone; a scavenger hunt
through people's private communications to find evidence with no "real"
judge to determine whether the
search is justified, no probably cause (only suspicion), and unlimited criteria
- only secret meetings, and sometimes some forged paperwork.
Our administration
believes that situation ethics is the appropriate solution to restore the
reputation that they "can" protect the populous, and as they continue to
fail at this, the administration's control of the people will only become
tighter. In the end, however, relying on the government alone to protect
the people will only lead to one conclusion: a totalitarian government,
where people feel safer, but nobody really is safer.
Situation ethics and the constitution do not meld to those who believe
that constitutional rights are absolute, and that rights aren't something
the constitution gives to the people, but acknowledges the people already
reserve for themselves. It was under national security that Hitler
established a firearms registration, and under that same guise that he
used that roster to disarm the Jews by force, shortly before slaughtering
them. Suspending the 4th Amendment under the guise of
national security or by using fear-mongering tactics does not justify itself,
even if passed by a legislative body, just as DC's handgun ban was
unjustified - yet it took three decades to fix because people act like sheep.
The fact remains that any law that violates the
constitution is by and far irrelevant, and it is the duty
of the people to both fight and reject such laws, and the tyrants who
pass them.
The freedom and constitutional rights of citizens is quite simply more important
than catching terrorists, and I'll explain why: if the constitution is decimated
in the process of defeating terrorism, then we haven't really defeated terrorism, but rather it has defeated us in its last stand. It won't matter how many lives were saved, because the goal of our enemies
is to destroy this country. We've all been called to the defense in a war being fought against America,
and the choice is to sacrifice freedom or to risk life. Freedom is a
messy thing, and sometimes costs lives to defend, yet as an American it is
our responsibility to give our lives to preserve the freedom we have, rather
than bask in our entitlement. If you demand stability, move to a country with a dictatorship or totalitariat, where both industry and the people are
controlled closely by the government. Freedom is messy, unstable, and sometimes deadly - but
it's freedom. To what extent are you willing to sacrifice your freedom?
A little safety? Franklin said those men deserve neither.
The impact of FISA stretched beyond basic rights to privacy, but also affects state rights. Certain preemption stipulations included in the act steal certain
rights from the states, throwing into question the rights of the state to
both govern their own juristdiction and hold the federal
government accountable. Specifically, states are restricted from conducting
investigations into corrupt telecommunications providers who assist the federal government with
their illegal wiretapping, meaning the state can't even play a role in
ensuring that FISA isn't being abused. It also prevents the state from passing any laws
requiring providers disclose information about their assistance with the
federal government's illegal wiretapping, meaning the state has to help
keep illegal wiretapping a secret. The state is also barred from
suing a provider for illegally assisting with government wiretapping, and
usurps the authority of state courts from making any
decisions regarding civil matters about the government's illegal
wiretapping. Basically, what we have here is part of the FISA act
removing the state's right to monitor or regulate federal government abuse
of its own citizens, on the state's own turf.
At the end of the day, the FISA bill our representatives signed not only allows Americans to continue being abused and violated, but it forces the state to "keep quiet" about what goes on, effectively rendering them powerless against what goes on in their state, and what kind of abuses result. If you are expecting some reprieve from the Supreme Court, remember that they have proven just how slow a judicial body can move - don't expect a ruling for another 30 years. And if you somehow can manage to wait that long, there's a good chance our judicial system may have been done away with by congress.
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