From Benjamin Franklin “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

I was a Captain in the Army and my last post was as Deputy G-2 and Ft. Campbell, Ky. In that capacity I was involved in the surveillance of American Citizens under the Johnson administration; being young and uneducated despite a college degree I did not understand the danger in what we were doing. Today the danger of an out of control federal government is more real that ever as the technology is there for a real 1984 situation.  Head Francklin’s words he is 100% right!

Re-Post from Whats Jimmy Think? July 11, 2014

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board cites, The National Security Agency’s (NSA) collection of bulk phone records is illegal and should be stopped, according to a report by the independent federal privacy watchdog. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, (PACLOB) made independent by Congress in 2007, said the NSA’s phone record collection program provided “minimal” benefits in counter-terrorism operations.

PACLOB’s findings run counter to President Obama’s news conference (who saw this report before his public address) said last week although the program would “end as it currently exists,” its capabilities should be maintained.

IMHO, saying it would “end as it currently exists with capabilities maintained” is a clever legalism that equates to a minor tweak of NSA’s activities, so the NSA program continues 99.99% unchanged.

PACLOB’s panel also concluded that the program raises serious threats to American Civil Liberties, has shown limited or no value in countering terrorism, and is not legally sustainable from a policy perspective, namely NSA’s activities violate the US Constitution.

“We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counter-terrorism investigation,” said PACLOB’s report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.

Recent testimony in Federal Court and disclosures before Congressional Oversight Committee hearings, indicated that the Government could not cite a Single instance demonstrating that any piece of evidence retrieved from this massive Data-Base of telephone records, solved an issue of National Security.

If it were not for SNOWDEN’s release of NSA records evidence, the American public, the Media, and PACLOC would not know that its Government was Spying in its own Citizens in the name of National Security.

More on SNOWDEN. From what we know from others that have been deemed “Whistle-Blowers,” their future may be in jeopardy. In the Snowden matter, would he have been imprisoned for years in the name of National Security? With such police action, the Media, the American Public, and The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have no knowledge of the Government’s spying on its own population, violating the US Constitution’s 4th Amendment with regard to the Right of Privacy.

The Police nor the GOV can NOT Search everyone’s Private records, Nationally, Regionally, or Locally, every home, every office, everyone’s mail and telephones, in the hope, or in search of finding Criminality.

If the GOV or the Local Police have cause for a Crime, then a Judge reviews the matter, and may, or may not, issue a Court Ordered Search of records, offices, homes, telephones, etc. The reverse is not legal according to our Laws. For each individual case of possible Criminality, the officer in a jurisdiction, provides evidence to a Judge, in effort to obtain a Judicial Search Warrant or a Court Ordered Wire-Tap. Certain standards have to be met; Judges determine if in this particular case, the standards for a “Legal Search and Seizure” have been met, in light of one’s Right to Privacy afforded by the 4th Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. The Fourth Amendment was adopted by the States, in response to the abuse of the Writ of Assistance, a type of general search warrant issued by the British Government and a major source of tension in pre-Revolutionary America.

The Fourth Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison, along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, in response to Anti-Federalist objections to the new Constitution. Congress submitted the amendment to the states on September 28, 1789. By December 15, 1791 (27 months later) the necessary three-quarters of the states had ratified the Fourth Amendment. Ten weeks later, on March 1, 1792, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson announced the adoption of the Fourth Amendment.

Because the Bill of Rights did not initially apply to the states, and federal criminal investigations were less common in the first century of our nation’s history, there is little significant case law for the Fourth Amendment before the 20th century. The amendment was held to apply to the states in Mapp v. Ohio (1961).

Under the Fourth Amendment, search and seizure (including arrest) should be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer who has sworn by it.

Fourth Amendment case law deals with three central questions
(1) What government activities constitute “search” and “seizure”
(2) What constitutes probable cause for these actions
(3) How violations of the Fourth Amendment rights should be addressed.

Early court decisions limited the amendment’s scope to a law enforcement officer’s physical intrusion onto private property, but with Katz v. United States (1967), the Supreme Court held that its protections, such as the warrant requirement, extend to the privacy of individuals as well as physical locations.

Law enforcement officers need a warrant for most search and seizure activities, but the Court has defined a series of exceptions for consent searches, motor vehicle searches, evidence in plain view, exigent circumstances, border searches, and other limited situations.