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Subject: Does FISA let them spy on in our own homes?
The answer would seem to be yes.
And we, regular Americans, are wholly fucked.
Watch the video of Law Professor and Fourth Amendment expert Jonathan Turley:
A basic transcript:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/15/complicity/index.html
):
I mean, the Democrats never really were engaged
in this.
In fact, they repeatedly tried to cave in to
the White House, only to be stopped by civil libertarians
and bloggers. And each time they would put it
on the shelf, wait a few months, they did this before,
reintroduced it with Jay Rockefeller's support,
and then there was another great, you know, dustup
and they pulled it back. . . .
I think they're simply waiting to see if the public's
interest will wane and we'll see that tomorrow,
because this bill has, quite literally, no public
value for citizens or civil liberties.
It is reverse engineering, though - which the
Bush administration is famous for,
and now the Democrats are doing it -- that
is to change the law to conform to past conduct.
It's what any criminal would love to do.
You rob a bank, go to the legislature, and change
the law to say that robbing banks is lawful. . . .
This is a very frightening bill. What people have
to understand is that FISA itself is controversial.
This court issued tens of thousands of warrants
granted applications for surveillance without turning
down any. Only recently did they turn down two.
. . . What you're seeing in this bill is an evisceration
of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.
It is something that allows the president and the
government to go in to law-abiding homes on their
word alone, their suspicion alone, and to engage
in warrantless surveillance. That's what the
framers that drafted the Fourth Amendment wanted to prevent. . . .
Well, there's no question in my mind that there
is an obvious level of collusion here. We now know
that Democratic leadership knew about the
illegal surveillance program almost from its inception.
Even when they were campaigning about fighting
for civil liberties, they were aware of an unlawful
surveillance program as well as a torture
program. And ever since that came out, the Democrats
have been silently trying to kill any effort
to hold anyone accountable because that list could
very well include some of their own members.
And, I'm afraid this is Washington politics at
the worst.
And, so, I think that what you're seeing with
this bill is not just caving in to a very powerful lobby,
but also caving in to sort of the worst motivations
on Capitol Hill since 9/11.
You know, the administration was very adept at
bringing in Democrats at a time when they knew
they couldn't refuse, to make them buy in to
this program, and now that investment is bearing fruit.
animaux
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