Many people have written about the Fourth Amendment and privacy implications of the NSA's communications surveillance and data-mining. And Congress actually showed some backbone on this in 2003 by passing recission of Total Information Awareness - or Terrorist Information Awareness, as the Bushists had deceptively rebranded it.
The law couldn't be more clear (my emphasis):
- SEC. 8131. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this or any other Act may be obligated for the Terrorism Information Awareness Program: Provided, That this limitation shall not apply to the program hereby authorized for Processing, analysis, and collaboration tools for counterterrorism foreign intelligence, as described in the Classified Annex accompanying the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004, for which funds are expressly provided in the National Foreign Intelligence Program for counterterrorism foreign intelligence purposes.
- (b) None of the funds provided for Processing, analysis, and collaboration tools for counterterrorism foreign intelligence shall be available for deployment or implementation except for:
- (1) lawful military operations of the United States conducted outside the United States; or
- (2) lawful foreign intelligence activities conducted wholly overseas, or wholly against non-United States citizens.
- (c) In this section, the term `Terrorism Information Awareness Program' means the program known either as Terrorism Information Awareness or Total Information Awareness, or any successor program, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or any other Department or element of the Federal Government, including the individual components of such Program developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Alberto Gonzales and the rest of the Bushist lackeys have tried to leave themselves an out by playing a shell game about how many and specific programs there are. They'll be happy to show you inside the walnut, but there will never be a pea there. Of course, it's a dodge, a lie, a fraud.
What in sum the Bushists have done is to abrogate the clause in the former Constitution that the framers felt was so important that they put it first, Article I, section 1:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United StatesDuhbya and Darth and their minions have arrogated to break the fundamental expression of democracy and to spend money specifically prohibited by law.
A few links for your reading pleasure:
More on the former Constitution at "Documenting the tatters".
No comments:
Post a Comment