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Administration Claimed Immunity To 4th Amendment
mrogers writes "The EFF has uncovered a troubling footnote in a newly declassified Bush Administration memo, which asserts that 'our Office recently [in 2001] concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.' This could mean that the Administration believes the NSA's warrantless wiretapping and data mining programs are not governed by the Constitution, which would cast Administration claims that the programs did not violate the Fourth Amendment in a whole new light — after all, you can't violate a law that doesn't apply. The claimed immunity would also cover other DoD agencies, such as CIFA, which carry out offline surveillance of political groups within the United States."
I thought the whole constitution had no application to the whole government?
After all, isn't it just a scrap of paper?
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
Isn't the Republican party traditionally the one that raises the biggest fuss about the Bill of Rights?
Sure would be nice if Colbert or Stewart chose to lampoon this little footnote. At least their shows get noticed more than Slashdot.
Aren't you guys tired of living in a Police State and a constant state of war - when are Americans going to stand up and demand their rights back - I keep waiting,,,,
Wait, then who does it apply to? Foreign governments spying on US citizens? US government spying on foreign citizens? Foreign governments spying on foreign citizens?
I thought the whole idea behind the 4th amendment was to say that the US government spying on US citizens was off limits. I'd like to hear why they think one of the other three situations is the real reason that pesky little amendment is in there.
I'm one of those religious, conservative nutjobs that gets mocked on this site, and I find this outrageous. Here is the Fourth Amendment:
That's been suspended?? Doesn't apply to military operations?? If the citizens have no rights over against the military, why do we have the Third Amendment?Now I see that there is a difference in the Third Amendment between "in time of peace" and "in time of war," but realistically, this "time of war" against terrorists can NEVER be officially and completely over. There are no official enemies, so there can be no official truce.
The government is overstepping its Constitutional bounds, and it needs to stop. We have to be careful that we do not lose our identity as a country of freedom via our efforts to protect that freedom.
See, the whole thing is just a misunderstanding of the phrase, "No warrant shall issue but upon probable cause." It doesn't mean they can't search, it means they don't need a warrant. How silly is that?
I intended this as a joke, but upon reflection... *sigh*
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The part of all this that really gets to me is that the administration feels that they have the right to do all of this in such an underhanded fashion. This is a democracy, they work for the people. If the government really felt that the fourth amendment didn't apply or was somehow holding back effective terror efforts, and that most people would not object to them taking on this extra dimension of authority, there are ways to change that. Amendments can be themselves amended, for example. At the very least, some kind of public announcement or passage of some clarifying law is called for. This kind of thing, where they decide the law doesn't matter, and then they don't tell anyone about it, is indicative of a government that feels itself to be above the people, or, at best, the feel that they 'know what`s good for us'. It may be a '$f-bomb piece of paper'... but the theory of open, participatory government ruled by the people, with oversight, checks-and-balances, and restraint is what this nation was founded on. Given the inability to directly preserve these ideas in a concrete form, we substitute symbols in their place. Its just a piece of paper. Its just a bolt of cloth (flag). Its just an amalgamation of stone and concrete (the White House). But these things represent something greater, some over-arching idea to which we have all subscribed. Nobody, not me, not you, not Mr. Bush, can just go and decide its meaningless because its inconvenient. And the fact that we have to find out about this kind of thing from watchdog-style organizations and not from our government directly is evidence of the idea that there are people in government who have forgotten what its all about.
"The law applies to you, not us.
Sincerely,
The Administration"
given the breathless nature of the summary, I actually read the RTFA. Some points.
1) It's a speculative footnote - the memo authors were speculating that the 4th amendment may not apply during military operations in the US proper. The summary takes that and runs with it to its own speculation.
2) The basis of the footnote was the fact that Congress authorized military operations in the US, and typically the 4th amendment doesn't apply to military operations - if a soldier is going to search a house, his warrant is permanent and engraved into the sole of the bot he uses to kick down the door. Why in the HELL Congress decided to chuck posse comitatus overboard I'll never understand, except ibn light of tehm being a bunch of cowardly pussies who were so afraid of a jetliner crashing into the Capitiol and killing them all that they would do ANYTHING to protect their pampered asses.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Posse Comitatus was altered by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. It's not really what it used to be anymore.
Here are some articles:
http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5150
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/martial_law_made_easy.html
And here are Senator Leahy's remarks on the Senate floor about this Act, which has since been passed and signed into law. The first paragraph is all you really need to read:
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html
And the wiki, for good measure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Constitution is not a law. It's the framework of how the country operates. It applies to everyone in this country regardless of political position, military rank or accumulated wealth. Unlike laws, which can be written to exclude certain groups, the Constitution applies to everyone in all 50 states, all citizens abroad, and all people in US facilities abroad. To think any differently is treason.
Can we please get a good summary on some articles?
1) The basis for the OP was a footnote found by the ACLU, not as mentioned in summary, in a seperate document. The document that the headline makes reference of is at this time being requested.
2) The name of the document containing the response is entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.", this the name given in the footnote.
3) The document was written at the request of the White House, shortly after 9/11, when they had asked the Justice departmant what could legally be done in response to another terrorist attack on US territory.
4) The response was with respect to the military only and with terrorist on US territory. Exactly what type of military operation was being performed is currently not known.
5) It was not used as the legal under pinning for wiretapes and data mining. As has already been known for a long time the allowance for this refered to other laws. 6) The paper was over turned internally, time when done internally is unknown but the easliest known record of statements refutting this paper are from 2003. Additional ones exist from 2006.
So the Fourth Amendment is in the Constitution precisely to limit domestic military operations.
Actually, 100% of the current debt is W's.
Utter nonsense. The national debt was over $5 trillion when Clinton left office. That can't be blamed on W. There was a year or two during the Clinton administration when there were budget surpluses, thanks largely to capital gains taxes on the Nasdaq bubble, but they only reduced the debt, they didn't come close to eliminating it. Also, the unfunded liabilities of social security, medicare, government pensions, etc. are at least $40 trillion, and if the annual increases in these liabilities were included in the budget calculations there would never have been a surplus.
It is true that the national debt now is about $9 trillion, a big increase during the disastrous administration of W. But keep in mind that less than a quarter of the $4 trillion increase is due to the war that liberals (and paleocons) hate, the rest is due to domestic spending and the sort of world policing (NATO, bases in Japan and Korea, etc.) that the liberals tend to support. W backed the prescription drug medicare benefit, right along with Kennedy and Clinton. That added hundreds of billions of unfunded liabilities all by itself. As the baby boomers retire more and more of those unfunded liabilities will come due and be transformed into actual debt. For this reason you will see the national debt continue to balloon regardless of who becomes President next.
I understand you're trying to make this into some sort of Red vs. Blue thing, but I have to say that it's really disheartening to read posts like yours, and see people nonchalantly dismiss Constitutional protections.