NSA: Annals of Non-Denial Denials

So House Intelligence Committee leaders say that Edward Snowden is lying. They’re saying that he couldn’t possibly have had access to the records he said he did, that he lied about his past, etc.

You know what neither the House Intelligence Committee nor Obama seems to be denying? That the NSA gathers data on emails and phone calls for every American in general, or Verizon customers in specific. One need not believe that Snowden is telling the truth about everything, or that he’s a hero, or that everything he revealed (like details of our spying on various Chinese firms) needed to be revealed.

It’s the domestic spying on all Americans that’s the scandal: The United States government ignoring fourth amendment constitutional guarantees. The fourth amendment reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Government asking for “the email and phone records for every American” is, in fact, an unreasonable search and seizure, and “the servers of every major telecommunications and Internet provider in America” is an unreasonable place to be searched. That’s the scandal, not the handwaving Obama and congress have participated in to distract you from the fact that every single piece of electronic communications you participate in is being tracked by the government.

That’s the scandal. One of the many perpetrated by the Obama Administration (who have scaled up electronic eavesdropping and warrantless wiretaps far beyond what liberals screamed about George W. Bush undertaking).

That’s the NSA scandal we should focus on.

Tags: , , , ,

Leave a Reply