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Text of the proposed law: "The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the ph
by uvdiv 13y ago
Text of the proposed law:
"The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause."
http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/EAS13699.pdf http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/EAS13699.pdf
("Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013")
- dkulchenko 13y agoIs that the entire bill? Seems extremely narrow-scoped and with no terms defined. IIRC, the ongoing spying is not even warrantless - they're operating under a broad-scope warrant issued by FISC, so this bill would do absolutely nothing.
- uvdiv 13y agoYes, the entire rulemaking part. It's true the Verizon spying had a secret-court FISA warrant, but was that warrant required to have "probable cause"?
- mpyne 13y agoI believe the answer might actually be yes to that as well. Remember the NSA treats analysis (search) of information as different from collection of information. Doesn't matter though, the proposed law talks about search of American phone records which the NSA is already forbidden (even with PRISM) from looking at. In other words the new content of this law would be exactly zero, if that's all it purports to add.
- einhverfr 13y agoIs it more likely than not that looking at all social graph info from phone records over an indefinite period of time will show evidence of terrorist activity? If so, probable cause is met. What's lacking is particularity which is entirely missing in the text of that law.
- mtgx 13y agoHaven't you heard? The way they do it now is that the NSA secretly spies on people, and then they give the info to FBI, which now has "probable cause". These guys are hellbent on finding every possible loophole in the Constitution, and (ab)using it to the extreme. They've forgot all about the spirit of the Constitution. It must help that they have a Constitutional lawyer in office helping them discover all these loopholes. And here we thought that because he was a Constitutional lawyer, he was going to use that knowledge to uphold the Constitution. The joke's on us, I guess.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- loteck 13y agoAs has been covered, the government already obtains a FISA warrant in order to "search" the records they are gathering en masse. Nice try, Rand, but some people still read the text of bills.
- gizmo686 13y agoAs someone without training in law, that wording seems extremely odd. It seems like it is not a piece of legislation, but rather an interpretation of the amendment; where I thought that interpreting the constitution was the job of the court. If this wording works, than wouldn't it give Congress the ability to work around the constitution simply by passing laws saying that <insert clause here> shall be interpreted to make <insert law here> constitutional.