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I respectfully disagree with your comment on the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the collection of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, and made s

by ccrush 12y ago

I respectfully disagree with your comment on the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the collection of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, and made so under the power conveyed by Article 5 of the Constitution. Article 5 clearly allows for amendments to the Constitution, and a clear instance of when this is the case is in Article 1 Section 9 Paragraph 4 being amended by contrary language in the 16th Amendment. However, not all amendments are clearly contrary to, or magnifying the verbiage of the original text. In these cases, it is up to the courts to decide. One could argue that calling the discovery process "unduly burdensome" and "conflicting with national security interests" is absolutely not to trump "free speech" and "due process." Are these constitutional issues clear-cut? Not at all. We need the courts to make careful legal decisions which err on the side of freedom instead of caution IMHO.

kordless 12y ago
What we need is the Transparency Amendment. After X many months (not years) information the PEOPLE's government collects, and the rational behind collecting it, must be made public. NO MATTER WHAT. You can't have your cake and eat it too; it's simply not the way this universe works.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I'm in favor of formalizing such a rule, but a period of months just isn't realistic. As a very simple example of why, consider how easily this would enable financial fraud; you could lay the groundwork for a fraudulent scheme early in the fiscal year, wait for a six-month 'transparency window' to close, and observe whether your prior activities had attracted official notice or not - if not, you could proceed with impunity. I'm not saying this to pour cold water on the idea; it's one that I think should be explored and refined, as part of a general framework of privacy protection for the individual - that is, I'd like some degree of sovereignty over my personal data as regards commercial as well as government uses. I think the EU is a good way towards this.
  - judk 12y ago
    "6-months" isn't a statute of limitations in this idea. The govt could still investigate later.
  - kordless 12y ago
    Alternately you could make all your data available publicly at a price set in Bitcoin units. Gathering all that data from everyone would be extremely expensive.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I feel the same way (that these are very complex issues in which the appropriate balance is best determined by the courts). I'm trying to pre-emptively address the populist arguments which are often articulated here in which only the BoR is given the time of day. 'Secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty' is certainly a key constitutional imperative, but so is 'provid[ing] for the common defence'; failure of the latter arguably results in a de facto abridgement of the former. My more utilitarian side would like to always resolve such balancing problems in favor of greater liberty and rely on the emergence of self-organizing political structures, since we are clearly not governed by angels; on the other hand I'm increasingly in sympathy with Madison's corollary that 'if men were angels, no government would be necessary.' Between a sad misanthropy and the limitations of foresight, these days I more inclined to a reluctant deontology which puts greater trus tin institutions than individuals.
- mindcrime 12y ago
  'Secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty' is certainly a key constitutional imperative, but so is 'provid[ing] for the common defence'; failure of the latter arguably results in a de facto abridgement of the former. I will argue that the inverse of that is equally true. If we don't have Liberty, what exactly is left that's worth defending?
- ccrush 12y ago
  If it were such a simple decision, to put your trust in institutions versus individuals, we wouldn't have an issue. Unfortunately, the interests of any institution are driven by the clique that controls it, effected by those that encompass it, supported by those that fund it, and opposed by those it disturbs. The institutions themselves are interdependent and so the placement of trust onto one institution without checks and expecting any other outcome than the monstrosity our surveillance infrastructure has become is a grave error; one that has already been committed. It is inarguably not the fault of the NSA directly that their information systems were used in other, potentially illegal ways. It's hard to blame anyone when a local county police officer gets an order from the state drug enforcers to pull over a car for any possible reason. It's hardly the fault of the state police for following the instructions of the local DEA office. And it's hardly the DEA's fault that their information about drugs coming from foreign countries, information that came directly from the NSA, is accurate and actionable. Furthermore, it's none of their responsibility to question the legality of how the information was acquired. They have it and are able to use it in conjunction with a drug-sniffing dog to detect the drugs without, in theory, breaking any laws. However, this situation can only exist because our rights were traded for security. One could argue that stopping this car is absolutely necessary, and that if the information that "a black SUV is travelling east on the highway around 8pm and carrying narcotics" is available, that it should be actionable. However, this makes for a lot of upset middle-aged mothers and their children being pulled over at gun-point and approached with the "extreme prejudice" mentality because the situation was pre-empted by intelligence information. Reliance on trust in eavesdropping on everybody effectively leads to living a life of terror where it is common-place to be considered a suspect before being clearly identified as one. This is so common that just in the past 5 years we've had numerous reports of tactical assaults on the vehicles and homes of unsuspecting citizens. Surely, all of us would react to such a situation with an intention to defend ourselves; it is expected and entirely justified. However, it is equally justified for a police force to react with deadly force to a criminal they have been following and know to be dangerous. It is completely inappropriate for the police to approach someone whom they only suspect of being a criminal because of "intelligence information," and attempting to settle the situation with deadly force. No, we cannot have our entire trust in institutions. Sometimes, we must count on the people that constitute them to make the right choice. It is clear that the abuses to the people that came as a windfall from the lack of oversight in the intelligence community were planting seeds for many Snownden-type actors. We are only left to wonder how many of them were detected in the past year and neutralized surreptitiously. If we can't trust our government to establish internal checks, then we must rely on individuals to alert us of its failures. They most certainly will not do so themselves.

by ccrush 12y ago

kordless 12y ago

What we need is the Transparency Amendment. After X many months (not years) information the PEOPLE's government collects, and the rational behind collecting it, must be made public. NO MATTER WHAT. You can't have your cake and eat it too; it's simply not the way this universe works.

anigbrowl 12y ago
I'm in favor of formalizing such a rule, but a period of months just isn't realistic. As a very simple example of why, consider how easily this would enable financial fraud; you could lay the groundwork for a fraudulent scheme early in the fiscal year, wait for a six-month 'transparency window' to close, and observe whether your prior activities had attracted official notice or not - if not, you could proceed with impunity. I'm not saying this to pour cold water on the idea; it's one that I think should be explored and refined, as part of a general framework of privacy protection for the individual - that is, I'd like some degree of sovereignty over my personal data as regards commercial as well as government uses. I think the EU is a good way towards this.
- judk 12y ago
  "6-months" isn't a statute of limitations in this idea. The govt could still investigate later.
- kordless 12y ago
  Alternately you could make all your data available publicly at a price set in Bitcoin units. Gathering all that data from everyone would be extremely expensive.

anigbrowl 12y ago

I feel the same way (that these are very complex issues in which the appropriate balance is best determined by the courts). I'm trying to pre-emptively address the populist arguments which are often articulated here in which only the BoR is given the time of day. 'Secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty' is certainly a key constitutional imperative, but so is 'provid[ing] for the common defence'; failure of the latter arguably results in a de facto abridgement of the former. My more utilitarian side would like to always resolve such balancing problems in favor of greater liberty and rely on the emergence of self-organizing political structures, since we are clearly not governed by angels; on the other hand I'm increasingly in sympathy with Madison's corollary that 'if men were angels, no government would be necessary.' Between a sad misanthropy and the limitations of foresight, these days I more inclined to a reluctant deontology which puts greater trus tin institutions than individuals.

mindcrime 12y ago
'Secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty' is certainly a key constitutional imperative, but so is 'provid[ing] for the common defence'; failure of the latter arguably results in a de facto abridgement of the former. I will argue that the inverse of that is equally true. If we don't have Liberty, what exactly is left that's worth defending?
ccrush 12y ago
If it were such a simple decision, to put your trust in institutions versus individuals, we wouldn't have an issue. Unfortunately, the interests of any institution are driven by the clique that controls it, effected by those that encompass it, supported by those that fund it, and opposed by those it disturbs. The institutions themselves are interdependent and so the placement of trust onto one institution without checks and expecting any other outcome than the monstrosity our surveillance infrastructure has become is a grave error; one that has already been committed. It is inarguably not the fault of the NSA directly that their information systems were used in other, potentially illegal ways. It's hard to blame anyone when a local county police officer gets an order from the state drug enforcers to pull over a car for any possible reason. It's hardly the fault of the state police for following the instructions of the local DEA office. And it's hardly the DEA's fault that their information about drugs coming from foreign countries, information that came directly from the NSA, is accurate and actionable. Furthermore, it's none of their responsibility to question the legality of how the information was acquired. They have it and are able to use it in conjunction with a drug-sniffing dog to detect the drugs without, in theory, breaking any laws. However, this situation can only exist because our rights were traded for security. One could argue that stopping this car is absolutely necessary, and that if the information that "a black SUV is travelling east on the highway around 8pm and carrying narcotics" is available, that it should be actionable. However, this makes for a lot of upset middle-aged mothers and their children being pulled over at gun-point and approached with the "extreme prejudice" mentality because the situation was pre-empted by intelligence information. Reliance on trust in eavesdropping on everybody effectively leads to living a life of terror where it is common-place to be considered a suspect before being clearly identified as one. This is so common that just in the past 5 years we've had numerous reports of tactical assaults on the vehicles and homes of unsuspecting citizens. Surely, all of us would react to such a situation with an intention to defend ourselves; it is expected and entirely justified. However, it is equally justified for a police force to react with deadly force to a criminal they have been following and know to be dangerous. It is completely inappropriate for the police to approach someone whom they only suspect of being a criminal because of "intelligence information," and attempting to settle the situation with deadly force. No, we cannot have our entire trust in institutions. Sometimes, we must count on the people that constitute them to make the right choice. It is clear that the abuses to the people that came as a windfall from the lack of oversight in the intelligence community were planting seeds for many Snownden-type actors. We are only left to wonder how many of them were detected in the past year and neutralized surreptitiously. If we can't trust our government to establish internal checks, then we must rely on individuals to alert us of its failures. They most certainly will not do so themselves.