By Rachel Alexander
Monday, June 24, 2013
A whistleblower has exposed the National Security
Administration’s warrantless spying on millions of ordinary Americans, and
conservatives are divided in their reactions. Dick Cheney and Michele Bachmann
are calling former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a traitor. This may be the
only time I ever disagree with them.
Snowden revealed that judges are approving warrants
allowing the government to obtain “inadvertently acquired” information without
a search warrant. This includes the contents of emails and listening in on
phone conversations. It is ostensibly authorized under Section 215 of the
Patriot Act.
This is terrifying when you consider how easy it could be
for the government to target someone, then make it look like they
“inadvertently acquired” their confidential information after poring through
gobs of information. The government is permitted to retain the information for
up to five years. As an attorney who formerly handled public records requests
for the government, I assure you it is easy to retain records for longer than
that without anyone noticing. Snowden said that he had access to obtain this
information from virtually anyone with a personal email address.
This administration cannot be trusted not to abuse its
authority and target political enemies. The government has already been caught
using the IRS to target conservatives, so it should not be trusted with wide
access to the average American’s personal information without a warrant. As someone
who has been targeted by a fishing expedition – the State Bar of Arizona
demanded to know everything I had ever blogged, including anonymously, over a
period of five years - I greatly fear giving the government the ability to
conduct fishing expeditions that violate the Fourth Amendment. Because
technology has become so vast, and the laws have become so vague - many no
longer require intent - one civil liberties attorney argues that it can easily
be shown that the average American commits three felonies a day. Put this all
together and it becomes very easy for the government to target anyone.
Doug Hagmann, a columnist with Canada Free Press, was
told by an anonymous employee at the Department of Homeland Security that the
Obama administration is already spying on and targeting conservative reporters,
bloggers and whistleblowers. “If you are a website owner with a brisk
readership and a conservative bent, you’re on that list.” The Obama
administration will claim any surveillance is related to terrorism, “but it’s a
political dissident list, not an enemy threat list.”
The advance of technology has given the government many
new ways to monitor our activities. Yet the Founding Fathers drafted the Fourth
Amendment in order to protect us from the government spying on us in our homes.
The NSA surveillance allows the government to monitor what we are doing on our
computers inside our homes.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who was appalled by the
surveillance, contrasts the privacy of mailing letters through the Post Office
with today's modern email: there is no similar expectation of privacy with
email, even though it is just a modern day version of a letter. He lamented how
excessive government monitoring of people is what we used to abhor about
communist Russia.
The government is essentially giving itself broad powers
to spy on us, and justifying it with the vague excuse of combating terrorism.
Snowden advises investigative journalists, “How many terrorist attacks were
prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance
that could not be gained via any other source?”
Snowden leaked the story to the UK Guardian because none
of the big newspapers in the U.S. had the guts to break such an incriminating
story against the Obama administration. Snowden said he released evidence of
the surveillance because he was tired of seeing “lies from senior officials to
Congress.” Now Snowden has fled to Hong Kong, and the Obama administration is
trying to track him down and try him for being a traitor.
Contrast this with how the Obama administration has bent
over backwards transferring terrorists to U.S. courts where they will receive
the full panoply of constitutional rights. Yet when it comes to Snowden, merely
a whistleblower, the government is already declaring him guilty of treason,
filing a criminal complaint against him on Friday. Snowden told the UK Guardian
in an interview that he no longer stands a chance at a fair trial in the U.S.
Two U.S. senators, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall
(D-Colo.), both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have asked the
administration how many Americans were subjected to this surveillance, but the
administration refuses to provide the information, unbelievably asserting it
doesn't have it. Other members of the House and Senate, on both sides of the
aisle, are introducing bills that would declassify the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court opinions that authorized these programs. This will reveal
how the court interpreted the Patriot Act so broadly as to justify the
surveillance.
Some on the right are concerned that Edward Snowden has
revealed classified information that could damage our security efforts. But
what has been damaged exactly? Snowden has not revealed any U.S. operations
against legitimate military targets. Let's not forget what happened to liberal
journalist Geraldo Rivera when he actually did reveal U.S. troop movements in
Iraq – he wasn't even prosecuted. Snowden merely “pointed out where the NSA has
hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private
businesses.”
There probably wasn’t anything else he could do to stop
the government surveillance – it is highly unlikely that reporting it to
another government agency would have accomplished anything but getting him
fired.
The Patriot Act was fraught with potential civil
liberties violations when it was first passed. But most of them were addressed
and the law was changed. Now it appears another loophole has been found in it
that must be changed to protect our Fourth Amendment right. The government
should not be able to casually access the personal information of Americans it
has no reason to suspect are involved with crime or terrorism.
What Snowden has done can be distinguished from the
actions of Pfc. Bradley Manning. Manning released videos and documents relating
to our military fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as a video of an
American helicopter firing on a group of men in Baghdad, which many believe
provoked terrorists. Manning revealed the military's combat role in fighting
terrorism, whereas Snowden revealed massive spying on average Americans, two
very different things. Snowden contributed $500 to Ron Paul’s presidential
campaign in 2012, clearly no American-hating lefty.
If Snowden is really a traitor, then why is Obama now
saying things need to change? Obama said in an interview on the PBS Charlie
Rose show PBS last week, “We’re going to have to find ways where the public has
an assurance that there are checks and balances in place, that they have enough
information about how we operate that they know their phone calls aren’t being
listened to, their text messages aren’t being monitored, their e-mails are not
being read by some Big Brother somewhere.” Obama formed a Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board and met with it last week to address this. Also as a
result of Snowden’s exposure, Google and Facebook are opening up about what
information they disclose to the U.S. government.
If this surveillance is not curtailed, conservative
activists should seriously consider switching to encrypted email. I have a
feeling the government is not really going to stop this. And just like Obama’s
denial that ordinary Americans’ phone calls were being listened in on, Obama
will deny that surveillance is increasing.
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