Uncle Sam Is Listening In On Your Phone Calls

Anger swells after NSA phone records collection revelations

Senior politicians reveal that US counter-terrorism efforts have swept up personal data from American citizens for years 

The scale of America's surveillance state was laid bare on Thursday as senior politicians revealed that the US counter-terrorism effort had swept up swaths of personal data from the phone calls of millions of citizens for years.

After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon, the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.

A White House spokesman said that laws governing such orders "are something that have been in place for a number of years now" and were vital for protecting national security. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the Verizon court order had been in place for seven years. "People want the homeland kept safe," Feinstein said.

But as the implications of the blanket approval for obtaining phone data reverberated around Washington and beyond, anger grew among other politicians.

Intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who has previously warned in broad terms about the scale of government snooping, said: "This sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking." Former vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as "obscenely outrageous"

My view:

The Obama administration is a serial constitution violator.  We thought the Bush administration was bad, yet Obama takes this to a whole new level.

The premise is that "the homeland kept safe" is the overriding reason to violate any part of the constitution that happens to be inconvenient at the time.

1st amendment - Freedom of the press - we don't need that, we need to keep the homeland safe. (Note it was a British newspaper that broke this story).

2nd amendment - Right to bear arms - we the police and military will protect you, you don't need those guns.

4th amendment - Prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets out requirements for search warrants based on probable cause - we saw how warrantless searches were carried out after the Boston tragedy.

6th amendment - Right to a fair and speedy trial in the public eye - we know that unmanned drones have been launched on "suspected terrorists"

10th amendment - Limits rights of the federal government under the constitution - we see the serial violation of the forementioned as violation of this amendment as the federal government seeks to increase its power and centralize all major authority.

Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Again we see that a series of federal governments have violated this part of the constitution for their own purposes, particularly since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 and pure fiat currency was issued.

So we should not be surprised that constitutional rights are being further trampled by the feds and their goons at the NSA.