Thursday, July 18, 2013

Congress Finally Decides NSA Surveillance Violates the Law

“America has no functioning democracy at this moment,” says Jimmy Carter
Kurt Nimmo

July 18, 2013

nsalistensCongress has finally decided that massive, unprecedented and unwarranted surveillance of the American people conducted by the National Security Agency is against the law.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has broad jurisdiction over matters related to federal criminal law, arrived at the conclusion months after the American people reached a similar conclusion.
“We never, at any point in this debate, have approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens employed by our government,” said House fixture John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, during a hearing on the NSA. “If the government cannot provide a clear, public explanation for how its program is consistent with the statute, it must stop collecting this information immediately.”
Other committee members have promised to amend the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act and force the NSA to stop its surveillance. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and author of the original PATRIOT Act, said it is not likely Congress will reauthorize the business-records collection provision of the act when the law expires in 2015.
Fourth Amendment, What Fourth Amendment?
James Cole, deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, insists the NSA’s vacuum cleaner approach to electronic surveillance does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
How so? Well, in 1979, Cole argues, the Supreme Court ruled that telephone records are not private information covered by the Fourth Amendment.
Besides, there is a special court for this sort of thing – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It was approved by Congress, so bureaucrats believe it is legal.
Back in the day, Congress created the FISA and a secret court in response to embarrassing revelations uncovered by the Church Committee investigating intelligence abuses.
FISA’s special court is “almost a parallel Supreme Court,” according to David B. Wells and John Wilson Wells, authors of American National Security and Civil Liberties ion an Era of Terrorism.
The Death of John Doe
Jimmy Carter Says We Don’t Live in a Democracy
Former President Jimmy Carter has come out against NSA surveillance. He characterized Edward Snowden’s leak as “beneficial” for the country.
“I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial,” Carter said.
“America has no functioning democracy at this moment,” the former president also said, according to Der Spiegel.
Indeed, the United States does not have a functioning democracy. There is plenty of evidence that national elections are rigged and the two-party system – actually a one party system lorded over by a cabal of globalist banksters and fascist corporatists – has a monopoly on political power. NSA surveillance is merely another tool designed to guarantee they stay in power.
But then the United States is not supposed to be a democracy. It was intended to be a constitutional republic.

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