The Government's Spying on the American People is Unconstitutional

NSA Spying is Unconstitutional

 * Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told Sean Hannity on Monday that what the Obama administration and the National Security Agency did with the Patriot Act was “clearly not within the law.” Referring to the dragnet collection of American citizens’ phone records and Internet information, Sensenbrenner said that “this is clearly beyond the law as I have outlined it, and it’s unfortunate that the Justice Department and the FISA court [which approves surveillance requests] did not follow the law in Justice’s petition to the court and the court approve it.” - (source)
 * The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, The Washington Post reported Thursday. (source)

NSA Spying is Being Done under False Pretenses
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 * The National Security Agency is "blurring the lines" between the war on drugs and the war on terror, according to a memo produced by the spy agency itself and published Monday by Glenn Greenwald's new website The Intercept.
 * The memo was published in conjunction with a new Intercept story detailing how the NSA recorded "virtually every" cell phone call in the small island nation of the Bahamas. The spy agency reportedly used a DEA "backdoor" to gain access to Bahamian cell phone networks.
 * ...the NSA's heavy involvement in counternarcotics -- could raise more questions for critics of the agency. The agency has repeatedly hammered on the threat of terrorism as a justification for its wide-ranging surveillance apparatus. But former contractor Edward Snowden's documents show the agency is using its powers in unrelated ways -- like spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.


 * The NY Times quoted a “senior intelligence official” who said ‘target’ “surveillance had been valuable, but said it was difficult to point to any particular terrorist plot that would have been carried out if the surveillance had not taken place.” That contradicts everything we’re being told by the defenders of the NSA spy program.

Even our allies are being spied on

 * The U.S. National Security Agency monitored the telephone and email activity of Brazilian companies and individuals in the past decade as part of U.S. espionage activities, the Globo newspaper reported on Sunday, citing documents provided by fugitive Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor. (source)
 * France’s top security official publicly dressed down the United States at the American ambassador’s July 4 garden party, denouncing alleged U.S. “espionage” of France and other countries, while the European Parliament voted to open an investigation. (source)

Opposition is Growing
"The federal government would need a warrant from a judge if it wants the cooperation of California officials in searching residents' cellphone and computer records, under a bill making its way through the state legislature." The bill, which passed the state Senate with just one opposing vote on Monday, was introduced in the wake of information leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden showing massive internal surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA.

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It's Really about Profit
[http://truth-out.org/news/item/19647-who-buys-the-spies-the-hidden-corporate-cash-behind-americas-out-of-control-national-surveillance-state Who Buys the Spies? The Hidden Corporate Cash Behind America’s Out-of-Control National Surveillance State]


 * For most election analysts, the revelations came like a bolt from the blue, despite a whole series of warning signs. These included Obama’s rapid fire decision to step up the war in Afghanistan right after he took office, the alacrity and severity with which his administration prosecuted national security whistleblowers after promising greater transparency and the administration’s sweeping claims about the government’s right to hold citizens without trial for indefinite periods. Not to mention the Justice Department’s insistence that killing American citizens without any kind of court hearing is lawful, the efforts to prosecute journalists for simply posting links to leaked documents, the overkill that attended official responses to the Occupy movement and protests at the national party conventions, or the White House claims that press freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights do not cover bloggers in an era in which everyone, including the New York Times, uses blogs.


 * Even now, the suggestion that the Obama administration embodies a distinctively new form of extensively privatized National Security State organically linked with the famously contentious Bush-Cheney structures takes some getting used to. In particular, many readers are likely to wonder what a bitter, partisan stalemate such as the U.S. just witnessed over raising the debt ceiling can possibly mean in a situation where Big Brother and Big Money are working hand in hand through it all.