Category Archives: Constitution

Surveillance Societies Condition Helplessness, Anxiety and Compliance.

Constitution, Individual Rights, Internet, Justice, Law, Liberty, Regulation, Technology, Terrorism, The State

“It’s slow and subtle,” writes Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez, “but surveillance societies inexorably train us for helplessness, anxiety and compliance. Maybe they’ll never look at your call logs, read your emails or listen in on your intimate conversations. You’ll just live with the knowledge that they always could — and if you ever had anything worth hiding, there would be nowhere left to hide it.”

An superb piece by Sanchez, which I’ve followed, below, with a Sanchez segment on Stossel:

Some of the potentially sensitive facts those records expose becomes obvious after giving it some thought: Who has called a substance abuse counselor, a suicide hotline, a divorce lawyeror an abortion provider? What websites do you read daily? What porn turns you on? What religious and political groups are you a member of?

Some are less obvious. Because your cellphone’s “routing information” typically includes information about the nearest cell tower, those records are also a kind of virtual map showing where you spend your time — and, when aggregated with others, who you like to spend it with.

It’s precisely this kind of analysis the NSA is likely interested in doing to help “fingerprint” either specific suspects or the general profile of a terror suspect. Link that information to other data sets being collected, like credit card bills, and you can even deduce when a woman is pregnant before her own family knows. Think of big data analysis as a statistical Sherlock Holmes, capable of making surprising inferences from seemingly insignificant details and patterns.

But fine, so what if a bunch of strangers in a room in Fort Meade could, in principle, discover these things about you? There’s no reason to think they’re digging for that kind of stuff, and even if they did, it’d be like learning there are naked photos of you circulating in a Mongolian village: A little creepy, maybe, but unlikely to have a concrete effect on your life.

Assuming you don’t match a profile that gets you flagged for more intensive surveillance, that’s probably right — as long as they’re only using that vast, rich database to look for specific terror or espionage suspects. If they change their minds about the rules governing access to the database or how it’s put to use, of course, we’re unlikely to ever know; we didn’t know what the rules were before the leak either.

That’s one problem with bulk collection of data. The information often sticks around indefinitely, while the rules only stick around until someone decides to change them. The IRS is all fired up to use big data to hunt for tax cheats, and in principle, the NSA can disseminate evidence of some crime. Sooner or later, other agencies may start to wonder why such a juicy data set is going to waste.

But the average person is unlikely to pique the NSA’s interest, even when those sweeping surveillance powers are abused for purposes ranging beyond terrorism. It probably won’t affect you personally or directly.

However, that seems like an awfully narrow way to think about the importance of privacy. Folks don’t usually say (aloud, anyway), “I’m white, why should I care about racism?” or, “My political and religious views are too mainstream to ever be restricted, so why should I care about the First Amendment?”

READ ON.

And watch (no transcripts, of course) Stossel, as Sanchez explains that “most cellphone carriers have the capability to install remote spyware on your cell phone,” in addition to the dozens of [other] ways we can [and are being] tracked.

The ‘Anti-Democratic Sentiments of the Founding Fathers’

America, Constitution, Democracy, Founding Fathers, History

“A complete democracy on a wide scale was widely regarded throughout the colonies as a threat to law and order. The example of Pennsylvania, which abolished all property qualifications for voting and holding office and produced a document making a mockery of constitutional government in the eyes of some onlookers, confirmed the suspicions of many colonial leaders that an unrestrained democracy could drive good men out of public office and turn the affairs of state over to pettifoggers, bunglers, and demagogues. They wanted representation of brains, not bodies—and for a number of years the best minds in the country dominated American politics. … No doubt the Virginia Constitution and Declaration of Rights, as well as the American Constitution of 1787, would have fallen even shorter of perfection had they been written by popularly chosen assemblies of untutored and inexperienced deputies of the people at large… [The Founders] were not familiar with universal suffrage and mass democracy. … Besides, there was a abundance of historical evidence indicating that democracies tend toward mediocrity and tyranny of the majority. …”

—Constitutional scholar James McClellan, writing about the first state constitutions, 1776-1783, in Liberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government (pages 151-152).

One look at the country’s preening politicians, pundits and public intellectuals proves the nation’s founders right. It’s a large sample and it’s mostly and consistently drek.

UPDATED: Will Mark Levin Ever Diss Militarism and Majoritarianism (As Facets of Statism)?

Constitution, Democracy, Federalism, Founding Fathers, libertarianism, Liberty, Military, Neoconservatism, States' Rights

Mark Levin is right about the need to repeal the 17th Amendment. Libertarians have long since argued in favor of senators once again being elected by the respective state legislatures, as was the original intent of the Framers.

However, about eight minutes into Mr. Levin’s segment with Sean Hannity, I heard the radio host emphasize only the idea of term limits vis-a-vis the Senate, when he should have also been dissing the idea of democracy. Were not America’s constitution makers trying to put in place a scheme that would forestall unfettered democracy?

Was this not the purpose of an upper House elected by state legislatures, and not by the people at large as the 17th Amendment decreed?

I imagine there is no place for curbing militarism in the grand scheme of Mr. Levin’s new book.

Neoconservatives do not consider the military-industrial-complex a branch of Leviathan. However, militarism and majoritarianism are facets of statism.

UPDATE: From “Independence And The Declaration of Secession”:

“While Mark Levin, the radio man lauded by his Republican adherents as “The Great One,” has denounced the secessionists among us (check), McClellan (a real scholar) seconded the Declaration’s secessionist impetus. …”

Media-Enabled MEGALOMANIAC Speaks

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, Individual Rights

Barack Obama is an out-of-control megalomaniac—a mindset that has been mediated by media. The intrepid press sat in today rather quietly on a press conference, and listened to the monster speak about his willingness to “jiggle” his surveillance programs here and there so as to allay unnecessary fears (“provide greater assurances,” as he put it).

To quote the moron, “The men and women of our intelligence community work every single day to keep us safe because they love this country and believe in our values. They’re patriots. And I believe that those who have lawfully raised their voices on behalf of privacy and civil liberties are also patriots who love our country and want it to live up to our highest ideals. So this is how we’re going to resolve our differences in the United States — through vigorous public debate, guided by our Constitution, with reverence for our history as a nation of laws, and with respect for the facts.”

In remarks that are not yet all online (or may not find their way there), Obama said—in defiance of the evidence—that he was comfortable that “the NSA program is not being abused,” going on to promise that he’d outsource the matter to a … new hire: A Civil Liberties Officer.

Yes, this “ass with ears” will bring in a civil-liberties bureaucrat to calibrate our unalienable individual right to “be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

This is the essence of the modern-day Managerial State: common-law and constitution is overridden; rights outsourced to the better judgment of bureaucrats and hired “experts,” in this case, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. It “will make public the legal rationale for the government’s collection activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The NSA is taking steps to put in place a full-time civil liberties and privacy officer,” promised Big Daddy. (CNN’s Jessica Yellin was in estrus.)

After all, those white guys in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment: What on earth did they know?

To be fair to this clueless creature, George Bush The Decider had a similar disregard for the Constitution.