Category Archives: Law

Mass Surveillance Based On Nothing But Prior-Restraint Argument

Government, Homeland Security, Law, Regulation, Terrorism

Mass surveillance is based on nothing but a prior-restraint argument: Violate everybody’s rights in the hope of nabbing a few terrorists. That’s if you buy the government’s good intentions; its real goal—reflexive inclination, really—is to use every method conceivable to increase its sphere of control.

Glenn Greenwald puts it a little mildly for my taste, but the heroic investigative journalist, also first “to use information given to him by Snowden to break stories of NSA surveillance,” explained a similar concept to CNN’s JAKE TAPPER:

GLENN GREENWALD: “… We could eliminate all sorts of crimes, Jake, like rape and murder and kidnapping and pedophilia if we just do away with the requirement that police officers first get a search warrant before entering our house, or if we let the government put video cameras in all of our homes and offices and watch what we are doing all the time. We make the choice that we’d rather not do that because we’d rather live with a greater risk of crime than let the government invade our privacy. The fact that there’s a half of 1 percent chance that it could have helped a terrorist plot 11 years ago in terms of detection is hardly a reason to do this massive, ubiquitous surveillance program.”

In a new piece for The Guardian, Greenwald looks at the history and dynamics of the NSA scam tactics:

The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are “serious questions that have been raised”. They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic “reforms” so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge.
This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable. In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury. In response, the US Congress enacted a new law (Fisa) which featured two primary “safeguards”: a requirement of judicial review for any domestic surveillance, and newly created committees to ensure legal compliance by the intelligence community.
But the new court was designed to ensure that all of the government’s requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government’s lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch. As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government.
Identically, the most devoted and slavish loyalists of the National Security State were repeatedly installed as the committee’s heads, currently in the form of NSA cheerleaders Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House. As the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article on the joke of Congressional oversight, the committees “more often treat … senior intelligence officials like matinee idols”.
As a result, the committees, ostensibly intended to serve an overseer function, have far more often acted as the NSA’s in-house PR firm. The heralded mid-1970s reforms did more to make Americans believe there was reform than actually providing any, thus shielding it from real reforms.
The same thing happened after the New York Times, in 2005, revealed that the NSA under Bush had been eavesdropping on Americans for years without the warrants required by criminal law. The US political class loudly claimed that they would resolve the problems that led to that scandal. Instead, they did the opposite: in 2008, a bipartisan Congress, with the support of then-Senator Barack Obama, enacted a new Fisa law that legalized the bulk of the once-illegal Bush program, including allowing warrantless eavesdropping on hundreds of millions of foreign nationals and large numbers of Americans as well.

The ACLU’s executive director Anthony Romero had a line almost as neat as Rand Paul’s “If you like your privacy you can keep it” (and here I add the soundtrack of villainous laughter: “NHAHAHAHAHAHA”). It is:

The president should end – not mend – the government’s collection and retention of all law-abiding Americans’ data. When the government collects and stores every American’s phone call data, it is engaging in a textbook example of an ‘unreasonable search’ that violates the constitution.

Minimum Wage ‘Pulverizes The Poor’

Economy, Free Markets, Labor, Law

Minimum-wage legislation fixes the price of labor above its productivity, making it less likely that the young and the unskilled will be hired. Those who claim to represent the interests of unemployed youngsters—whose labor-participation rate has been in decline—and other unskilled laborers don’t much care that such legislation circumvents voluntary exchanges in the marketplace. Because government has fixed the price of labor, economic actors are prevented from engaging in mutually beneficial, voluntary exchange.

Still less is the hike justified because it impoverishes. Government can set wages above market value (productivity), but it cannot compel business to hire (and lose money), the outcome of which is unemployment among the young and the poor.

USA Today reports that “13 states are raising pay for minimum-wage workers at the start of 2014.” Another site more savvy than the Seattle Times—almost any website on the WWW qualifies—pegs the additional labor costs to the City of Seattle of “a $15 minimum wage” at “nearly $700,000.

Get rid of the minimum wage altogether says Prof. Walter Block, and jail those who pass it for the crime of “pulverizing the poor.”

UPDATED: Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go POOF

Constitution, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Government, Homeland Security, Law, Race, Racism, Regulation

“Quacking Over Ducksters, As Freedoms Go POOF” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“While the nation fretted over the ouster of one Duckster from the parallel reality of a TV reality show, more of the protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution evaporated.

Just after Christmas, district-court Judge William Pauley ruled that the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution were relative freedoms, not absolutes ones. As such, Fourth-Amendment rights had to be calibrated against a government’s need to maintain a database of records that would (putatively) prevent future terrorist attacks. …

… This is the inglorious history of American freedom and federalism. In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along (as nicely as plaything Justice John G. Roberts did for ObamaCare)—there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, “independent” regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.

A “civil liberties officer,” for example.

The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another. The idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government was worse than naive.

As “luck” would have it, legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment was previously in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing the judge needed to justify an anti-constitutional ruling. To wit, the grounds upon which the New York jurist dismissed this ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) case against the NSA were, primarily, “that bulk collection was [already] authorized under existing laws allowing ‘relevant’ data collection to be authorized by secret US courts.”

Here you have the essence of modern-day, Managerial-State America. Natural law, common-law and Constitution have been nullified; buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedent, ad infinitum, rights having long-since been outsourced to the “better” judgment of bureaucrats and hired “experts.”

In this case, to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. …

Read the complete column. “Quacking Over Ducksters, As Freedoms Go POOF” is on WND.

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UPDATE (1/3): Someone is guilty of a performative contradiction. In any event, I’m glad I have not lost the reader who claims he is lost to me. From the COMMENTS @ WMD:

Nys Parkie
• 12 hours ago

Mercer lost me. Was a fan. Now her libertarian squeamish mish-mash of words only offend me. Her article on hunting cut the cord. I, as a conservative libertarian only have this response. Let me live as I choose and don’t demonize me for it. Maybe you (Her) is some type of PETA Vegan in disguise, I don’t know. Hate your mirror and not me.

Reply
Spyker May Nys Parkie
• 10 hours ago

Nys..,

You cannot chastise Ilana for your lack of command of the national language of the USA. She uses no words not from a good dictionary – the only “mish-mash” is the pancake between your ears.

As far as being ‘offended’ – kindly consider carefully what is ostensibly ‘arrogance’ and what is de facto personal insecurities.

To follow Ms Mercer demands no greater effort than reading through ATLAS SHRUGGED in a week…

Ducking Around As Freedoms Go POOF

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Law, Liberty, The Courts

Face it, the idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government is worse than naive. Rather, it WAS recklessly naive of the American Founding Fathers to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve as a check on one another.

Today, Judge William Pauley, “a Clinton appointee to the Southern District of New York,” ruled that “privacy protections enshrined in the fourth amendment of the US constitution needed to be balanced against a government need to maintain a database of records to prevent future terrorist attacks. ‘The right to be free from searches is fundamental but not absolute,’ he said. ‘Whether the fourth amendment protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a question of reasonableness.’”

Pauley argued that al-Qaida’s “bold jujitsu” strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.

As if the purview of an American justice is to “marry” American law with Islamic ideology; a US judge must apply the constitution to the facts. In truth, any protection the natural law once provided us has been lost, buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedents, whatever.

The Guardian:

The judgement, in a case brought before a district court in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union, directly contradicts the result of a similar challenge in a Washington court last week which ruled the NSA’s bulk collection program was likely to prove unconstitutional and was “almost Orwellian” in scale.
Friday’s ruling makes it more likely that the issue will be settled by the US supreme court, although it may be overtaken by the decision of Barack Obama on whether to accept the recommendations of a White House review panel to ban the NSA from directly collecting such data.

There you have the sum of American freedom and federalism: Legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment is already in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing he needs to justify an anti-Constitutional ruling.

To wit:

The [Judge dismissed the] ACLU case against the NSA … primarily on the grounds that bulk collection was authorised under existing laws allowing “relevant” data collection to be authorised by secret US courts.

And if the Supreme Court doesn’t play (as nicely as Supremo Roberts played for ObamaCare)—there is always an extra-constitutional committee to kill off/override constitutional protections.

As the nation f-cks around with the huckster Ducksters, the ‘privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution’ just got still weaker, as if this were possible.