Obama-appointed civil liberties board upholds mass internet data collection by NSA
The five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), appointed by President Obama, released a report this week upholding core components of the US government's surveillance apparatus. Specifically, the panel affirmed the constitutionality of operations conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008, which authorizes PRISM and other bulk electronic data collection operations run by the National Security Agency (NSA). The report gives a bogus stamp of legitimacy to some of the most aggressive and criminal surveillance operations carried out by the US government. The surveillance operations covered by the report are responsible for mass spying on an astonishing scale.
Peter Van Buren ■ Shredding the Fourth Amendment in Post-Constitutional America || The Bill of Rights was designed to protect the people from their government. If the First Amendment’s right to speak out publicly was the people’s wall of security, then the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy was its buttress. It was once thought that the government should neither be able to stop citizens from speaking nor peer into their lives. Think of that as the essence of the Constitutional era that ended when those towers came down on September 11, 2001. Consider how privacy worked before 9/11 and how it works now in Post-Constitutional America.