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The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And now, from an article on the NY Times website...
The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues.
The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.
You can follow comments on the article over on BoingBoing.
Call me a crazy Canuck, but this sure looks like another step in the evolution of a police state for my neighbors south of the border. Legal wiretaps by the government? Directed against any private citizen they choose? Scary stuff indeed.
And now, from an article on the NY Times website...
The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues.
The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.
You can follow comments on the article over on BoingBoing.
Call me a crazy Canuck, but this sure looks like another step in the evolution of a police state for my neighbors south of the border. Legal wiretaps by the government? Directed against any private citizen they choose? Scary stuff indeed.
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(no subject)
It may be an analogy, but I tend to think of it as if they had tapped phones on the basis of a warrant that later turned out to have been forged by police. I would hope that in this case it would be the police who would be considered the criminals, and not the company. Here, I think the agency that issued illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping orders should be hit by the hammer, and the phone companies, which were probably little more than just inconveniently placed, should probably not be the targets.
Then again, that's just me.