Monday, March 21, 2011

"Surveillance Powers"

An appellate court has reinstated lawsuits against expanded "surveillance powers" granted by Congress under the Bush administration. These "surveillance powers" include wiretapping, interception of international electronic calls and e-mails, etc. The court recognized that the people and groups affected by the laws have a legitimate reason to be fearful that the government may be monitoring their e-mails and calls.
The problem with this law is that it goes against the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is suppose to protect the people against unreasonable searches and seizures. The law seems to skip over the Fourth Amendment. I think it is about time the courts say something about this unreasonable law. The court did not want to deal with this law during the Bush administration and therefore they pushed the cases aside. But now the cases have come back. The law extends the power of the government too far at the expense of the people's privacy. Do you think this law can be justified for any reason or has the government clearly infringed the people's rights to privacy?

3 comments:

Jason Galisatus said...

As much as you believe in homeland security and the enforcement of it, you cannot escape the fact that this is a blatant betrayal of the constitution. I personally wish that people could be wiretapped without warrants. I think that the privacy right could be waived because of homeland security. BUT that is not the issue at hand. What I think of that is irrelevant because of the violation of the Constitution that cannot be ignored. It's ironic that these "strict constructionists" and "original intenters" suddenly have no problem loosely interpreting the Constitution when it serves their purpose. How annoying.

ACatiggay said...

I agree with Jason...the Constitutionality of this is totally unjustified since it is going against our very own rights and liberties as American citizens. Privacy however, is not beneficial in the end if someone is hurt that cuold have been prevented and therefore wiretapping with legitamate probable cause from the government is ok...but still it is a stretch...if something is so suspicious...then just get a warrant for its search and wiretapping

Andrea Nelson said...

I agree with Jason and Alex. Some times wiretaping could be justified like if there were to be another world war or another aspect like that. But i think that it is definietly a violation of our rights. If there is no probable cause whatsoever to be wiretaped then there shouldn't be any government surveilance.