If I could go back in time, I would make a lot of mistakes.
President Bush publicly admits to violating the fourth amendment
This is the type of news that makes me shudder. It also doesn’t surprise me.
Bush ‘backed spying on Americans’
It seems that he ordered the NSA to illegally search ~500 American citizens right after the 9/11 attacks. This news comes only one day after the Bush administration finally gave up on fighting John McCain’s bill that bans the U.S. from using torture as an interrogation method. Why the hell was he fighting it in the first place? So he could continue to kidnap and torture people in secret CIA prisons.
Update: The Volokh Conspiracy has an excellent article/discussion regarding this news.
Update: Bush confirms he authorized spying on Americans domestically
12 Responses to 'President Bush publicly admits to violating the fourth amendment'
Leave a Reply
on December 16th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
500 people *may* have had their 4th amendment rights violated under the patriot act. 6000+ Americans HAVE had their 4th Amendment rights violated by Kilo Vs New London. Which do you think if more likely, some NSA official being interested in you for suspected terrorism or A developer Eyeballing your house for a new luxury Condo Site? I think you got your eye off the ball. Besides last week, you were saying how great it is to violate 4th amendment rights on the basis of whether or not it makes other people comfortable. When things like this happen in this country it is you “living breathing Document” people who have yourselves to blame. I personally am appalled by the level at which this country is viewing peoples’ lives and properties as comunal. The end of our great Republic is near and the weak will be crushed under the boot of a dictatorship while the strong will be killed in the uprising. Do you think that George Bush will be the guy in charge? You need to get your head out of the sand and view governement as a whole as the problem not individual Officials. George Bush did not pass the Patriot Act alone. And it took 5 Justices to pass Kilo Vs New London. It is high time we see the 2 political parties for what they are: a singular bipolar mind hell bent on enslaving us all.
on December 16th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
You seem to be missing a larger point: Bush violated the 4th amendment *before* the Patriot Act was passed.
I personally believe that the Patriot Act violates all sorts of amendments, but challenges to it are working their way through the courts. So far, things are looking good for getting our civil liberties back. The ACLU has already had favorable rulings in more than one case challenging the law (various aspects of it).
on December 17th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
I personally believe that the patriot act is important and while some provisions may be unconstitutional, you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. The ability to share grand jury information between domestic and international intelligence agencies is essential to being able to prevent another 9/11. The ability to gain a warrant for voicemail messages of suspected terrorist. The ability to provide federal lawsuit protection to ISP companies who aid the Federal government by providing information about internet usage in accordance with a warrant. The ability to subpena email coorespondance. All of these provisions are good and important to fighting terrorism. None of the above provisions occur without a warrant. Gone are the days when this countries enemies use smoke signals and secret handshakes. Our ability to fight our enemies has to be adjusted as new threats are introduced. I fail to see how any of the above provisions violate anyone’s rights and yet a couple of ACLU lawyers scream bloody murder when they were added to the patriot act. The bottom line is that too many politicians want to defeat bush so badly, that they are willing to put the whole country in danger to do it. I am no great lover of government but I understand that this countries enemies know our legal system and are willing to do anything to destroy us.
BTW you do know that our Constitution does not apply to enemy combatants. Foreign terrorist have no claim to either the geneva convention or the US constitution.
As for bush spying on Americans, I will wait to see more concrete evidence on this. So far we have 1 NY Times reporter who is releasing a book in 9 days and a few Black-Helicopter blogs. I wanna see who has been spied on and in what context.
As for the real threat here, you should be more concerned about what the senate, congress and supreme court are doing. Bush is not running for anything ever again. But local governments will be taking homes and properties for as long as we allow it. I don’t think you are in any serious danger of being kidnapped by the CIA and being tortured to obtain your secret email password. Your real concern should be whether or not JU decides that it needs your neighborhood for a new parkinglot and goes to your city council to get it.
on December 17th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Reading your comments, it is clear to me that you haven’t read or completely don’t understand the Patriot Act. You say, “None of the above provisions occur without a warrant.”. This is false. The government had the ability to do all those things BEFORE the Patriot Act with a warrant. The Patriot Act removes this and allows the FBI (and other government agencies) to write their own subpoenas without any judicial oversight and without any warrant.
Also, you also seem to be missing the bigger picture regarding the “enemy combatant” classification. Jose Padilla–a U.S. citizen–was declared by the President to be an “enemy combatant” so he could ship him out of the country and hold him forever without a trial. What’s to stop the President from declaring *anyone* an “enemy combatant” and shipping them off? Better still, since the Patriot Act allows law enforcement to keep warrants and subpoenas secret, there’s no way for anyone to legally speak about someone being taken away.
Example: If the government broken into my home and took my wife away, they could seal the warrant and place me under a secret gag order. Leaving me no recourse. Even petitioning in court would be against the law until the seal is removed. It is all there in the Patriot Act. Read it some time.
“So far we have 1 NY Times reporter who is releasing a book in 9 days and a few Black-Helicopter blogs.” Umm… You consider the BBC to be a “black helicopter blog”? Check the front page of CNN and Foxnews.com. It is there too.
The real threat here is Bush, the CIA, and general law enforcement. For other topics of interest (such as eminent domain), please wait until the next article on that topic =)
on December 18th, 2005 at 2:21 am
> Reading your comments, it is clear to me that you haven’t read or
> completely don’t understand the Patriot Act. You say, “None of the
> above provisions occur without a warrant.â€
Actually You are right. I had only read a few interpretations of it. So I decided to pull up the patriot act (http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html) and read it. I read most of it (it is quite lengthy) and it is interesting to me that there is a whole section of the Act (section 213) that deals with instances where the excecution of a terrorism warant can be delayed or stopped by a court (meaning that there IS some kind of Judicial oversight going on here).
In section 211, it deals with the scope of access granted by the government. In no way does this section remove the requirement for a warrant. It simply clarifies some of the statutes already put forth in Title 18 chapter 121 section 2703 (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+18USC2703).
Section 212 actually adds greater restrictions by saying the following:
“(3) a provider of remote computing service or electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service (not including the contents of communications covered by paragraph (1) or (2)) to any governmental entity.”
Most of the patriot act deals with who will have oversite over intelligence, what can be shared between agencies and how it will be funded. The portions dealing with actual new Access between Government and private data are mearly minor ammendments to current law and none of them that I can see have “without a warrant” anywhere in them.
There is even a nifty section (2712) that provides groundwork for redress in the court of the United States. You can sue if you believe that your rights have been wrongly damaged by the patriot act.
The more I read of the patriot act the more I am convinced it is a straw dog or boogey man used to keep our eyes off the real problems with our governement.
> Example: If the government broken into my home and took my wife
> away, they could seal the warrant and place me under a secret gag
> order. Leaving me no recourse. Even petitioning in court would be
> against the law until the seal is removed. It is all there in the Patriot
> Act. Read it some time.
Does this scenario really seem plausable to you? What do you think you could possibly be doing that would get the attention of anyone in the Government? This sounds like hystarical ranting to me but in any case, Section 2712: gives you the right to sue in such an instance. I read this section carefully. The conditions of the preceedings are very specific but not overly restrictive in my opinion. I can see in this section why the ACLU might get upset but I can also see why each condition would be necessary.
BTW none of the websites allude to who was actually spied on. According to the President’s radio address only individuals with “a clear link” to Al Queda have been put under surveilance. Now I know that is trusting the Wolf to guard the Sheep but untill there is evidence otherwise and untill it is shown that he violated some law, I think all the “Bush Did it and Karl Rove put him up to it!!!” people should relax and wait and see what actually happened. I am starting to see a pattern of stories that come out 1 day only to be disproved the next. It is becomming tiresome to see all the attacks against Bush that are just petty carping. I mean I have no great love for the man but so far he has done a pretty good job all things considered..
on December 18th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Umm.. You’re not very good at reading laws, but I can’t fault you for that. Law language is such a pain in the ass.
First of all, section 213 is all about delaying/stopping NOTIFICATION of a warrant, not delaying/stopping the warrant itself. Meaning, law enforcement is given the ability to execute a warrant without notifying the person being searched. This is so they can tap your phone or Internet connection without letting you know. By itself, this isn’t really that big a deal. However, when combined with other parts of the law, it becomes part of that “secret seizure” I was talking about.
Section 211: Totally agree with you there… In no way does “this section” remove the requirement of a warrant.
(Now here’s way you’re WAY off)
Section 212: You obviously didn’t read all of it. The text you quote is in regards to ISPs giving out customer information if they feel it is a matter of life & death. As in, they’re granted legal protection if they give out your info to law enforcement if law enforcement tells them it is a matter of “Life & Limb”. Considering there is no way to disput this (on the part of the ISP), they basically have to give out whatever information any law enforcement agency requests of them.
When you combine that authority granted by section 212 with the ability to keep a warrant secret (section 211), you grant the ability for any government entity to spy on you without a warrant in just about any way you can think of (phone, emails, IMs, faxes, etc).
Also, you should read section 220. It includes, ” No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section.” Which is that “secret warrant” I was talking about. Admittedly, to use this function of the Patriot Act, the FBI must go through a “secret court” (presumably, a non-DOJ judge of some sort and a crack team of secret jurists carefully selected from intelligence-related agencies). Regardless, it doesn’t make me feel any safer. The ability for the government to seal the seizure of anything while simultaneously gagging all parties who know about it is nothing short of tyranny… If it actually happens. Has it? How could we know? After all, if it has happened anyone involved would be barred from talking about it! Have your computer seized and your assets frozen and want to explain to your landlord why you can’t pay them? Too bad.
“There is no reason for the FBI to investigate me.” is what I hear a lot. Does it matter? What if they make a mistake and tap the wrong phone? Apparently, it happens all the time.
Not only does the FBI often investigate the wrong people, they also break the law. Apparently the lack of judicial oversight has allowed agents to search & seize willy-nilly without so much as an ounce of accountability.
I recommend you read Slate’s guide to the Patriot Act. You can skip down to where it goes into detail, “Section 215, aka ‘Attack of the Angry Librarians”‘. It delves into all the juicy bits of the act in a rather straightforward way.
Also, you *really* need to take a look at the ACLU’s page concerning the National Security Letters. The documents that the FBI uses to search & seize at will with gag orders and such.
-Riskable
“I have a license to kill -9″
on December 18th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
> Meaning, law enforcement is given the ability to execute a warrant
> without notifying the person being searched.
At the risk of being obtuse, why would you notify someone that you are tapping a phone.
Section 220 says no such thing. Here is the whole section:
“(a) IN GENERAL- Chapter 121 of title 18, United States Code, is amended–
(1) in section 2703, by striking `under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure’ every place it appears and inserting `using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by a court with jurisdiction over the offense under investigation’; and
(2) in section 2711–
(A) in paragraph (1), by striking `and’;
(B) in paragraph (2), by striking the period and inserting `; and’; and
(C) by inserting at the end the following:
`(3) the term `court of competent jurisdiction’ has the meaning assigned by section 3127, and includes any Federal court within that definition, without geographic limitation.’.
(b) CONFORMING AMENDMENT- Section 2703(d) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by striking `described in section 3127(2)(A)’.”
That is it. That’s all there is. Nothing about non-disclosure. I personally like to read things for myself rather than rely on other people’s interpretation of things. It’s one of the reasons I have a hard time with church. The Patriot act is not that hard to understand it is just incredibly boring. Like watching female boxing.
on December 18th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
I found the section you were talking about. It is in section 501.
If you read that section more closely, you would see that the disclosure constraints applies to those people who produced the “tangible items” to the government. Ask yourself this, why would you exact a warrant for something that could be helpful in a case against someone only to allow the person who provided it to warn the person under investigation? It seems only logical to me. In fact I am surprised this was not already a part of Title 18 of the US Code. Again this really is much ado about nothing. Kilo vs New London is much more alarming to me than this.
on December 18th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
BTW here is paragraph b of section 501:
`(b) Each application under this section–
`(1) shall be made to–
`(A) a judge of the court established by section 103(a); or
`(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and
`(2) shall specify that the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.
“Application” here refers to the application for a warrant. IANAL but this seems pretty fair and constrictive. I do not see where this violates anyone’s rights and I am still not all that interested in such an esoteric circumstance.
on December 18th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
Regarding, “At the risk of being obtuse, why would you notify someone that you are tapping a phone.”…
You wouldn’t… Until you were done. Before the Patriot Act, if a warrant was obtained to tap your phone–and no charges were pressed–you would be notified of the warrant after it expired (90 days?). Basically, it prevents the government from just spying on whoever they please without the public knowing about it.
As for section 220, you’re right! I meant to say 215, but when I was looking at my other open window it was at section 220. A Freudian slip. Of course, since I quoted the text in question you could have just done a simple search on the page to see what I was talking about.
Another section you should look at: 206 (double-checked: yes, 206). Since you’ve associated with me, the Patriot Act grants the government to tap your phone/Internet connection and record your communications indefinitely (well, until Dec 31st since it wasn’t renewed). It is called “roving wiretaps” and it is absurdly ambiguous. BTW: They keep this recorded information forever… Regardless of the 2005 deadline.
-Riskable
“I have a license to kill -9″
on December 19th, 2005 at 12:16 am
“Ask yourself this, why would you exact a warrant for something that could be helpful in a case against someone only to allow the person who provided it to warn the person under investigation?
Answer: It bars you from speaking about it, forever.
So say you work at a bank and one day an FBI officer walks up to you with a warrant to search a safety deposit box owned by John Doe. You do as you’re told and notice that Mr. FBI has just walked off with a large amount of cash out of the box. You find this odd, so you want to inform the police that perhaps you’ve been had… But wait! The warrant said that you are never to speak of the warrant to anyone, ever or face possible treason charges.
Now John Doe comes in to pick up the items in his safety deposit box and notices there’s things missing… “My things have been stolen!” John says. Do you tell him the truth? Do you tell you boss? Who can you talk to about this? A lawyer? Nope! No one… Or face charges. It is a matter of national security, after all.
So after being fired for refusing to disclose what the hell happened to Mr. Doe’s box… Possibly facing felony charges for theft (after all, YOU let a stranger in–it is there on the video). You are screwed either way. So is Mr. Doe who has yet to be accused of a crime. He may never be accused–and his money never returned.
There’s no way for us to know if things like this are happening. Our government was setup with checks & balances to prevent things like this from happening. The National Security Letters don’t even get read by Congress! You could argue that right now, our government is full of saints who would do no wrong… But what about tomorrow? What about 10 years from now? What sort of tyranny is going on right now, behind our backs? We may never know.
The basic rights being violated here are the rights to due process, the rights of the accused, and the right of all citizens to secure the blessings of liberty.
on December 19th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
This Bank situation you presented is absurd for several reasons. 1) John Doe would have to produce his key to open the safety deposit box (it takes 2 you know). 2) Overriding security policies would be the responsibility of the Branch Manager not a regular bank associate. 3) The Bank as Corporation would be the issuee of a warrant not the Branch Manager. That means that any communication required within the institution to act on the warrant, would be permitted by it. This includes interbranch notification and notification to the legal department. 4) I may be wrong about this but aren’t Financial Institutions required to catalog any assets turned over to the government under a seizure? If that is true then there would have to be a process for soliciting “tangible Items” from a financial institution.
> He may never be accused–and his money never returned.
You may not be aware of this, but under current drug laws, this is already legal. The amounts vary from state to state but basic forfeiture laws around the country allow government to confiscate any cash if found during a legal search that constitutes a “suspicious ammount”. In Georgia for example, if you are found with 10k or more on your person in cash, it can be confiscated without a charge ever being filed.
It sounds to me like your problem here is with Government power. I personally believe that the current patriot act is the natural byproduct of the drug laws of the 80s. AntiDrug laws are constantly referenced as the basis for some of the provisions of the patriot act. The same people who thought they would get a drug free society in exchange for growing the power of the federal government, now cry foul over the patriot act. Those people have only themselves to blame. I raised my eyebrows when I read the patriot act but when compared to other things going on, it is small potatoes. I don’t trust anyone who thinks that the patriot is greater assault on liberty than Kilo vs New London.