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The Fourth Amendment 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." Pretty straightforward, right? It was, until something labeled the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" (FISA). Today, every electronic communication of every kind -- e-mail, telephone conversation, radio or TV communication, in any medium -- is routinely overheard, recorded, stored and available for use against any American citizen by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the IRS, the Social Security Administration and every information and intelligence gathering agency government-wide. Your cell phone isn't just a telephone any more: it's a GPS for government trackers; it stores your phone records and conversations; and the "your" telephone company routinely provides that Government whatever it asks about what we say, to whom, and when. So do our computers. The result? There is no longer any reasonable expectation of privacy, anywhere, anytime, for anyone.

One might ask, "How did this come to be?" In 1978, under President Jimmy Carter, Congress enacted something called the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" (FISA), whose nominal purpose was to enable the federal government to eavesdrop, wiretap, or otherwise capture the contents of communications and/or conversations involving people from other nations around the world whom our government believed might be plotting or conspiring to do America harm. Of course, some of those nefarious plotters might also be doing so in conjunction with Americans; therefore, it was necessary to "listen in" on everyone, lest our defenders in the intelligence community not be able to detect all they could. Which in turn meant that a mechanism needed to exist to honor the 4th Amendment - if only in form. Thus came about what is now known as the "FISA Court," whose two-fold purpose was to approve the "listening" while maintaining a cover for violating the 4th Amendment, and appearing to provide protection for American citizens against the very Government behavior things that Court was approving. (No, it doesn't make sense, but it's the way it is.) All this, of course, was long before cell phones, personal computers, laptops and even the internet.

Human nature being what it is, whatever Big Government can get away with, small government will follow. So now we have all kinds of electronic surveillance, 24/7, on everyone throughout the land, from the White House all the way to City Hall. For those readers familiar with George Orwell, "1984" is alive and well; and, yes, Big Brother is watching. And listening. And recording. And waiting -- to use whatever he has against anyone. It's no longer science-fiction; it's fact - and describes that part of the Intelligence community that has come to be labeled the "Deep State."

Again, human nature being what it is, and humans being the inherently curious political animals that we are, some in the intelligence community have turned their authorizations from guarding against our external threats, to attacking and destroying those they perceive as partisan political enemies - further violating the 4th Amendment, both in spirit and in fact.

All of this is not only in direct violation of the 4th Amendment, it's totally destructive to a free and open, self-governing society, i.e., our founding principles. If the Founders and Framers didn't want the Crown spying on us, why do we allow our government - at every level - to? For better security? Ben Franklin said it well: "Those who trade freedom for security deserve neither."

What can We, the People, do to turn this around? Obviously, trusting the Government to correct itself makes no sense at all - governments, by their very nature, acquire power; they neither share nor yield. But, we still have in place a (somewhat) representative governmental structure; why not make it truly representative? Yes, it means paying closer attention to what that government is actually doing. And it means paying even closer attention to how what it does affects us, both currently and down the road. And it means paying even more attention to knowing whether what those who claim to want to represent us will actually do that, or fall into more of the internecine partisanship that wins political victories but destroys the fabric of our Republic. It means, as Plato warned 2,500 years ago, that We, the People, must get involved and participate in this self-governance project; otherwise we'll simply continue transitioning to its opposite, i.e., tyranny. And we see tyranny blossoming everywhere, from schools to governments and everywhere in between, largely because We, the People, have assumed the best - and enabled the worst.

Remember, the Constitution neither guarantees nor enforces our rights and protections; it simply affirms them, and functions as a mechanism for us to exercise and protect them ourselves. Government, by its very nature, neither shares nor yields power; it takes it. That's why Thomas Jefferson's "In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution," is so important. Bud Nason lives in Littlestown, is a Conservative Thinker and an Adams County Voter. E-mail him at budnason@aol.com.

The rest is here:
Constitution and Fourth Amendment - Gettysburg Times