NSA Spying_Tyranny vs. Safety at the Cost of More Liberty

28 December 2013, A Vallejo Times-Herald NSA Spying article functionally reports the Federal Judiciary has turned the invasion of personal privacy into a 'he said-she said' discount by pitting one judge against another.  The US national invasion of privacy history just keeps marching onward toward tyranny. 

There is always a justification-our safety.  Perhaps Thomas Jefferson expressed the situation best:  "Giving Congress (the Federal Government) a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.  It would reduce the whole (Constitution) to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."  Then Daniel Webster also described the rationale best when he wrote "Good Intention will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They will promise to be good masters; but the mean to be Masters."

So it is with the 'most transparent' Administration of Barrack Obama!  The NSA leadership lies to Congress about obtaining Metadata while building a facility to house it, then recants the lie.  How often has this nation transgressed on its citizens.  Let's just see!

1798, the Alien and Sedition Act is used against citizens who speak out against Federal behavior.  1861, habeas corpus laws are suspended in Maryland by Government.  Fast forward- 1917:  The FBI, deeply engaged in World War I political surveillance concerning persons opposing draft and impending war, proceed against hundreds of people under 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 Sedition Act because they peacefully expressed opinion about war and  a draft.  Jump to November 1970:  FBI issued an urgent directive to recruit college campus informers on black student organizations because the agency had concluded that, “Black Student Unions (BSU) and similar groups…are targets for influence and control by the violence-prone Black Panther Party (BPP) and other extremists.” In fact, there was never an indication the Black Panther Party gained college campus influence.

1990's: President George W. Bush authorized warrantless wiretaps without Special FISA Act of 1978 Court approval, reviving inherent Nixon presidential power arguments. President Obama continues this practice with a nod to post-9/11 statute adopted by Congress, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), implicitly encompassing warrantless wiretapping where the president’s concern was the prevention of international terrorism yet relying on other agencies to carry out the work.

24 instances in 2006 of Social Security employees losing laptops from cars or homes, compromising personal Social Security data, occur.  May 2006, a laptop containing personal information of 26.5 million veterans and spouses stolen from an employee's apartment. June 2006, Internal Revenue Service loses a laptop containing 291 employees and job applicants information, including fingerprints, names, Social Security numbers and birth dates. July 2006, U.S. Department of Transportation laptop containing Social Security numbers and other personal information on some 133,000 Florida residents stolen from a special agent's car in Doral, Fla.  18 August 2008: NIH Loses a  computer containing unencrypted details of about 2,500 participants in clinical trials, stolen from researchers while off government property.  Technology's Toll on Privacy and Security Computers, databases and networks have connected us like never before, but at what cost?

The Government, employing hundreds of thousands of discrete skills, awards a sole source contract for the Affordable Care Website to a Canadian company of questionable capability.  Yet on 20 July 2010 South Shore Hospital in South Weymouth, Mass, only one of many hacked medical facilities over time, reported that computer files for 800,000 people with 14 years of personal, health and financial information of patients, vendors, employees lost by a professional data management company.  And the Affordable Care Enrollment Website has no security protocols mandated to protect the enrollees; HHS Secretary Ms. Sebelius, representing Government, is not concerned.

How long to we continue to elect and tolerate this repetitive act from a Government not concerned for privacy.  Quote Ben Franklin Almanac: " Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."