‘US Constitution makes no exception for national security’

Warrantless monitoring of the internet traffic and phone calls of all Americans is a real problem and a blatant violation of the US Constitution, Ivan Eland, analyst and Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute policy group told RT.

Ivan Eland spoke with RT regarding the legal implications of the
recently uncovered vast and warrantless surveillance program
known as PRISM.

RT: Do you sleep more soundly at night as an American
citizen, knowing that all this data – your data – is being
captured and stored?

Ivan Eland: No I don’t. I think this is a real violation
of the US Constitution. Even the Democrats are saying this is
legal, it’s been checked out by Congress — but that doesn’t wash
when it violates the direct provisions of the US Constitution,
which states that any warrant cannot be a general warrant. In
other words, they can’t go mining for things, which is what they
are doing. And also, there has to be a probable cause that there
has been a crime committed — well, every citizen in America can’t
be suspected of being a criminal. Now, they say they’re not
listening into the conversations. But the Constitution does not
say anything about that, it just says if it is a search — and
this is a search, and it is clearly unconstitutional, even though
the Patriot Act, which has unconstitutional portions of it,
okay’s it. So I think it is a very bad thing, and there is
another program that actually does capture emails, the content of
emails, photos of people overseas — also captures Americans as
well.

RT: But why the fuss over this now? I mean as we heard
from our correspondent it’s been ongoing for the last seven
years, since 2006, why is this causing a rumpus now?

IE: Well, I don’t think they realized that this was so
widespread. There was some suspicion of it, and some senators had
been raising cryptic comments. But of course the problem is the
whole thing is classified, and we have to rely on these senators
and the bureaucracy itself, the National Security Agency, to tell
us everything is okay and it’s under wraps, but I’m telling you
if they’re taking, if they’re monitoring traffic of all Americans
that’s a real problem. It’s a blatant violation of the US
Constitution.

RT: Well, they say that one major terrorist plot has
been thwarted because of PRISM, surely that’s good enough to
carry it on, isn’t it?

IE: No, it’s not. And the US Constitution makes no
exception for national security, and terrorism specifically. By
the way, you’re chances if you’re an American of ever being
killed by a terrorist are about the same as getting killed by an
asteroid or lightning. Terrorism is a very rare event, the
government invests way too much effort in preventing terrorism.
And, therefore, I’m sorry but even if this is true — and
I’m skeptical that this [PRISM[ really led to the arrest and
foiling of a terrorist plot — but even if it did, it’s
unconstitutional and they have to amend the constitution to do
it.

This article originally appeared on: RT