{"id":39928,"date":"2013-06-07T15:47:27","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T14:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/spying-on-americans-and-the-fourth-amendment-an-open-letter-to-dianne-feinstein-chair-of-the-senate-intelligence-committee\/39928\/"},"modified":"2013-06-07T15:47:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T14:47:27","slug":"spying-on-americans-and-the-fourth-amendment-an-open-letter-to-dianne-feinstein-chair-of-the-senate-intelligence-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/spying-on-americans-and-the-fourth-amendment-an-open-letter-to-dianne-feinstein-chair-of-the-senate-intelligence-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Spying on Americans and the Fourth Amendment. An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Senator Feinstein:<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Thursday, when you responded to news about massive ongoing surveillance of phone records of people in the United States, you slipped past the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you seem to be in the habit of treating the Bill of Rights as merely advisory.<\/p>\n

The Constitution doesn\u2019t get any better than this:\u00a0\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The greatness of the Fourth Amendment explains why so many Americans took it to heart in civics class, and why so many of us treasure it today. But along with other high-ranking members of Congress and the president of the United States, you have continued to chip away at this sacred bedrock of civil liberties.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0the night before your sudden\u00a0news conference<\/a>, the leaked secret court order \u201cshows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk \u2013 regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most chilling parts of that just-revealed\u00a0Surveillance Court order<\/a>\u00a0can be found at the bottom of the first page, where it says \u201cDeclassify on: 12 April 2038.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apparently you thought \u2013 or at least hoped \u2013 that we, the people of the United States, wouldn\u2019t find out for 25 years. And the fact that we learned about this extreme violation of our rights in 2013 instead of 2038 seems to bother you a lot.<\/p>\n

Rather than call for protection of the Fourth Amendment, you want authorities to catch and punish whoever leaked this secret order. You seem to fear that people can actually discover what their own government is doing to them with vast surveillance.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Executive Branch is being run by kindred spirits, as hostile to the First Amendment as to the Fourth. On Thursday night, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement saying the \u201cunauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That statement from Clapper is utter and complete hogwash. Whoever leaked the four-page Surveillance Court document to Glenn Greenwald at\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0deserves a medal and an honorary parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in the Nation\u2019s Capital. The only \u201cthreats\u201d assisted by disclosure of that document are the possibilities of meaningful public discourse and informed consent of the governed.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be candid about the most clear and present danger to our country\u2019s democratic values. The poisonous danger is spewing from arrogance of power in the highest places. The antidotes depend on transparency of sunlight that only whistleblowers, a free press and an engaged citizenry can bring.<\/p>\n

As Greenwald tweeted after your news conference: \u201cThe reason there are leakers is precisely because the govt is filled with people like Dianne Feinstein who do horrendous things in secret.\u201d And, he pointed out, \u201cThe real story isn\u2019t just the spying itself: it\u2019s that we have this massive, ubiquitous Surveillance State, operating in total secrecy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously, you like it that way, and so do most other members of the Senate and House. And so does the president. You\u2019re all playing abhorrent roles, maintaining a destructive siege of precious civil liberties. While building a surveillance state, you are patting citizens on the head and telling them not to worry.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you should have a conversation with Al Gore and ask about his statement: \u201cIs it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?\u201d Actually, many millions of Americans understand that the blanket surveillance is obscenely outrageous.<\/p>\n

As a constituent, I would like to offer an invitation. A short drive from your mansion overlooking San Francisco Bay, hundreds of us will be meeting June 11 at a\u00a0public forum<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cDisappearing Civil Liberties in the United States.\u201d (You\u2019d be welcome to my time on the panel.) One of the speakers, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, could explain to you how the assaults on civil liberties and the wars you keep supporting go hand in hand, undermining the Constitution and causing untold misery.<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein, your energetic contempt for the Bill of Rights is serving a bipartisan power structure that threatens to crush our democratic possibilities.<\/p>\n

A huge number of people in California and around the country will oppose your efforts for the surveillance state at every turn.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Norman Solomon<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Global Research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Senator Feinstein: On Thursday, when you responded to news about massive ongoing surveillance of phone records of people in the United States, you slipped past the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you seem to be in the habit of treating the Bill of Rights as merely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}