{"id":40066,"date":"2013-06-08T01:07:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T00:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-constitution-makes-no-exception-for-national-security\/40066\/"},"modified":"2013-06-08T01:07:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T00:07:22","slug":"us-constitution-makes-no-exception-for-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-constitution-makes-no-exception-for-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018US Constitution makes no exception for national security\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Published time: June 07, 2013 23:58 <\/span>
\n \n <\/div>\n

\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\n Reuters \/ Jason Reed <\/p>\n

\n Download video<\/a> (21.71 MB)
Embed<\/a><\/p>\n
\n

Code<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\n Ivan Eland spoke with RT regarding the legal implications of the
\n recently uncovered vast and warrantless surveillance program
\n known as PRISM.\n<\/p>\n

\n RT:<\/b> Do you sleep more soundly at night as an American
\n citizen, knowing that all this data – your data – is being
\n captured and stored?<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\n Ivan Eland:<\/b> No I don\u2019t. I think this is a real violation
\n of the US Constitution. Even the Democrats are saying this is
\n legal, it\u2019s been checked out by Congress \u2014 but that doesn\u2019t wash
\n when it violates the direct provisions of the US Constitution,
\n which states that any warrant cannot be a general warrant. In
\n other words, they can\u2019t go mining for things, which is what they
\n are doing. And also, there has to be a probable cause that there
\n has been a crime committed \u2014 well, every citizen in America can\u2019t
\n be suspected of being a criminal. Now, they say they’re not
\n listening into the conversations. But the Constitution does not
\n say anything about that, it just says if it is a search \u2014 and
\n this is a search, and it is clearly unconstitutional, even though
\n the Patriot Act, which has unconstitutional portions of it,
\n okay\u2019s it. So I think it is a very bad thing, and there is
\n another program that actually does capture emails, the content of
\n emails, photos of people overseas \u2014 also captures Americans as
\n well.\n<\/p>\n

\n RT:<\/b> But why the fuss over this now? I mean as we heard
\n from our correspondent it\u2019s been ongoing for the last seven
\n years, since 2006, why is this causing a rumpus now?<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\n IE:<\/b> Well, I don\u2019t think they realized that this was so
\n widespread. There was some suspicion of it, and some senators had
\n been raising cryptic comments. But of course the problem is the
\n whole thing is classified, and we have to rely on these senators
\n and the bureaucracy itself, the National Security Agency, to tell
\n us everything is okay and it\u2019s under wraps, but I\u2019m telling you
\n if they\u2019re taking, if they\u2019re monitoring traffic of all Americans
\n that\u2019s a real problem. It\u2019s a blatant violation of the US
\n Constitution.\n<\/p>\n

\n RT:<\/b> Well, they say that one major terrorist plot has
\n been thwarted because of PRISM, surely that\u2019s good enough to
\n carry it on, isn\u2019t it?<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\n IE:<\/b> No, it\u2019s not. And the US Constitution makes no
\n exception for national security, and terrorism specifically. By
\n the way, you\u2019re chances if you\u2019re an American of ever being
\n killed by a terrorist are about the same as getting killed by an
\n asteroid or lightning. Terrorism is a very rare event, the
\n government invests way too much effort in preventing terrorism.
\n And, therefore, I\u2019m sorry but even if this is true \u2014 and
\n I\u2019m skeptical that this [PRISM[ really led to the arrest and
\n foiling of a terrorist plot \u2014 but even if it did, it\u2019s
\n unconstitutional and they have to amend the constitution to do
\n it.
\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Published time: June 07, 2013 23:58 Reuters \/ Jason Reed Download video (21.71 MB)Embed Code 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 […]<\/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-40066","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\/40066","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=40066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}