The Republican War on America: Warrantless Searches
Posted in Stand Up For Liberty by R Lee Wrights on October 21st, 2006 by George Phillies
“Return to the last week of September, 2006, and the Republican Bills to legalize torture, to end the right of habeas corpus, to imprison persons without trial, and to perform wiretapping without warrants. These Bills were Un-American to the core, and go to reveal the truth:
Above all, the Bush War on Terror is a war on your freedoms.”
Do you use the telephone or Internet? If you do, the Federal government is probably listening. Private telephone companies without being served with a warrant allowed their own employees and Federal agents to install signal splitters so that every telephone call that passed through major offices was divided, one signal being diverted to the Federal government. There is a pretense that the contents of messages were not read, only the addresses, but this claim is physically impossible. Each message passes in digital form down a single signal line, the address and speech codes marching along in unified packets. If you grab a packet you have the address and part of the voice communication all at once. Only after the intercept is complete can the phone number and voice contents be separated.
There was no need for these warrantless searches. Under the prevailing FISA statute, in an emergency the government could have made the wiretap first and asked for a judge’s permission later. The Federal Court in question was always ready for business.
It is entirely clear why the Bush Administration did not pursue this course of action. They were not interested in searching the records of a particular person. They wanted to do a general search, under the notion of a General Warrant that was effectively one of the justifications for Independence listed in the Declaration of Independence.
It is difficult to imagine a more thoroughly Un-American deed than bringing to the United States one of the chief tyrannical acts of that odious tyrant George III Hanover, King of England. But that is exactly what the Republicans did.
It becomes clear that while many employees of our national espionage and law enforcement agencies are loyal patriots who love their country, many others have committed gross acts of disloyalty to the Constitution they swore to defend. That’s an oath to the Constitution, not to the President. It is the task of a future Libertarian administration to ask Congress for a Corps of Special Prosecutors who will rid the Federal government of subversives. Those civil servants can be replaced, if they need replacing, with patriotic civil servants who love their country and will actually do their duty to defend the Constitution.
George Phillies is a contributing editor for Liberty For All. You can contact Dr. Phillies at phillies@wpi.edu.
Eric said,
October 21, 2006 @ 11:56 am
With the military comission act,War has been declared on Our freedoms,It’s scary,1st FDR made us the enemy of congress(march 1933 trading with the enemy act,national bank emergancy)(FDR was a another dictator),now Dubya is declaring war on us.And has given himself way more power than FDR ever had(by elimating the constitution,and habeas corpus).Well time withdraw from the system,be where freedom is appreciated.FDR=democrat Dubya=republician.enuff said