OPINION:
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”
— Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961)
Late last week, a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealed that he had had enough of the FBI and Congress trashing the Constitution. The normally secretive court and the normally secretive judge explained in a rare public opinion the unlawful behavior of FBI agents spying on ordinary Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The FISA Court judge revealed that the FBI spied illegally on 278,000 Americans in 2022, including — all unnamed — a U.S. senator, a state senator and a state judge.
These revelations should have been shocking, but they were buried on the back pages of weekend newspapers and never made it to a national debate. The story was not even featured prominently on major websites.
The restraints imposed on the government in the Fourth Amendment have been so routinely and consistently disregarded that the public has come to expect them, and their revelations no longer outrage the conscience.
Nevertheless, every encroachment upon personal freedom — here, the natural human right to be left alone — when unchecked, forms a small precedent, and becomes another step on the stairway to totalitarianism. It makes the next encroachment easier for the zealots in the government to accomplish and to justify.
If Americans believe that the Bill of Rights means what it says, then all rational persons — except the zealots in the deep state and the quislings in Congress — should be demanding that the Congress and the FBI conform to and abide by the restraints imposed upon them by the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.
Here is the backstory.
The Fourth Amendment, which was written in the aftermath of British soldiers searching Colonial homes with general warrants — search where you please and seize what you wish — serves two values. The first is privacy, and the second is restraint upon the government.
Privacy is a natural human right. A right is an indefeasible claim against the whole world.
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/26/fbi-illegally-accessed-americans-communications-27/