The Constitution was created in order to protect natural rights that exist outside of any government, and does not grant or establish any rights themselves, but merely imparts negative rights and limitations on the government.
You may think that an obvious statement, but I've been increasingly concerned at the education of the populace about the subject.
Also, the difference between positive and negative rights is an important one not enough are aware of.
This is what makes America, despite its flaws, what Christopher Hitchens called "the last revolution to stand a chance", and to this day is the basis for what I consider true American exceptionalism that distinguishes us from other countries such as the UK.
I'd go further than that; I'd say that the difference is strongly downplayed in political and educational contexts because so much Government overreach is predicated upon people not knowing, or not caring, about the difference.
Also, even people who /do/ understand, often don't care. Because if they did, they'd have to concede that many Federal programmes in the US are unconstitutional, that is, they involve powers not explicitly delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution.
And folks want their FCC, FDA and Obamacare, so they let it slide ...
Instead, be proud about keeping American ideals alive :)
Only UK can spy on Brits, on US can spy on Americans etc.
This is probably the single most misunderstood point in the whole surveillance debate.
The point was that the US was NOT allowed to spy on its own citizens, (UK too) and they got around that by spying on each other and sharing information. That was revealed in the months after the the initial Snowden leaks.
The UK changed the law (Investigatory Powers Act) to allow itself to spy on and hack its own citizens.
Countries are completely allowed to spy on their own citizens (in accordance with their own laws). They are also allowed to spy on foreigners (in accordance with their own laws, which typical have few protections for foreigners).
5-EYES is an agreement between certain countries to NOT spy on people from those other countries, and instead agree to freely exchange intelligence, and respond to each others requests etc.
For example, if a suspected terrorist on a GCHQ operation turns out to be American (or Australian etc), GCHQ are NOT allowed to intercept their phone. It must be done by the NSA who have to get a warrant in accordance with the US Constitution and US laws etc.
Without going into detail, I know this from experience.
Clapper was questioned by congress about whether data on a Americans was swept up in the dragnet, and Clapper (lying) said no, not wittingly.
Likewise, GCHQ were found to be acting illegally, hence the IPA that enshrined what they were already doing into law.
> 5-EYES is an agreement between certain countries to NOT spy on people from those other countries
If this is the case, then based on those leaks, it looks like both the US and UK broke this agreement. None of this makes any sense based on what you just told me.
5-EYES countries agree to not "target" each others citizens, i.e. to actually hack their devices or listen to their phones.
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GCHQ's bulk collection of metadata was ruled legal but they had failed to provide some information to the surveillance watchdog, which is why the watchdog retrospectively ruled a period of it's operation (7 years) unlawful.
It did not become lawful after IPA, it was always allowed (rightly or wrongly), they just failed to provide sufficient information about the programme to the watchdog. IPA didn't pass until 2016, well after the programme had been ruled lawful under existing laws.
P: Clapper lied.
Q: RIPA was signed into law to make GCHQ collection legal.
P -> Q: ???
That reminds me that there are still people who deny the holocaust or the fact that the Earth is not flat.
I want to hear more about your interesting take on reality.
The declassified portion of the UK USA agreement [1] doesn't actually mention spying on other members' citizens, as the purpose of the agreement was to establish the scope of shared information during the Cold War.
The prohibitions on collection were made during subsequent agreements and aren't declassified. Some countries have additional restrictions, such as prohibiting other members from collecting metadata; all prohibit collection of actual message content.
Of course, a country could defy the agreement and existing treaties, and collect. I haven't seen any evidence of this in the Snowden leaks though.
1. https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/uku...
I think first you might be misunderstanding positive and negative rights. Positive rights are rights that are asserted onto others. Negative rights are rights an individual has that others may not violate. The principles of the enlightenment and individualist freedom and liberty require negative rights as part of natural law, such as what John Locke called the first right, the right to self defense.
So, the importance of a system of government that primarily Madison, but others as well, took a great deal of time to research by combing through the history of government so as to "form a more perfect union." is that they realized that assertion of positive rights is often in opposition to negative rights, and that for a truly free and open society it would need to be based on negative rights. Of course implementation was not and is not perfect, but they were trying to design a system that would get better over time by encouraging freedom and liberty.
In essence, America is the only country truly founded on the principles of the enlightenment and individual liberty and natural rights. This is why the British fought so hard to continually undermine us even after the revolution. Liberty is a threat to monarchy, tyranny, despotism and oligarchism around the world because it inspires people and solves problems.
I'm guessing the German constitution was designed by the Allies post-WW2 primarily as a way to control the country via complex bureaucratic layers that ignore these principles. Once someone asserts positives rights over anothers negative rights it becomes so completely subjective that it is an easily corrupted process, at least in theory thats how I would see it play out, but I don't know much about German law (even though I have visited). So, you tell me, how corrupted is the German constitution and/or law?
The trick in America is lawyers figured out ways to whittle things down via bad precedent, and due to corruption of all three branches, the media and education system has been training the populace to forget the fact that the government can not and does not grant any rights. Rights must exist outside of government, and the government is formed to protect those rights and for very little purpose other than that. That is why America is floundering currently. By sacrificing it's principles for a super-hardcore realpolitik it has undermined it's own bedrock foundation.
The last president that tried to stand up to this though never left Dallas.
Indeed, my first interpretation was that negative rights meant the same as limitations, but after doing some reading later on (after having already replied), I noticed that they weren't the same thing at all.
The German constitution starts with a set of basic human rights - most if not all are negative rights. And only afterwards does it regulate the structure of the state and other aspects which sometimes overlap with these basic rights (like the death penalty would probably be in conflict with article 1 of the constitution anyway - but I guess better be explicit about it). Also included is a law that prohibits changing these basic rights - even if you had complete control of the legaslative branch you wouldn't be able to for example abolish freedom of opinion (or any of the other basic rights). Resistence against anyone that seeks to destroy the democratic order is also codified (although seemingly it is unclear at what point in time one can start to intervene; armed resistence is believed to be covered when appropriate though).
> In essence, America is the only country truly founded on the principles of the enlightenment and individual liberty and natural rights.
Not to be too negative here, but that sounds like pure propaganda to me.
> I'm guessing the German constitution was designed by the Allies post-WW2 primarily as a way to control the country via complex bureaucratic layers that ignore these principles.
It wasn't designed by the allies (although they did have a huge influence on it and had to agree to it), but by a German comittee that was tasked with designing a new constitution that should prevent a rise of another authoritarian regime. While it might have been possible to do so without involving the principles of enlightenment, individual liberty and natural rights, they are the corner stones of constitution I would say. And if one looks closely one can see that parts are heavily inspired by the US system (like strong federalism). In my opinion (as a German, so certainly to be taken with a large grain of salt) the German constitution as we have it now, is better suited to protect liberties than the US one (since it is essentially one with training wheels after the previous one didn't work out so well because the population wasn't quite on board with this democracy thing yet).
> Once someone asserts positives rights over anothers negative rights it becomes so completely subjective that it is an easily corrupted process, at least in theory thats how I would see it play out, but I don't know much about German law (even though I have visited). So, you tell me, how corrupted is the German constitution and/or law?
The basic rights of the constitution are deemed more important than any other law and in fact form the foundation for the whole legal system. And to ensure laws cannot conflict with the constitution (for long anyway) we have the constitutional court (like the supreme court in the US), which can kill any law it deems unconsitutional (lower courts can dismiss cases too if it is obvious, but those descisions are non-binding for other courts).
As for normal law - our constitutional court is doing a pretty good job of killing laws that violate the constitution (including the law regulating how federal elections are performed which benefited the currently governing party slightly - nowhere near as bad as in the US though). Compared to what I hear about the US I would say we are still doing quite well over here. However we also have a different legal system in general to the one in the US - legal precedent is not binding in our system for example.
> Rights must exist outside of government, and the government is formed to protect those rights and for very little purpose other than that.
I fully agree with the first part and would like to point out that mentioning those natural rights before the state in the constitution does send a pretty strong signal what's of larger importance. Mentioning the state first and then only later having the natural rights (like the constitution of the Weimar republic does) makes them, at least to me, seem like an afterthought..
But are they, really?