Tell Congress: Defeat the HPSCI Surveillance Bill | Hacker News Reader

Tell Congress: Defeat the HPSCI Surveillance Bill

act.eff.org

30 pointsdanboarder6 comments

From the article: "Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance inside the United States by vacuuming up digital communications so long as the surveillance is directed at foreigners currently located outside the United States. It also prohibits intentionally targeting Americans. Nevertheless, the NSA routinely (“incidentally”) acquires innocent Americans' communications without a probable cause warrant. Once collected, the FBI can search through this massive database of information by “querying” the communications of specific individuals."

How can this law exist alongside the Bill of Rights 4th Amendment?

4th Amendment: The 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United...

As a gun enjoyer, I'm here to tell you that they don't care about the Constitution / Bill of Rights at all. When we started letting the state make little cuts to some of our rights whether in the name of safety or what have you, it weakened the protection for all of them.

If they can infringe the single most strongly worded amendment, they can infringe any of them.

I can't help but feel that framing your support for the parent's fourth amendment comment "as a gun enjoyer" effectively poisons the well in attempting to lend fourth amendment cover to whatever second amendment humbug one may wish to smuggle into the conversation (e.g. stockpiling weapons as a "privacy" issue).

I'm sorry you feel that way. I support all human rights, such as privacy, freedom of expression, and stockpiling of weapons. Many of them are enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but they are not contingent upon it since it does not confer them.

The purpose of my post was to educate the reader that for over a century the US has been infringing the Peoples' right to keep and bear arms along with their other rights, and that the people who make up the government could not care one lick about the BoR since many voters will happily support infringement of rights they care less about (such as gun rights, privacy, and so on) insofar as it is supported by claims of safety or national security or protecting children or what have you and most especially if it is claimed to only hurt those the voter does not identify with (gun owners, privacy advocates, people who vote for a party different than yours). Each time this happens, it weakens the BoR as a whole.

All human rights are equally important, and any attack on one of them is an attack on them all. When we let the state divide and conquer our rights (and us!), we lose.

Yees, all the shootings by people who clearly should never have had guns due to mental health issues are clear proof that the US is infringing our second amendment rights.

"You can prevent the biggest encroachment on your privacy rights since the Patriot Act in two minutes max." - Edward Snowden

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