A.C.L.U. Files Suit Over Phone Surveillance Program
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In the 1970's and 1980's, the courts were extremely active in policing the government. It was by all measures a much scarier time. Obama has a few drone strikes--Reagan was funding revolutions in other countries. It was the height of the cold war and the threat of nuclear holocaust, and the palpable fear about communism paled anything we see today over terrorism. Even in the early 2000's, in the throes of the aftermath of 9/11, the Supreme Court forced the Bush administration to dramatically adjust its policy on giving legal representation to inmates at Guantanamo.
Since then what has happened is a process of delegitimization of the judiciary. And both sides of the aisle have been to blame for this: from the right's talk of activist judges to Obama's physically menacing over the Justices during his state of the union. The judiciary has been at fault too: having overextended itself in the culture wars of the 1960's and 1970's, it very self-conciously adopted a mantra of extreme judicial restraint.
What you have left today is a judiciary that might no longer be able to effectively police the government. I've made it clear elsewhere that I don't think the current surveillance program is illegal, but it might not matter one way or the other. The judiciary's role in our system of checks and balances is ultimately rooted in faith in the legitimacy of the institution, and that faith has been dramatically eroded over the last two decades.
In hindsight Bush. vs. Gore did a lot to erode this faith, and the ruling was probably a mistake.
Although, to it's credit, the court did not overturn Obamacare, probably because deciding such a partian battle would have further eroded this faith.
A few drone strikes? We've built drone bases around the globe and are murdering thousands of innocent civilians with those strikes.
Fund revolutions in other countries? We're doing that in Syria right now. We actively participated in the revolution in Libya.
The scale of proxy wars engaged in then versus today can scarcely be compared its so different.
Certainly American intelligence operatives have murdered their countrymen quietly over the decades. A big difference to me (at least) is that these assassinations are completely out in the open, publicly announced and such.
But what do I know, this rationalizing logic (and to be fair it is not yours, it is the USG) is disgusting. But it works in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and worked so well in Iraq, yeah?
No, it did not. Strategy bad, implementation bad, and results bad. What a surprise.
This distinction is not irrelevant. In our system of government, courts decide "can" while the political process decides "should." But we have a tendency of equating the two, and responding to every instance of "shouldn't" with "you can't do that!" "Can" Obama pursue terrorist suspects into Yemen with force? Yes! Should he? Who knows.
If we can learn anything from networking jokes, no amount of guns will make UDP TCP, just like forcing Yemenis to accept legitimacy based on your definition of the need for stateful intervention to prevent stateless chaos and terrorism (the biggest fad word of the decade) and will not work (I would not be surprised, knowing my history of ancient Greece, if the terrain and disconnected government are not so uncommon, see Afghanistan also).
I agree on the should-can dichotomy. The problem is that I was under the impression the should was important in the betterment of society than the can, and that has recently changed. But maybe because I was raised by lawyers, I was taught the should was more important the can, hence the idea of constitutional powers. I am under the impression that is the outrage with PRISM/FISA/general government malfeasance these days: like a cop who badgers someone he pulls over and does not follow his legal obligations, the USG in Yemen, in signals intelligence, in everything to be honest, does what it can and worries about the should later, and will find any excuse in the should category that is exceptional to justify a "can" they knew to be a "cannot." It is disgusting.
It is ok: my time abroad taught me all governments are shams, and we best tolerate them just to make them pleased with themselves. The USG is like all other bullies, and any government bully must be convinced in its total allegiance of the flock or it must (can) flex its muscle even though it knows it should not. Unfortunately when the bully beats too many people, they gang up and trounce on him.
Sorry, end rant. Not meant to be directed at you. Your last point is really good, but it defines exactly what makes me want to be Scandinavian. I do not want to support my government even tacitly anymore.
Wrong.
1) Section 412 of the USA PATRIOT act permits indefinite detention of immigrants; see Jose Padilla, an American citizen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Padilla_(prisoner)#Habeas...
2) Sections 1021 and 1022 of NDAA FY2012 (which Obama is defending right now in Obama v. Hedges): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDAA_2012#Controversy_over_ind...
You're OK with indefinitely detaining American citizens until the government slaps some charges on & convicts? Spooky.
Read the history of the Padilla case: http://www.nyclu.org/case/padilla-v-bushhamdi-v-rumsfeld-cha....
See also: http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/what-supreme-cou....
There was a legal wrangling over the scope of the President's detention powers, and Padilla's appeal to the Supreme Court was rendered moot by the government deciding to charge him. No U.S. citizen has been indefinitely detained since.
That's not the only way to view the situation, though. That's the "software" view of the world. I take a "hardware" view of the world. That data is sitting on Google's property. Its servers, its hard drives. You've given up posession of that data. Under that view, rummaging through that data is neither unconstitutional nor against the spirit thereof.
more generally, the constitution just has nothing to say about the larger issue of "tracking." The founders wrote the 4th with a specific grievance in mind: British searches of houses with very broad warrants. They just didn't address the government collecting information you left out in the world to track you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
And there isn't even a geostrategic goal like turning Afghanistan against the USSR; it's just setting fire to formerly stable Muslim nations in the name of "democracy", just as Bush did.
Scenario 2: NSA wins, People lose, Lawyers wins
Now, who's the smartest?
#3 definition is probably the closest to common usage: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ambulance%20c...
ACLU lawyers make a fraction of what they could working for private law firms.
According to this article from 2007, a job at the ACLU will get you $59k starting wage vs. $160k working for private law firms. Note that these folks have the same college loans to payback. I think we owe them our respect and gratitude.
This isn't always the case: http://www.studentaid.ed.gov/sites/default/files/public-serv...
(At least employees of the ACLU foundation are eligible for loan forgiveness, and $59k is low enough that it would actually matter)
(There is a lot of electronic case filing now, but ..) For example, for the supreme court, you need 40 copies.
These poor bastards lose no matter what, because of how many times they have to empty the recycling bins.