It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase,
that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States;
and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil,
it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.
Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them.
[The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly
within the enumerated powers
and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.
Thomas Jefferson
Sunday Talk Soup, NSA and the "We Have Nothing to Hide" Side
As I write this, I've been doing a slow burn listening to week-old podcasts of Fox News Sunday and ABC This Week. Other than Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), and George Will, there were few rational folks around on the data privacy issue.
There are some fundamental truths here: the whole concept of the Fourth Amendment was based on specific warrants, reasonable searches; the British had used general warrants to search the homes of innocent colonists. This is like the soldiers taking every piece of paper in your house and saying "Trust us; we won't look at this stuff unless there's a need down the road, and there are procedures in place that are under the scrutiny of British judges." . What it boils down to is they want access to your current data because it may be useful in the future when it may no longer be available (maybe you'll dispose of it), so we are going to get a copy of it now; there needs to be a compelling reason for this comprehensive data grab, not a theoretical explanation that the data might be useful one day; this is the logical equivalent of a general warrant. This is, by nature, unfettered search; if they had a legitimate need, they would comply with a specific warrant. It essentially argues that there is no such thing as private data: you have to trust the State, which has a monopoly on force, that it will police itself: the burden of probable cause has been shifted from the State, where informed consent and the individual's right to know are effectively ignored by the powers that be. The fact that Cummings, Mikulski and/or Cardin may or may not have voted or been briefed on the disposition of secretive government data collection or access of my personal data is irrelevant; our Constitutional rights cannot be compromised by or defined away by the legislature; it's one of the functions of an independent judiciary to discern majoritarian abuses of individual rights. Imagine, for instance, if the 111th Congress decided to ban the publication of conservative viewpoints.
This has nothing to do with my sensitivity of the contents of an email I wrote to my mother 5 years ago. The content could likely have been family news or debunking the latest urban legend email she forwarded. I had nothing to hide--but the government has no legitimate interest tracking my emails or relevant characteristics, i.e., metadata. It is spending money it doesn't have collecting data that have no relevance whatsoever to any security interests of the US. Even if some IT recruiter, unknown to me, had unrelated nefarious ties outside work hours, that still doesn't justify the government searching me or my other contacts.
The same thing holds true about insane screening procedures at TSA. I'm not prude: I've showered in shared showers in high school gym, college dorms, or fitness clubs, and I seriously doubt anyone wants to see an overweight middle-aged guy in the nude. But security lines rarely catch a legitimate risk, and over 99% of travelers undergo expensive time-consuming, humiliating treatment which would be considered an assault in other contexts--not for any legitimate purpose but because the god of uniform treatment is more powerful than a more discerning god. I don't feel safer because babies and grannies are being fondled.
Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek has a relevant essay on the sheep 'I've got nothing to hide, so I'm willing to throw your privacy rights under the bus' crowd: to him, it all boils down to whether government is an angel (it doesn't make mistakes, it acts objectively without reference to political context, it follows the rule of law (a commenter Greg White notes, "“Show me the man and I will find the crime.”--Lavrenti Beria (of Joseph Stalin’s KGB)), it doesn't arbitrarily change the rules, it will collect data in the right measure)) or government is a god (infallible judge of human behavior whom knows where to draw the line in monitoring righteous public/private behavior).
[It would be nice if one of the bloggers I favor like Boudreaux or Mark Perry would occasionally give my blog a plug, but apparently my own contributions or readership don't meet their standards. I'm not holding my breath.]
New Bad Elephant of the Year: Dick Cheney
Unlike progressives, I don't have Cheney Derangement Syndrome; like Obama, Cheney has an unflappable persona; however, to me Cheney comes across as more decisive and authoritative and exudes confidence. (I'm sorry, but regardless of our ideological differences, Obama comes across as more nuanced than principled. I'm sure he actually believes in what he's saying, but when a partisan leader tries to co-opt the term "balanced" without input from and/or opposition leadership by his side, I'm not buying it.)
This doesn't mean I don't have issues with Cheney, especially given my current perspective. Consider this compilation of Cheney quotes: the alleged quote to O'Neill that Reagan proved deficits don't matter. Then if you look at the first 3 quotes on Iraq, he made a very good case against going after Hussein in the first Gulf War, but he never gave a good explanation of explaining why the same reservations didn't apply to the second Gulf War. I particularly dislike the John King interview, a sort of domino theory applied to the so-called War on Terror; staying the course in Iraq from 2004 to 2006 did little more than chew up American casualties and was no virtue; I would have preferred that he discussed the surge as moving away from a strategy that wasn't working and a moral obligation to leave Iraq with a functioning government. The surge strategy with counter-terrorist tactics was announced only after Bush lost control of the Congress in the 2006 elections.
But Cheney's talking point that the Congress "signed off" on NSA spying on American citizens is not acceptable (only some members were briefed). It doesn't address the Fourth Amendment issues. It reinforced that Cheney doesn't mind big government when it comes to security issues.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall |
Simon and Garfunkel with James Taylor, "What A Wonderful World"
