[From article]
An award-winning investigative journalist at The Washington Post, Carol Leonnig, broke the story about what can be described as a Secret Service “plot” to leak confidential documents in an attempt to embarrass Congressman Jason Chaffetz, an outspoken critic of the Service. Over a dozen officials at the Secret Service knew about the plot but failed to report this illegal activity.
Instead of focusing on the unlawful leak intended to humiliate Chaffetz, government officials issued judge-less warrants for the telephone records of the “good cop” who spoke with Leonnig when his colleagues failed to follow the law.
[. . .]
The Star Chamber authorized searches and seizures of books and papers to silence critics of the Crown and religious dissidents. Judge-less administrative subpoenas “are impossible to reconcile with the Fourth Amendment,” which was written as paramount law governing government to prohibit such abuses.
Privacy advocates have been very vocal criticizing the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata, which, while violating the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and individualized suspicion, has not been used to harass individuals, businesses, or nonprofit organizations – to my knowledge, at least.
[. . .]
[A] so-called Email Privacy Act being pushed by Google expressly acknowledges the proper Fourth Amendment process that only judges may issue warrants for federal officials to obtain private emails. The bill, however, would only protect Google and other email storage services, while actually encouraging federal and state bureaucrats to seize private emails directly from us or our businesses through judge-less administrative warrants.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/judgeless_warrants_for_phone_records_and_money_in_the_bank_for_lawyers.html
October 6, 2015
Judge-less warrants for phone records (and money in the bank for lawyers)
By Mark J. Fitzgibbons
No comments:
Post a Comment