The United States Government Should Substantially Curtail Its Domestic Surveillance

I will be styling this round as if it were a real debate speech. If you would like to see my evidence, tell me in the comments and I will provide evidence for each argument stated. Contention 1: Inherency First, the court will ask if the persons whose home or property were being searched expected a degree of privacy. The court will ask if that expectation of privacy was reasonable. If the police have to enter onto your property in order to get a look at the evidence or other property that they wish to use in court, they generally have to have a search warrant to do so. Law enforcement officers are allowed to take photographs from the air above your home, or can eavesdrop on your conversations in order to get enough information to get a warrant. Police officers or other law enforcement agencies must apply for a search warrant before conducting a search of the person or premise in issue. If the search warrant allows the police to search the bathroom of a home for illegal drugs, then the police should confine their search to the bathroom. However, police can search beyond the scope of the search warrant in order to insure their safety. If the police show up at your door and ask you if they come inside to search for drugs and you consent to the search, then the police do not need a warrant. In general, the police are allowed to search and frisk you if they have a reasonable suspicion that you are armed during a traffic stop. This is not an illegal search and seizure. To sum up my inherency argument, it is saying that there are little gaps in the current "system" for search warrants, and police are taking advantage of those little gaps. Contention 2: Significance & Harms The battle over surveillance has less to do with invasions of privacy and more with the sense that government decided it can do whatever it wants with impunity. If the "metadata mining" reveals a pattern of curiosity, then it is a simple matter to reach into the grab bag and pull out everything any particular individual has said for a long period of time. The FISA Court approved "programatic" surveillance by interpreting relevant to mean all. What makes the NSA dustup disturbing is the feeling within government that government can act with impunity. Judges chose consciously to turn a bling eye when their colleagues were insisting on scrutiny of actual government practices. The "head in the sand" attitude of the Judiciary is a dismal record that does not fit judicial independence. Undue difference has undermined the independent role of the judiciary. No judge wants to feel responsible for the deaths of innocents. But direct responsibility for death lies with those who contribute to the act. The judge has an ethical responsibility for abuses by government of which the judiciary is apart. Pleas for Executive carte blanche power are exactly what judicial independence was developed to avoid, and what many statements in various declarations of human rights are all about. The way if unreviewed Executive discretion is the way of tyranny. Globalization has resulted in a net gain in power for executives. Such an imbalance poses a growing threat for protection of individual rights by domestic courts. Judicial globalization providers a parallel approach to restore the balance. Judicial separation of power justifies borrowing on non-democratic transnational judicial dialogue with reference to international law. It gives national judiciary a unique expertise on once aspect of foreign affairs, and so is a further exception to the usual presumption that the judiciary is the least qualified branch. From a democratic point of view, restoring the balance is a predicate for any well-ordered form of democratic self-government. Democratically free people do not make war. Bonds and shared value sew them together. Liberal values dispose them toward peaceful negotiation. As we promote freedom we will decrease world's wars. We have already seen decrease in world violence with increase in democracies. Contention 3: Solvency The Freedom Act, will make modest changes to the Patriot Act. We still have a major problem in the US of massive NSA snooping, and that's really left unresolved. Nuclear weapons continue to proliferate. Life appears endangered. Countries that govern themselves do not go to war with one another, do not build WMD's, or sponsor terrorism. Democratic countries form trading partnerships and are more environmentally responsible. I have an advantage but I will sum it up. My INDIA ADVANTAGE is basically saying that we are influencing them. So if we increase our surveillance then India will see that and they will do the same. This will make Pakistan mad and will start a war with India. This war will contain nuclear weapons. When other countries see this war happening they will jump in and potentially another world war will nuclear weapons. With that I am now open for my opponents arguments, and or questions.