Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The invasion of America

The invasion of America
Creeping intrusions against our privacy rights are an assault on the
Constitution.
By Andrew P. Napolitano
February 18, 2008
When President Nixon was in his pre-Watergate heyday, he ordered the FBI
and the CIA to electronically monitor the private behavior of his domestic
political adversaries. Shortly after Nixon resigned, investigators
discovered hundreds of reports of break-ins and secret electronic
surveillance. None of it was authorized by warrants, and thus all of it
was illegal. But it had been conducted pursuant to the president's orders.
Nixon's defense was, "When the president does it, that means that it is
not illegal." 
He made that infamous statement in a TV interview years after he left
office, but the attitude espoused was obviously one he embraced while in
the White House. He, like his present-day successor, rejected the truism
that the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the government
from conducting electronic surveillance of anyone without a search warrant
issued by a judge based on probable cause of a crime, restrains the
president.
In response to the abuses during the Nixon administration, Congress
enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in 1978. The
law provides that no electronic surveillance may occur by anyone in the
government at any time under any circumstances for any reason other than
in accordance with law, and no such surveillance may occur within the U.S.
of an American other than in accordance with the 4th Amendment. 
The 4th Amendment was written in response to the Colonial experience
whereby British soldiers wrote their own search warrants, thus literally
authorizing themselves to enter the private property of colonists. 
The amendment has been uniformly interpreted by the courts to require a
warrant by a judge; and judges can only issue search warrants after
government agents, under oath, have convinced the judges that it is more
likely than not that the things to be seized are evidence of crimes. This
standard of proof is called probable cause of crime. It is one of only two
instances in which the founders wrote a rule of criminal procedure into
the Constitution itself, surely so that no Congress, president or court
could tamper with it.
FISA also created the bizarre, constitutionally questionable procedure in
which federal agents could appear in front of a secret court and, instead
of presenting probable cause of a crime in order to obtain a search
warrant, would only need to present probable cause that the target of the
warrant was an agent of a foreign government. The foreign government could
be friendly or it could wish us ill, but no illegal or even anti-American
behavior need be shown. Subsequent amendments to this statute removed the
"agency" requirement and demanded only that the target be a person
physically present in the U.S. who was not born here and is not an
American citizen, whether working for a foreign government or not. 
The FISA statute itself significantly -- and, in my opinion,
unconstitutionally -- lowered the 4th Amendment bar from probable cause of
"crime"to probable cause of "status." However, in order to protect the 4th
Amendment rights of the targets of spying, the statute erected a so-called
wall between gathering evidence and using evidence. The government cannot
constitutionally prosecute someone unless it has evidence against him that
was obtained pursuant to probable cause of a crime, a standard not met by
a FISA warrant. 
Congress changed all that. The Patriot Act passed after 9/11 and its later
version not only destroyed the wall between investigation and
prosecution,they mandated that investigators who obtained evidence of
criminal activity pursuant to FISA warrants share that evidence with
prosecutors. They also instructed federal judges that the evidence thus
shared is admissible under the Constitution against a defendant in a
criminal case. Congress forgot that it cannot tell federal judges what
evidence is admissible because judges, not politicians, decide what a jury
hears.
Then the Bush administration and Congress went even further. The
administration wanted, and Congress has begrudgingly given it, the
authority to conduct electronic surveillance of foreigners and Americans
without even a FISA warrant -- without any warrant whatsoever. The
so-called Protect America Act of 2007, which expired at the end of last
week, gave the government carte blanche to spy on foreign persons outside
the U.S., even if Americans in the United States with whom they may be
communicating are spied on -- illegally -- in the process. Director of
National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell told the House Judiciary
Committee last year that hundreds of unsuspecting Americans' conversations
and e-mails are spied on annually as a consequence of the warrantless
surveillance of foreigners outside the United States. 
So where does all this leave us? Even though, since 1978, the government
has gotten more than 99% of its FISA applications approved, the
administration wants to do away with FISA altogether if at least one of
the people whose conversations or e-mails it wishes to monitor is not in
the U.S. and is not an American. 
Those who believe the Constitution means what it says should tremble at
every effort to weaken any of its protections. The Constitution protects
all "persons" and all "people" implicated by government behavior. So the
government should be required, as it was until FISA, to obtain a 4th
Amendment warrant to conduct surveillance of anyone, American or not, in
the U.S. or not. 
If we lower constitutional protections for foreigners and their American
correspondents, for whom will we lower them next?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a New Jersey Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1995,
is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His latest book is
"A Nation of Sheep."
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times 
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 is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel.
Ma tu fonti anche vagamente progressiste proprio mai, eh?


Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times , ma non dite al coglione mastroviti
che LAT non è di destra eh? se dovesse sveglià...

 che LAT non è di destra eh? se dovesse sveglià...
"Senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel"
Complimenti, sergio. Per la milionesima volta, riposti spazzatura di
ultradestra approfittando del fatto che gli ingenui potrebbero vederla
"ripulita" dal passaggio per un giornale indipendente o (supposto)
progressista.
Ma del resto, il riciclaggio della spazzatura di ultradestra sembra
proprio essere il tuo forte.

 ultradestra
difendere la privacy dei cittadini è di ultradestra? E da quando?
da quando Blair ha disseminato l'UK di telecamere di sorveglianza più
del caveau di una banca?

 Come mai ti preoccupi dei caveaux delle banche
no, mi preoccupo della privacy inesistente dei tuoi concittadini, caro
il mio "democratico"

 Nono, sento odor di 'spesa proletaria'.
no, quella è la vodka che trinchi...:D


ma lascialo stare, il coglionazzo eugenio mastroviti è solo uno del
manipolo di scagnozzetti al servizio del goebbelsuccio.
non vedi a cosa si attacca pur di non parlare dell'articolo?