July 7, 2016
Next Stop on the Totalitarian Train: Dispense with “Evidence” Altogether
Becky Akers
That loud slam you heard yesterday was yet another door closing on our liberty.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland, OR, heard arguments Wednesday in a case truly worthy of a banana republic: may the Feds imprison us via our own words that they “collected” without a warrant or, pre-Snowden, without our even suspecting that they’re eavesdropping on us? I.e., may Our Rulers completely eviscerate the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments in their zeal to toss us in the pokey?
As always, Leviathan’s excuse is that it seeks to prevent big, bad “terrorism.” And so the FBIyes, the same FBI that can’t seem to find a single instance of wrongdoing in the life of a serial criminalgoes about fomenting terrorist plots. Don’t ask me how ginning up terrorism diminishes national insecurity: I’m just a serf, not one of Our all-wise Rulers.
One of those plots suckered 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud into trying to “ bomb a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore.” Mohamed is “ a U.S. citizen originally from Somalia … He is serving a 30-year sentence for the crime.” I’m not sure what “crime” Mohamed committed since the alleged plot never existed any more than the alleged bomb did. The kangaroo court that originally heard this made-up indictment from a bunch of wannabe thespians and actual liars at the FBI should have dispensed poetic justice and told Mohamed to pretend he’s in prison.
But we no longer have justice of any kind, let alone poetic, so Mohamed rots in jail. From there he’s appealing his conviction: not only was he the FBI’s patsy, but the government’s testimony against him violates basic Constitutional strictures. Some of the “evidence” came from communications the NSA collected under an anti-constitutional statute known as “Section 702.” In direct violation of the Fourth Amendment, which requires the Feds to obtain a warrant before any search of any “ persons, houses, papers, and effects,” regardless of whether the victim is a citizen of the United States, Sec. 702 authorizes the NSA to eavesdrop on and “collect” electronic communications from foreigners. Can you imagine a bigger aggression against the rest of the planet? Nations have gone to war for less.
Ah, but what the Feds sow overseas we reap here. Many of those hapless foreigners correspond with Americans, which means our emails, phone calls, etc., join theirs in the NSA’s warehouse. Nor do our files rest in peace there: rather, the government avails itself of them, including bureaus such as the FBI that exist specifically to incarcerate Americans.
And so yesterday, with a perfectly straight face, Ms. Kelly Zusman of the U.S. Injustice Department argued that “ the information they glean on Americans … already exists in the NSA databases. ‘The query is not a search,’ Zusman said. ‘It’s simply a means by which we access the information we have already lawfully acquired.’” That’s reasoning so circular I bet Kelly popped a few anti-vertigo pills before babbling it.
Nor had she finished her apology for totalitarianism. She also asserted “ that because the NSA legally collects the information, other agencies are free to use it. ‘Once we have legitimately acquired the information, there’s nothing to prevent us from then, for example, looking at every single item,’ she said.” Including yours and mine.
Indeed, that is precisely what the FBI did to Mohamed, our fellow citizen. Equally horrific, the Feds didn’t even “[acknowledge] having used information from the spy program to prosecute him … until his trial was over.” I’m no lawyer, thank God, but I’d say that pretty much pulverizes the rules of evidence.
Most people, even lovers of liberty, seem curiously apathetic about the NSA. Despite the agency’s extreme threat to freedom–the worst ever, in my opinion–, articles on it generate few readers’ comments; they’re seldom “shared” on social media; the outrage the IRS or TSA naturally inspire goes missing when the NSA is the topic. But Mohamed’s plight should alarm, infuriate, and rouse all of us to rebellionespecially when the court decides against him (as I’m certain it will). The NSA and the FBI have jointly toppled one of our last remaining bulwarks against utter, dissidents-incarcerated, everyone-else-living-in-dire-fear-and-poverty, Soviet-Union,-Nazi-Germany-revisited despotism.
At what point do we mount the barricades? The TSA beats a woman bloody at the airport, and the FBI gins up “terror plots” while the NSA hands it evidence gathered without a warrant to rob a guy of 30 years of his life. “ But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”
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