Barack Obama Asks Supreme Court To Allow Warrantless Cellphone Searches … The Hell with the 4th Amendment

Isn’t this special, Barack Obama asks the US Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches. So much for the US Constitution and the 4th Amendment under this imperial president. Jammie Wearing Fool asks,  remember when they said if we voted for Mitt Romney our freedom and liberties would be further eroded? It appears that they were correct in an convoluted Saul Alinsky kind of way.

From the WAPO:

If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.

In 2007, the police arrested a Massachusetts man who appeared to be selling crack cocaine from his car. The cops seized his cellphone and noticed that it was receiving calls from “My House.” They opened the phone to determine the number for “My House.” That led them to the man’s home, where the police found drugs, cash and guns.

The defendant was convicted, but on appeal he argued that accessing the information on his cellphone without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Earlier this year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the man’s argument, ruling that the police should have gotten a warrant before accessing any information on the man’s phone.

The Obama Administration disagrees. In a petition filed earlier this month asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, the government argues that the First Circuit’s ruling conflicts with the rulings of several other appeals courts, as well as with earlier Supreme Court cases. Those earlier cases have given the police broad discretion to search possessions on the person of an arrested suspect, including notebooks, calendars and pagers. The government contends that a cellphone is no different than any other object a suspect might be carrying.

As Weasel Zippers opines, He’s just lucky his name isn’t George W. Bush.

Audit Shows NSA Broke Privacy Rules 1000′s of Times Since 2008 … Bulk of Infractions Are “Unauthorized Surveillance of Americans”

NAH, the NSA is not spying on us. Only if you count the thousands of times that an audit showed they actually did …

The WAPO reports, an NSA audit dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. As The Hill states, the report is based on an internal audit and other documents leaked to the news organization by Edward Snowden. In other words, had Snowden not spill the beans, “We the People” would have had no knowledge of any of the NSA’s spying on Americans.

But its just a phony scandal.

VIDEO – CNN – CNN mocks Obama’s “Independent” group to review the NSA

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. [...]

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA’s compliance record. In June, after promising to explain the NSA’s record in “as transparent a way as we possibly can,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole described extensive safeguards and oversight that keep the agency in check. “Every now and then, there may be a mistake,” Cole said in congressional testimony.

The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Every now and then they make a mistake? 2776 TIMES!!!

But wait … Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers? He was wrong. Or was he purposely lying? Looks like Obama just got caught again with his hand in the “lying” cookie jar.

At a news conference Friday, President Obama insisted that the threat of NSA abuses was mostly theoretical:

If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.

What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court].

But as Weasel Zippers opines, this is just a phony scandal, even though the NSA actually did spy on Americans.

Senior Washington IRS Official Holly Paz Admits to Scrutinizing Tea Party Applications

IRS-GATE … Drip, drip, drip.

Holly Paz, an IRS senior supervisor in Washington, DC admitted to targeting Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. She stated she was personally involved in scrutinizing up to 30 Tea Party applications. Now according to reports, she is gone, but gone where? Fired, transferred, on administrative leave with pay? One thing is for certain, it’s no longer about rogue agents in the Cincinnati office, the IRS scandal that targeted conservative groups and Tea Party organizations now leads to Washington, DC.

From FOX News:

A Washington-based IRS supervisor acknowledged she was personally involved in reviewing Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status as far back as 2010, Fox News confirms — a detail that further challenges the agency’s initial claim that the practice of singling out those groups was limited to a handful of employees in Ohio.

Congressional sources confirmed to Fox News that Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Some requests languished for more than a year without action.

The account undercuts the narrative that senior officials only learned of the practice after it had already started in the Cincinnati office.

Details of Paz’s role were first reported by The Associated Press. Still, Paz provided no evidence that senior IRS officials ordered agents to target conservative groups or that anyone in the Obama administration outside the IRS was involved.

Instead, Paz described an agency in which IRS supervisors in Washington worked closely with agents in the field but didn’t fully understand what those agents were doing. Paz said agents in Cincinnati openly talked about handling “tea party” cases, but she thought the term was merely shorthand for all applications from groups that were politically active — conservative and liberal.

The Gateway Pundit provides an important little tidbit of information, Holly Paz was a Barack Obama donor.

Talk About Hipocrisy … In 2006 Joe Biden Said, Don’t Trust a Spying President or Vice President, What Say You Now Joe? According to Gallup, Majority of Americans Don’t Either

Americans appear to be very troubled by the government spying on them. Hmm, so was Joe Biden when he was in the US Senate.  In 2006, then Senator Joe Biden said you can’t trust a spying president.

“If I know every single phone call you made I’m able to determine every single person you talk to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. The real question here is what do they do with this information they collect that does not have anything to do with Al-Qaeda? And we’re going to trust the president and the vice president of the United States that they’re doing the right thing. Don’t count me in on that.“

But of course now that Biden is VP and Barack Obama is President, things are different. NOT! The NSA surveillance program as morphed into an all encompassing, out of control data grab on ever single American and in the process completely shredding the Contribution and Bill of Rights. For something that Biden said, “don’t count me in on that,” he appears to be all in now. What’s the difference? Oh, he is in power. Talk about your convenient flip-flops and the height of hypocrisy. Now that Biden is VP, he must feel it is completely OK to shred the US Constitution and spy on law abiding American people. Because the rules don’t apply the liberals. How does one morph their opinion that you can’t trust a spying president simply by whether they are a ”R” or “D”? Especially when the Obama administration has already been caught in the IRS scandal where conservative groups were targeted?

As Liberty Unyielding opines, “aren’t you glad we didn’t elect an idiot like Sarah Palin to be one heartbeat away from the president?”

It would appear We the People” are not for a spying president either. According to a recent Gallup poll, a majority of Americans disapprove of the NSA Government surveillance program. 53% of Americans disapprove of the “Big Brother” watching them and violating their right to privacy. Weasel Zippers provides a similar CBS poll where 58% disapprove of the Government surveillance program. The only group who approves, are Democrats. Funny, weren’t they the ones that were up in arms during the GWB presidency that their library books were being reviewed?

More Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the federal government agency program that as part of its efforts to investigate terrorism obtained records from U.S. telephone and Internet companies to “compile telephone call logs and Internet communications.”

There are significant partisan differences in views of the government’s program to obtain call logs and Internet communication. Democrats are more likely to approve, by 49% to 40%. Independents (34% vs. 56%) and Republicans (32% to 63%) are much more likely to disapprove than approve.

CNN asks, Was it OK for Snowden to leak secrets? The question is debatable as the jury is still out as to what his ultimate motive was.

ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging NSA’s Patriot Act Phone Surveillance Against We the People … Violates Americans’ Constitutional Rights of Free Speech, Association & Privacy

Once again we are witness to a government that has become just too big.

As reported at the New York Times, the ACLU has filed a aw suit against the federal government challenging the NSA’s phone surveillance against “We the People”. In an interesting twist, the left leaning ACLU has filed a law suit against the far-Left Obama administration over the collection of logs of domestic phone calls of all Americans where they were the target of an investigation or suspected of terrorism or not. The law suit names Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander, Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Charles Hagel and FBI Director Robert Mueller III as defendants. It is pretty bad when the ACLU is forced to sue the Obama administration over such an issue, or face a complete lack of credibility.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed last week by a former National Security Agency contractor — is illegal and asking a judge to stop it and order the records purged.

The lawsuit could set up an eventual Supreme Court test. It could also focus attention on this disclosure amid the larger heap of top secret surveillance matters revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who came forward Sunday to say he was their source.

I have personally disagreed with many actions in the past and inactions by the ACLU, who is supposed to defend all Americans civil liberties. However, I have to give them credit here. The ACLU filed a law suit charging that the program violates Americans’ constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy.  It is troubling that the US government thinks that it can just sweep up all data without any cause of legal search and seizure. It is even more eye opening that Barack Obama when he was Senator and candidate Obama ridiculed and vilified this program. When he became president, the program went on steroids.

In the wake of the past week’s revelations about the NSA’s unprecedented mass surveillance of phone calls, today the ACLU filed a lawsuit charging that the program violates Americans’ constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy.

This lawsuit comes a day after we submitted a motion to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) seeking the release of secret court opinions on the Patriot Act’s Section 215, which has been interpreted to authorize this warrantless and suspicionless collection of phone records. [...]

The ACLU’s complaint filed today explains that the dragnet surveillance the government is carrying out under Section 215 infringes upon the ACLU’s First Amendment rights, including the twin liberties of free expression and free association. The nature of the ACLU’s work—in areas like access to reproductive services, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants, national security, and more—means that many of the people who call the ACLU wish to keep their contact with the organization confidential. Yet if the government is collecting a vast trove of ACLU phone records—and it has reportedly been doing so for as long as seven years—many people may reasonably think twice before communicating with us.

Legal Insurrection reminds us that this was not the first law suit filed when it comes to the NSA data dragnet, Larry Klayman, former chairman of ‘Judicial Watch’ filed one as well.

On Sunday, a similar suit was filed by Larry Klayman, former chairman of Judicial Watch, against President Obama, Eric Holder, Keith Alexander, the NSA and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, among others.  The suit claims that the government’s phone surveillance activities “violates the U.S. Constitution and also federal laws, including, but not limited to, the outrageous breach of privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the due process rights of American citizens.”