Constitution

On Criminal NSA Overreach

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Some very disturbing new findings about the extent to which the  US government uses the vast power of its surveillance apparatus to tackle suspected domestic crime. Of course, up until this point we had been reassured that the draconian collection of telecommunications metadata and the full-on tapping of telephone calls and online communications was used only to help prosecute the “War On Terror”. This has now been revealed to be a total sham.

Rachel Maddow breaks down the extent of this surreptitious, lawless activity on her show:

 

And Reuters reports:

Reuters has uncovered previously unreported details about a separate program, run by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, that extends well beyond intelligence gathering. Its use, legal experts say, raises fundamental questions about whether the government is concealing information used to investigate and help build criminal cases against American citizens.

The DEA program is run by a secretive unit called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Here is how NSA efforts exposed by Snowden differ from the activities of the SOD:

Purpose of the programs

NSA: To use electronic surveillance to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation catch terrorists, the U.S. military fight wars, and the Central Intelligence Agency collect intelligence about foreign governments.

SOD: To help the DEA and other law enforcement agents launch criminal investigations of drug dealers, money launderers and other common criminals, including Americans. The unit also handles global narco-terrorism cases.

So to be perfectly clear – the United States government has explicitly decided to allow this vast spying program to be turned inwards to aid local law enforcement in their daily mundane activities. According to the (already flimsy) assurances that we were given when Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s secret programmes, the spying apparatus was to be used only to seek out and intercept communications between non-US citizens that represented a terrorism threat. But it turns out that this is not the case. If an intelligence analyst happens to eavesdrop on your telephone call and finds out that you want to (hypothetically) buy some pot from your friendly local drug dealer, that information might then be surreptitiously passed on to the DEA, who could then come and raid your home. Based on intelligence which they have no right to be privy to.

But worst of all is this bombshell:

Disclosure to the accused

NSA: Collection of domestic data by the NSA and FBI for espionage and terrorism cases is regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. If prosecutors intend to use FISA or other classified evidence in court, they issue a public notice, and a judge determines whether the defense is entitled to review the evidence. In a court filing last week, prosecutors said they will now notify defendants whenever the NSA phone-records database is used during an investigation.

SOD: A document reviewed by Reuters shows that federal drug agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to conceal the SOD’s involvement. Defense attorneys, former prosecutors and judges say the practice prevents defendants from even knowing about evidence that might be exculpatory. They say it circumvents court procedures for weighing whether sensitive, classified or FISA evidence must be disclosed to a defendant.

Local and federal law enforcement officers are actually being trained – instructed – to cover up the fact that the evidence they use to come and arrest you was unlawfully shared by the folks at the NSA. Apparently the clinical, non-threatening term for this is “recreating the investigative trail”. So rather than going to court and admitting that your evidence against the accused came from an NSA tip-off based on illegal spying by the government, agents are encouraged to falsify the account of their investigations and potentially perjure themselves by stating on the record that it was their own brilliant deductive and crime-solving abilities which led to the arrest.

It is hard to adequately describe how foul, deceitful and criminal this behaviour really is.

There was no excuse for allowing the NSA to violate the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable or unwarranted searches when it pertained to potential terrorism. There is certainly no excuse for widening this harassment in aid of civilian law enforcement.

Semi-Partisan Sam says no. This oppressive “national security” apparatus must be rolled back, and those responsible for willfully violating the Constitution must face the legal consequences of their actions.

More On Gun Control

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Ross Douthat, in his New York Times column, tackles the issue of gun control. Coming from a conservative perspective, he points out that if we frame the gun control debate in terms of a culturally rooted activity versus the negative externalities that it causes, we may end up back on the slippery slope to Prohibition:

The consumption of alcohol, like the ownership and use of firearms, carries all kinds of second-order risks, and it’s easy to run a Foer-style argument against the claim that the happiness people derive from beer and wine and liquor is worth the toll that alcoholic beverages take on life and limb and happiness: (How many of the thousands of Americans killed by drunk drivers every year does your desire for a cold Dogfish Head justify? How many lives ruined by alcoholism? How much spousal abuse? Etc.)

He also makes the valid point that because of the sheer ubiquity of guns in private hands in America today, reducing the numbers to anything close to a level that might make a dent in the gun crime rate would require the use of some very draconian tactics indeed:

47 percent of Americans report having a firearm in the home, and there may be as many as 270 million privately-owned guns in the United States. So if you actually wanted to put a real dent in accidental firearm deaths, you would need not just a ban on large magazines or stiffer background checks for gun purchasers, but an actual Prohibition-style campaign, complete with busts and raids and so forth, whose goal would be not only be a simple policy change but the rooting-out of a very well-entrenched aspect of American culture. And the experience of Prohibition itself suggests plenty of reasons to be dubious that such a campaign would ultimately be worth the cost.

This chimes very closely with my own views. Whether or not you think that stricter gun control laws are a good idea, the unescapable fact remains that there are so many guns in circulation in America today that anyone with sinister intent will likely not have a very difficult time in finding the weapon that they need to commit the offence that they wish to commit.

If a gun amnesty was held, in which people could return firearms that exceeded any future regulations concerning the type or caliber of weapon, only the law-abiding (and least likely to use their weapons for nefarious purposes) would do so, leaving the pool of “hot” weapons that are actually used most often in crime almost untouched.

And if the government were to really tighten gun restrictions and seek to enforce them on the population (not that this would happen in a million years given the power of the pro-gun lobby and American resistance to big government dictums), this would require the type of busts and raids that Douthat talks about in his column. Quite rightly, this would never be allowed to happen in America, or anywhere else.

As defeatist as it may sound at first glance, there really isn’t anything much that can be done to curb gun crime in America from the weapon supply side, aside from obvious measures (nonetheless opposed by the NRA) such as requiring background checks to be made by all vendors including at gun shows, and acknowledging the fact that no hunting, recreational or self-defence purpose can be filled with semi-automatic weapons or armour-piercing ammunition, and banning these.

Any political capital, legislative effort and community work should instead be directed at efforts that can reduce the rate at which people use the guns that are already out there – early intervention with troubled young people, more work to combat gangs and perhaps (shock horror) the legalisation and regulation of many of the drugs whose illegal trade forments so much violence.

Given that none of this is likely to happen, we can all be roundly ashamed that after more than a week since the horrific shootings in Aurora Colorado, after all the many words spoken and written by victims and commentators and policy makers, absolutely nothing is going to change.

I would dearly like to be proven wrong on this one.

Aurora, Colorado, And The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

I have now had the time to read and digest a lot of the immediate responses to the horrific shootings in Aurora, Colorado.

Some people (President Obama, Mitt Romney) have sought to explain, unify or heal.

Some people (Louie Gohmert, Brian Ross) have sought to make political hay out of the events.

Yet others have urged everyone to reserve their words and judgments while so many details of this terrible story remain unknown, and while the wounds and bereavements are so raw.

But I have yet to hear anyone – supporters of gun rights, or the interpretation of the Second Amendment that permits them – utter a statement such as this:

“Guns are an integral part of American history and culture, and the right to bear arms freely is enshrined in our nation’s constitution. On occasions, people who legally and legitimately own weapons will tragically misuse them, either through mental illness or malicious thought, and turn those weapons on themselves or on others. The twelve people who died in Aurora, Colorado yesterday were irreplaceable and will be missed, but they also represent a part of the sad, heavy price that we pay to live in a free society that upholds the right of individuals to own and carry firearms.”

If you do support the right to bear arms, surely this is what you actually think? Massacres and individual shootings are awful, but taking away the right of 300 million Americans to defend themselves against aggressors or a potential future tyrannical government is more awful still? No?

If you support a policy that has potentially negative adverse effects (such as removing benefits or subsidies from certain groups – family farms, long-term unemployed, those on sick leave) you should have the courage to own the bad as well as the good and have the guts to explain why the human benefits outweigh the human costs. As a conservative-leaning voter living in the UK, I have to do this all the time at the moment in today’s supposed “age of austerity” and government spending cuts. Supporters of individual gun ownership should do the same. No more mealy-mouthed phrases about “guns not killing people, criminals killing people”. No. Own the consequences of your policy position. Wait until the dead from Aurora have been buried, and then prominently proclaim something to the effect of the paragraph that I wrote above.

Some people say that the aftermath of civilian massacres or other high-profile gun crimes is an inopportune time to discuss the laws controlling the ownership and use of firearms. I say that taking that view is the height of cowardly avoidance – when else to discuss gun laws, regardless of the position you hold, than when their consequences are being felt most deeply?

I’ll nail my colours to the mast right here and now: I believe that individuals should be allowed to own guns suitable for recreational hunting or self-defence. That means shotguns, handguns, pistols, revolvers, tasers and nothing much more. No grenades, no semi-automatic weapons, no armour-piercing bullets.

However, I also believe that the second amendment, properly interpreted, does not currently permit gun ownership at all – a “well regulated militia” no longer being “necessary to the security of a free state” in any sensible modern worldview. Therefore I believe that a constitutional amendment is both necessary and desirable in order to enshrine the right to own firearms for the strictly limited purposes that I have outlined above.

Yes, I recognise that this position probably puts me at odds with everyone – strict gun control advocates and gun rights supporters alike, for different reasons. But at least I have put on record what I think about gun ownership, and why (not just cheap soundbites about liberty, the constitution and so on).

Let’s see the NRA and other advocates for even looser restrictions on gun ownership do the same.

ObamaCare Survives The Supreme Court

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Breaking News – the United States supreme court has upheld the contested parts of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), ruling it constitutional, in a blow to Republicans who had tried to characterise the bill as a grossly unconstitutional overreach of government power.

I haven’t had a chance yet to see the ruling, but it is hard to see this as anything other than a huge victory for the Obama administration in this election year, given the fact that the health care law is widely viewed as his signature domestic achievement and the fact that so many commentators – including many of those on the left – had predicted that large parts of the bill would be struck down.

My full reaction and thoughts on this developing story will follow in due course.