Forget The Fourth Amendment, It Means Nothing

When it was discovered that the Bush Administration had authorized the NSA to wiretap phones without warrants, many progressives and civil libertarians criticized this decision on the grounds that it violated American citizens’ right to privacy and the 4th amendment of the Constitution. The Congressional Research Service even preformed an investigation and found that many of the Bush Administration’s legal arguments in favor of the wiretapping program were faulty. Despite (or in spite of) the legal ambiguity, the Bush administration justified its warrantless wiretapping program by claiming it was crucial in stopping terrorist attacks on US soil. That was good enough for most Republicans and even some Democrats. Most Democrats, however, attacked President Bush relentlessly because of this program.    

On the floor of the Senate, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) claimed that President Bush had “deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment — to be free from unjustified government intrusion.”  He then went on to say that, ‘this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.”  Sen. Feingold was one of many outraged voices on the left who denounced President Bush for using illegal wiretaps to spy on Americans.  Many progressives wanted Bush impeached and prosecuted for the warrantless wiretap program and other actions taken by the Bush administration considered to be ”war crimes.”

 You would think that President Obama would have ended this program upon entering the Presidency considering all the years of outrage and calls for prosecution from voices on the left. You would be wrong. Early in his Presidency, the Obama justice department sided with the Bush Administration in regards to warrantless wiretapping. Not many people noticed this, according to the Wall Street Journal, because while he was siding with his predecessor on the wiretap issue he was releasing “post-9/11 legal memoranda in the name of “transparency,” producing another round of feel-good Bush criticism.”    

 It is clear to me that neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations care much about our right to privacy or our 4th Amendment rights. Now, the Obama administration wants to violate our right even further!

When you use your cell phone do you think it’s reasonable to expect privacy? According to the Obama justice department you would be foolish to think that. The administration believes that, “Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts.” The administration also claims that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records.”

Apparently, law enforcement officials have tracked people using cell phones for some time now in a variety of criminal investigations ranging from drug trafficking to bank robbery. According to documents obtained by the ACLU and the EFF law enforcement officials often tracked cell phones without a warrant.   

Tomorrow, the Philadelphia Third Circuit Court of Appeals will hear a case that will decide whether the government can use your cell phone to track you. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Kevin Bankston, “If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government, unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.” Big Brother may not be be watching us, but he will be in our pockets.

This is incredible invasion of our privacy and an unquestionable violation of our 4th Amendment rights. It was wrong when Bush was President and it is wrong now that Obama is President.  Barack Obama ran for President on a platform of changing the way Washington works. By not ending the warrantless wiretap program and by supporting the use of our cell phones as tracking devices, Obama is proving to us all that his platform was insincere and that  he is a complete fraud.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this will be a big story in the media. Most in the media are on Obama’s side and don’t want him to look more foolish than he already does. Also, Former President Clinton was rushed to the hospital today complaining about chest pains, he received two stents in one of his coronary arteries. This will be the top story on every news program on every news station even though I just told you everything you need to know about it.        

  

 

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