As discussed in a prior column, many civil libertarians view President Barack Obama as betraying core civil liberties in expanding on Bush-era surveillance programs, secrecy orders, and other measures. Now, even conservative justices are questioning the Administration’s demand to be able to engage in round-the-clock surveillance of citizens without a warrant using GPS technology. The sweeping new claim would gut the protections of the Fourth Amendment in the latest attack on civil liberties by Barack Obama.
In the United States v. Jones (10-1259) case oral argument, Justice Stephen Breyer correctly noted “If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 from their brief.” Even Chief Justice John Roberts who is often criticized for turning a blind eye to government intrusions raised concerns that the GPS surveillance would fundamentally alter the balance between citizens and police.
U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben response was classic: don’t worry about the Constitution just rely on Congress to pass a law if we go to far. Congress, of course, has historically cared little about civil liberties and the Administration’s position would leave core liberties as simple matters for political voting.
Despite the growing opposition from civil libertarians who have vowed not to support his reelection, Obama appears to be doubling down on increasing police powers and limiting civil liberties. The Jones case represents an utter disregard for privacy and constitutional protections in favor of further increasing the already disturbing level of police powers in our society.
The case is particularly interesting because of the use of the Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967). The government argues that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy because of the availability of GPS technology. For years, I have argued that our privacy rests on an increasingly uncertain foundation. When it was first handed down, Katz was a magnificent affirmation of privacy — declaring the Fourth Amendment “protects people not places.” However, the Court tied the protection to the “reasonable expectations” of citizens. As those expectations fall, the ability of the government to act without a warrant increases . . . which results in expectations again falling. The result is a downward spiral. The Administration is now playing on that weakness to argue for a broad new power of surveillance.
Source: The Hill
Ekeyra, problem is maybe children need to learn cops are our friends but even adults have to have some system of protection in place against those who will feed off the rest of us (as rapists murderers, etc.) Sadly Milgram showed in his experiment that power very quickly goes to our heads. Maybe it is just a part of our DNA that power does indeed corrupt.
Thanks anon…Good stuff…
“The japanese americans we shoved into internment camps during world war 2 had one right, and that was right this way”
“To my surprise when I expressed dismay another protestor responded, “it is so if somebody gets hurt they can see who did it or if something happens who started it so it is really for our protection.” ”
Perhaps putting an end to childish, infantile ideas, such as the police actually protect you, is a good start on the road to abolishing the american police state. Why not foster discussion of how to accomplish that instead of just crossing your fingers and really really hoping that putting “the right people” in charge of a massive domestic oppression aparatus turns out better than the last time?
Jill, When I was at Occupy Philly they didn’t bother with anything high tech like Sky Watch. A policeman stood right in front of us with a movie camera, filming us all. To my surprise when I expressed dismay another protestor responded, “it is so if somebody gets hurt they can see who did it or if something happens who started it so it is really for our protection.”
According to warcosts.com (Thanks, shano.)
The .01%:
Martin Stevens Lockheed Martin
Wes Bush Northrup Grumman
James McNerney Boeing
“Justice Anthony Kennedy said he had “serious reservations” about the way the device had been installed.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/08/us-usa-police-gps-idUSTRE7A767520111108
Oro – what you said.
OSB kicked off the Reign of Terror.
Now is there any doubt that Osama bin Laden won a great victory — not by his action but by our reaction? A reaction which he foresaw and fostered.
The two wars and government sanctioned war crimes, the expansion of the military-politico-industrial complex and transfer of unfettered power and authority from public to private sector, the trampling of civil liberties and creation of a police state mentality, the resultant Great Recession.
Where was America as of September 10, 2001?
Where is America now? Where is the goodwill following 9-11?
Where is Osama now? A jihad warrior killed in battle. A martyr. An
inspiration to hundreds of thousands if not millions.
And every day his enemies, by their own hands, fall deeper into his trap, weakening themselves and thus honoring the Great Osama.
Think we would wise up, don’t you? But many have discovered there is profit to be made in our self-destruction, political and financial. Or, at least, in the destruction of the 99%.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/justices-press-government-limits-warrantless-location-tracking
“In our friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU asserted:
Unless this Court concludes that GPS tracking is a Fourth Amendment search, any individual’s movements could be subject to remote monitoring, and permanent recording, at the sole and unfettered discretion of any police officer. Without judicial oversight, the police could track unlimited numbers of people for days, weeks, or months at a time. Americans could never be confident that they were free from round-the-clock surveillance of their activities. With a network of satellites constantly feeding data to a remote computer, police could, at any instant, determine an individual’s current or past movements and the times and locations that he or she crossed paths with other GPS-tracked persons.”
“This is very troubling to an old criminal defense lawyer observing the constant chipping away at the 4th Amendment.” -frankmascagniiii
Sir,
Your comments are heartening and comforting to an old nurse — an old nurse who hardly recognizes this country anymore.
Thank you, as I’ve said before, for being one of the good guys.
Thank you Frank, that was very interesting.
Olmstead v. United States (1928) – Right of privacy:
Justice Brandeis wrote his widely cited dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States (1928), Brandeis relied on thoughts he developed in his Harvard Law Review article in 1890. But in his dissent, he now changed the focus whereby he urged making personal privacy matters more relevant to constitutional law, going so far as saying “the government [was] identified . . . as a potential privacy invader.” At issue in Olmstead was the use of wiretap technology to gather evidence. Referring to this “dirty business,” he then tried to combine the notions of civil privacy and the “right to be left alone” with the right offered by the Fourth Amendment which disallowed unreasonable search and seizure. Brandeis wrote in his lengthy dissent:
“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred against the government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” [38]
In succeeding years his right of privacy concepts gained powerful disciples who relied on his dissenting opinion: Justice Frank Murphy, in 1942, used his Harvard Law Review article in writing an opinion for the Court; a few years later, Justice Felix Frankfurter referred to the Fourth Amendment as the “protection of the right to be let alone,” as in the 1947 case of Harris v. U.S., where his opinion wove together the speeches of James Otis, James Madison, John Adams, and Brandeis’s Olmstead opinion, proclaiming the right of privacy as “second to none in the Bill of Rights[13]:26
Again, five years later, Justice William O. Douglas openly declared that he had been wrong about his earlier tolerance of wiretapping and wrote, “I now more fully appreciate the vice of the practices spawned by Olmstead. . . I now feel that I was wrong . . . Mr. Justice Brandeis in his dissent in Olmstead espoused the cause of privacy – the right to be let alone. What he wrote is an historic statement of that point of view. I cannot improve on it.”[39]:445 And in 1963, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. joined with these earlier opinions taking the position that “the Brandeis point of view” was well within the longstanding tradition of American law.[13]:26
However, it took the growth of surveillance technology during the 1950s and 1960s and the “full force of the Warren Court’s due process revolution,” writes McIntosh, to finally overturn the Olmstead law: in 1967, Justice Potter Stewart wrote the opinion overturning Olmstead in Katz v. U.S. McIntosh adds, “A quarter-century after his death, another component of Justice Brandeis’s privacy design was enshrined in American law.”[13]
As Wayne McIntosh notes, “the spirit, if not the person, of Louis Brandeis, has continued to stimulate the constitutional mutation of a ‘right to privacy’.” [13] These influences have manifested themselves in major decisions relating to everything from abortion rights to the “right to die” controversies. Cases dealing with a state ban on the dissemination of birth control information expanded on Brandeis by including an individual’s “body,” not just her “personality,” as part of her right to privacy. In another case, Justice Harlan credited Brandeis when he wrote, “The entire fabric of the Constitution . . . guarantees that the rights to marital privacy and to marry and raise a family are of similar order and magnitude as the fundamental rights specifically protected.”[40] And the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, one of the most controversial and politically significant cases in U.S. Supreme Court history, the Court wrote, “This right of privacy . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”[41]
You know … there have been some very scholarly and sometimes heated discussions on the blog debating the reasons the Towers fell but it is the Anthrax Attack that took place with all those mysterious letters on Sept 17, 18 – Oct 2, 12,15 (Post Office, Florida Newspaper, Sen. Daschle’s office) that really helped pushed the public over the edge and eased the passage of the Patriot Act.
People seem to forget about that.
Woosty,
The attacks that brought down the towers took place on Sept 11, 2001 and the Patriot Act was passed on Oct. 26, 2001 exactly 45 days later. That is the time frame I’m referring to when I talk of “all the people and all the politicians were running scared”.
During that 45 days the anthrax letters had gone out to the Post Office and to Capitol Hill. On the day before passage, Oct. 25th, Tom Ridge issued this statement”
“Clearly, we are up against a shadow enemy, shadow soldiers, people who have no regard for human life. They are determined to murder innocent people.”
From Oct 20, 2001 NY Times article by Saul Hansell
“How do you calculate risk in an era when nightmares are becoming headlines?
That question can be terrifying these days for anyone who flies in an airplane or opens an unfamiliar envelope.”
On Oct. 20, 2001 some people were being escorted by police to their homes and businesses around Ground Zero and the news of the devastation was being reported on through their eyes for the first time.
Yes, the people and the politicians were all running scared and the coup took place without a hitch.
” Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail.
” It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” Benjamin Franklin
” Bad things happen when good people don’t speak out.” Mahatma Gandhi
It is a sad day in America when we are having a discussion on the eroding rights of U.S. citizens and the power given to law enforcement and sanctioned by the government. This is very troubling to an old criminal defense lawyer observing the constant chipping away at the 4th Amendment.
” I love my country…It’s the government I’m afraid of….God Bless America.” Unknown
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that under the government’s position anyone could be monitored after leaving their home and entering a vehicle. Only a person’s home would be secure from intrusion, she said.”
Well here’s a newflash:
Not even a person’s home is “secure from intrusion”…, but who would believe it.
And there’s more… but, again, who would believe it…
What in the hell is wrong with the people who already know… and do nothing… people in positions of power… They know… and they do nothing.
“A ruling is expected before June.”
Before June????
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/08/us-usa-police-gps-idUSTRE7A767520111108
Excerpt:
Justice Antonin Scalia also expressed concern, calling it “unquestionably a trespass” by the police and saying the device was attached without Jones’ knowledge or approval.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that under the government’s position anyone could be monitored after leaving their home and entering a vehicle. Only a person’s home would be secure from intrusion, she said.
Justice Elena Kagan said a GPS device can track someone’s movements 24 hours a day, wherever they go, and the data reported to the police. “That seems too much to me,” she said.
Chief Justice John Roberts said to Dreeben that the normal way to handle questions such as the length of monitoring would be to get a judge’s advance approval in a warrant.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked how far the government could go, questioning whether the police could put a computer chip in a person’s overcoat or could monitor and track everyone through their cell phones. “That’s really the bottom line,” she said.
Attorney Stephen Leckar, arguing for Jones, said use of the GPS device was a grave threat and an abuse of privacy rights.
Justice Samuel Alito pressed him on where to draw the line and whether the police could use a GPS device to monitor a suspect just for several hours or for only one day.
Sotomayor asked whether the police can access satellite cameras that show a neighborhood and use that to monitor a person’s movement from place to place. Leckar said the police would have to get a warrant.
A ruling is expected before June. (end of excerpt)
…so frightened that they willingly turned over their liberty to the goons in the shadows.
———————–
Blouise, with great respect, I disagree. I don’t disagree with your scenario, but I do not think that the American people have been as willing or as frightened as you suggest. Those politicians and those in the courts who had been so high on the hog that they were caught in new territory….so out of touch with Joe Public, if you will, they were our wall against this kind of terrorism. The wall is not completely dsmantled and we are getting a darn good look behind the curtain….but it is a mixed bag. .Corporate interests are just 1 of the ‘giveaway’ issues. There is a mighty move towards Capitalization on a Global scale….but that could not be acheived without the smoke screen of a 1000 attacks on the foundation constitutional issues like separation of church and state. abortion. womens issues. healthcare. alien rights. medicare…blah blah blah. …Opening the floodgates to the greedy guts did nothing more than damage….but the seal of approval was at the Supreme Court level…and higher. None of this could be accomplished without the blindfolding of the public by degree and dismantling of the Constitution by design. Habeus Corpus…Torture…detainment…surveillance…all these actions are anti-thetical to Americans.
It’s been an inside job all along, it will not change till lobbyists are on civil servant salaries and enforcement of existing laws isn’t gerrymandered like a political district. That’s my rant for the day.