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Not without a warrant and probable cause

Give me liberty or give me death, think about that.

Lori,

KUDOS to you kid!

You got it exactly right!

Here it is in a nutshell.

With all this new technology – computers, internet, texting, Iphones, etc. etc. – It is not a simple matter of just listening in on a telephone conversatin anymore. Anyone can go to your neighborhood electronics store and get a "spurt" device – that is a thing that was first used by the worlds various military services to send and recieve messages in a format known as "micro-spurts". You can send any text message to someone that you have given the recieve codes to, without those codes it would be nearly impossible to decipher the message.

The internet transmission lines are so crowded that one would not only have to have your ISP address but your IP Server and Router pathways among a myriad of other things also.

Do not believe what you see in the movies – that is only make believe.

Cell phone tracing is doggone difficult at best, and nearly impossible at worst.

Yup. Go get a warrant with some probable cause.

Data mining in a way like Echelon, not so much.

Cell phone tracing is actually yet another commercially available system now. There's a story online about some techno geeks who tracked down a stolen iPhone by wandering around with their laptop and tracking down its active signal strength. It eventually narrowed down to a single city corner, starting with a city block. It does seem to require some active technology, something you could turn off if you were a really alert criminal mastermind.

But then a really alert criminal mastermind probably wouldn't rely on cell phones to begin with.

I'm glad all of you are all proud for all of your free rights, but what would you do if a relative of yours was killed in a terrorist attack which could've been prevented by wiretapping? It's obvious you haven't experienced anything like this before, otherwise your thoughts would be different.

It's not like they track all of us. They only track terror suspects. That's a risk I'm willing to take to protect my life and the life of my family. If you all think about these free rights for terror suspects, then the world will experience problems. You can't have that attitude towards these people, because in their heads, all they want to do is kill innocent people.

Under the PATRIOT act, it doesn't take much to be a terror suspect.

Wiretapping people is wrong, no matter what. I have never heard of any attack that has been diverted or prevented because of wiretapping. It is such an invasion of personal liberties and rights, it isn't even funny. We've lost the spirit of our founders, like Benjamin Franklin who said something along the lines of "he who would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither, and will lose both."

Or Patrick Henry. "Give me liberty, or give me death!" they weren't afraid of someone, they wanted their liberties. They knew what it was like under a repressive regime. We've forgotten that, and so we are willing to let our personal liberties go the way of the dinosaur, as we sit idly by with our TVs and our 'safety'.

The fact of the matter is that wiretapping protects American citizens. The PATRIOT act? This is the same very act that has put thousands of organized crime members behind bars and has prevented a numerous amount of terrorist attacks.

I don't care what these people in the past have said, like Benjamin Franklin or Patrick Henry. They didn't have to deal with these terrorist groups as much as we have to now.

Your story is touching. But I would be just as worried that I might have a relative who may be detained under the provisions and abuses of those provisions by federal authorities. In fact, relative to the likelihood and danger of a terrorist attack using plain, normal, constitutionally legal, foreign intelligence gathering, I should be far more concerned at the abuse of individual privacy and civil liberties.

They don't just track "terror suspects" using wiretapping programs. It's a data-mining system that collects data on all manner of activity. Drug trafficking operations and normal criminal behavior for example, but also unrelated factors like private medical and financial records can be seized. These "investigations" are rubber-stamped through the expanded FISA protocols (under which there is no need to look for probable cause, bypassing the 4th amendment).

The single known plot which was "prevented" by wiretapping used legal, ie, there was a warrant process involving probable cause, wiretapping and also involved a foreign government (the UK). I don't know where the idea that the PATRIOT Act as a whole "protects" Americans comes from as a result.

If criminals are being put behind bars, it protects American citizens.

Good. Full-speed ahead wiretapping.

The program that supposedly protects American citizens, FISA/PATRIOT, wasn't involved in that plot was my point.

The danger of that sort of thinking is that at some point, the government (at least, the sort of government you seem comfortable with) can change the target. It's referred to as "mission creep". Instead of prosecuting terrorists, they could come after some other group. Perhaps a group that isn't very terrorizing or dangerous at all. Let's say Muslims generally, or veterans, or anti-abortion protesters, for example.

The PATRIOT act is horrid. It completely strips every single citizen of the US of their fourth amendment rights, making them susceptible to 'unlawful and unwarranted' searches and seizures. The government needs little provocation for this. In fact, it needs none at all. It merely needs to think you are a terrorist.

Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry did have to deal with terrorists. In fact, according to the British government, they were terrorists themselves. If I'm not mistaken, some of the founding fathers even faced assasination attempts by loyalists. (I may be wrong on this. Feel free to correct me if my information is mistaken. )

The fact is that the Constitution does not change. It is still the best document for it's purpose- to protect us from the government and the repressive regimes that rise up within a strict governmental system. The system we once had is the best…we've just strayed away from it because people hold your attitude.

Back in Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry's time, it took days just to deliver a message. Now, it takes seconds. We live in harsher times than theirs.

You are probably thinking about the movie Eagle Eye right? Where they had that one big machine that was going after citizens.

No human is ever going to stoop down to that level. Right now, the government is just trying to go after these terrorists for their attacks. It's Al Qaeda we are fighting right now.

Never seen it. I've instead been reading the ACLU reports, among others, on the abuse of the patriot act. The government is already not just trying to go after terrorists through wiretapping. And when it has succeeded against terrorists, they have used legal measures to obtain them. The same legal measures that constitutionally applied before the PATRIOT act was passed.

What's the difference? It's still private correspondence that the government should have to show probable cause in order to intercept it.

With technology these days, we are in greater danger. We can't live completely by sayings by concepts like that because then more innocent people will die.

Yea well, look at 9/11. They had warnings but they didn't do anything before that. That blew the whistle and the PATRIOT act came and saved the day.

We are communicating at this moment. The Islamists can communicate at this moment. The Nazis can communicate at this moment.

Does that scare you?

We cannot monitor correspondence. It is wrong, and verges on complete censorship. People have a Constitutional right to associate, talk to, and freely discuss anything and everything with whoever they wish. If we are to censor correspondence, where do we stop? What if someone in power decided they didn't like what you were saying, and decided to tap your phone? Would you feel all warm and fuzzy inside then?

What is at dispute here is rights that all should have, and that are guaranteed by the Constitution. Everyone has a right to be free from the harm of unwarranted seizures and searches. That would include wiretapping without a warrant.

The PATRIOT act isn't doing any saving except saving and giving power to the government.

Fear is not a probable cause.

You're not listening. The PATRIOT act has not provided any safety at all. None. It's like the pro-torture argument. Well we haven't had any attacks in 8 years, so we must be doing something good. They had probable cause to investigate prior to 9-11 and did not. They did not need to set up a system of pervasive wiretapping and data mining in order to provide for our relative safety from attacks. And none of the major plots we have seen since which have been prevented were stopped by using illegal or unconstitutional tactics, like torture or the patriot act or warrant-less wiretapping. So the argument that it "saved" us is moot. It hasn't. There is no good evidence to suggest that these strategies have in fact provided us with any greater security than previous and legally available strategies did. If anything, in the cases of torture and wiretapping, there is substantial evidence that we are in fact made less safe because our rights are infringed upon without probable cause or because the quality of investigation and information is eroded by the methods used to obtain them.

So, let's say a suspected terrorist is captured, and the government has reason to believe that he is part of a terrorist plot, and we have tried all of these "clean interrogation processes", and nothing gets through to them.

You are saying that our job is finished? That torture shouldn't be allowed, even if millions of people were at stake?

That's the problem with America. Everyone has equal rights. That shouldn't be allowed. What happens as a result of this is that terror suspects think they can just talk their way out of leaking information.

That is wrong. Torture is necessary when it comes to certain types of people, especially to terrorists. They don't think like you and I do. We are humble people, and we wouldn't kill anyone. These terrorists, are not people. If you take someone's life, you deserve to die. If you plan an attack to kill thousands of innocent people, you deserve to die, so torture is practically nothing.

Torture doesn't work.

And like the point on wiretapping, torture is being used well outside these "millions of lives are at stake" boundaries that people keep claiming exist. As is warantless wiretapping. Liberty's point, which is the essential reason to debate the constitutionality of this premise, is that there is nothing to stop the government from deciding or claiming that anything is "terrorist" in its nature and proceeding to monitor people who are not at all a danger to national security.

Similarly, we have tortured people well outside the boundaries of the 24-style ticking time bomb scenarios envisioned by torture proponents. Some of them were innocent. Others have died under our supervision. The reason not to cross that line is that there isn't ever a real life circumstance where we know with certainty that the person we have in front of us can prevent an action that will cost lives, much less where we know with certainty that beating them or torturing them will avert it at all. It generally ends up being true that we will get better quality of information without torture as a result. Most of the interrogation specialists and military commanders we have on the ground are in agreement on this point. So no. Torture shouldn't be allowed.

Torture is not necessary. Ask the interrogation experts at the FBI or the military. It does not work as effectively to obtain information. So why bother?

And like I mentioned before on the notion of "equal rights" as it regards the Constitution, if we were to pass a law that Jared is a traitor and should be put to death, you wouldn't have a problem with that? Those "trivial equal rights" you are so dismissive of are there for your protection. From yourself. Destroying the validity of rule of law and denying tolerance for opposition* ultimately risks your own freedom to oppose and to be tolerated by society.

*Within reasonable and not harmful methods, terrorism is not an acceptable form of opposition, but its root causes might be.

There's an old movie about Thomas More with the following debate in it that seems to be what you and I are going round about on:
Margaret More: Father, that man's bad.
Sir Thomas More: There's no law against that.
William Roper: There is: God's law.
Sir Thomas More: Then God can arrest him.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

You are believing the lies of anti-torture people. Do you have any specific cases of this in recent years? I don't care. As long as you don't do anything bad, you will be fine. Let the government do it's job and protect us.

This is not the 1700's. People who are under investigation by the government are for a reason. They wouldn't waste time going after me if they didn't think I was a terrorist. They don't have the manpower. They just go after the people who are obviously terrorists.

All these innocents are just trying to cover their reputation. People lie. Papadawg could even tell you. He's been in law enforcement. He's seen the dark side of human nature.

Yes. I do. Ali Soufan of the FBI for one got a ton of information out of Abu Zubadayah before he was tortured. Concurrently, much of KSM's information provided under torture is now acknowledged to be falsified. There are also several investigations into the deaths of suspects from prisoner mistreatment or torture underway right now. These are not "lies".

Wiretapping: A former NSA analyst provided reems of documentation on information that the NSA was collecting regarding private correspondence back in January. It did not matter whether this was correspondence taken with terrorist suspects, overseas communiques, or just you sending an email down the road. They were collecting everything. It was not simply a program being used to collect information on terrorist plots and deter them, or the arguably useful premise of counter-espionage generally. It was an everything program, used for domestic criminal investigations explicitly protected by the 4th Amendment warrant requirements.

So far as "don't do anything bad". The point is that at some time someone can (and will) change the definition of "bad". This is all the more true if you don't cut them off at the starting point by requiring that person to follow the rule of law in collecting information through private correspondence (ie, get a warrant backed by probable cause). Conservatives are fond of quoting Niemöller. I don't see how it fails to apply here.

It doesn't surprise me that you wouldn't care about evidence which might deter you from thinking in a particular way.

Thomas More 7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535. I must have missed where the 1700s came into play there.

The government does in fact waste time going after and investigating people who aren't terrorists all the time. Ask the ML King family, the leaders of labour unions, political adversaries of elected officials…..

To imagine that the government is given a vague mission and will fulfill only a stated premise within that vague uncertainty rather than satisfy other less desirable ends, or that it is somehow absolved of this "dark side of human nature" is foolish. We should always be suspicious when governments tell us that the only way the governed may be "safe" is for the government to violate the law.

You read my mind. Yea, that's just a few cases. No one is going to change the definition of bad because we won't let the government go that far.

It's not like everyone in Washington is going to agree that we should track everyone, everywhere, at every time. The government is trying to prevent terrorism, at all costs.

And "these innocents" are the experts who are saying that doesn't work. Not the people being tortured. Or in the case of the NSA wiretaps, they are the people doing the wiretapping or analyzing what it collected. They aren't the people who were caught.

You have explicitly and repeatedly ignored that the major terrorist event (the London plane plot) we did stop using wiretaps used legal methods to acquire them (they had a warrant and it was all overseas surveillance anyway, for which different laws apply). That had nothing to do with the FISA courts or the PATRIOT act. Neither of these were needed to protect us against these actions.

It then stands to wonder what are they needed for? What purposes are they in fact used to accomplish?

All I know is that I get to wake up every morning and I feel safe knowing that the government is preventing terrorist attacks from happening. Whether or not they are violating human rights has no concern to me.

There are some costs for which it is too high a price. The risk, using normal and legal methods, is pretty low.

To your point about Congress, if more people considered this risk actively, and weighted it against the costs to their individual freedoms, then yes, fewer people in Congress would think this way. There would be more than just say, Ron Paul and Russ Feingold opposing the stripping of civil liberties out of the Constitution in the pay any price mode of providing safety. Congress ultimately cares about getting re-elected. Sooner or later, fear subsidies and people reflect that most of their safety is not at all provided by government, at least not in the ways that they are told government does it. A relative stability from the enforcement of rules of law, with some explicit protections against what those rules may infringe upon, works quite well.

When the government abandons rule of law… there seem to be two conclusions. A police state. Something I fear we have tread far too dangerously into, with far too much control ceded to authoritarian forces like the police and the government (or even corporations for that matter, since they often write the laws these days). The idea is to use rigid applications of force to coerce instead of the premise justice and mutual respect. That works fine where people don't respect each other already and resort to violence and torment. But what if the people doing the violence and torment are also the government?

Which brings me to the ultimate result of a police state: anarchy. Where law means whatever someone in possession of power wants it to mean.

Breaking news. Terror suspect in Queens. Apparently, the government tried cooperating with this guy and he was used for information, but he turned on us and had instructions on his laptop on how to make bombs.

Did you also hear about the father and son who were making bombs in their basement? I guess you wouldn’t understand because you don’t live in New York City, which is their number one target.

These scum deserve to be tortured, and they deserve to have their rights violated. I don’t care who they are, and I’m glad some people in Congress feel the same way I do.

I don't see in that story that there was some as yet unproven utility to either warrant-less wiretaps or torture… so…what exactly is your point?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/watch-do…

Really? They're not going to go that far?

I am a student writing a persuasive essay on the government's use of wiretapping and was curious as to your opinions on the belief that if you're not doing anything "wrong" or illegal, then why should it matter if the government is paying attention to your communications?

The government keeps the information for use in data mining operations to look for patterns. If all they are using it for is anti-terrorism, this would indeed fit your question, as most of us are presumably not engaged in the support or activity of terrorism. That is not all they use it for. Such information can later be used by different administrations with a very different concept of "wrong" or "illegal" to find you guilty of "crimes" very different from terrorism. This is already true. The PATRIOT act has been repeatedly abused by the FBI and other institutions to prosecute various smuggling operations, drug distribution, etc, which are generally totally unrelated to national security or especially to "terrorism". A related problem is that for many years the government has tried to conceal its wiretaps and associated data mining (phone records, financial records), from their targets. It is in fact still unknown to millions of Americans that they have been targeted for investigation on these grounds or whether or not they would or could be. Not only is this a violation of our 4th Amendment rights as citizens and nationals, but it makes it roughly impossible to mount a defence against the government should it decide to accuse you of being a potential terrorist threat, for example by placing you on a no-fly list, by restricting evidence available to you as a potential criminal.

What are people opinions on reducing constitutional rights during times of percieved terrorist threats?

The constitution includes a capacity to reduce some constitutional rights during times of insurrection or civil strife. However a "terrorist threat" is a rather vague criminal act, however heinous and shocking it may be, rather than an ongoing and visible riot or civil war.

Additionally most of the investigative tools that were requested or supposedly absent from 9-11 already existed prior to Constitutionally abusive things like national security letters or wiretapping. It wasn't necessary to reduce constitutional rights so much as allocate more resources or move them around.