By Cliff Montgomery – June 18th, 2013
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
– Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
“The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.”
– Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, 1821
Like most of us, politicians tend to see what they want to see. Many in the Democratic Party have spent the last several days proving that fact to us all.
The matter began about two weeks ago, when the British publication The Guardian revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the phone records of millions of cell phone users every day, regardless of whether those individuals are suspected of committing a crime.
Then articles soon appeared in The Guardian and The Washington Post which revealed that for the last seven years, the NSA also has employed a congressionally approved, warrantless Internet surveillance system called ‘PRISM’, which gives the secretive agency a near-absolute capacity to spy on U.S. citizens’ emails, phone calls, video chats and more.
If this had happened under the presidency of George W. Bush, Democrats rightly would be furious. The speed with which many top Democrats now work to justify the Obama Administration for employing these methods is telling.
But not all leading Democrats are ready to pretend that tyranny ‘is justifiable when we do it’. Former Vice President Al Gore almost immediately chastised the Obama Administration on its unreasonable searches of Americans’ activities, boldly stating in a June 5th tweet that such “blanket” surveillance is “obscenely outrageous”.
On Friday, Gore stepped up his criticism of the invasive NSA surveillance programs.
“This in my view violates the constitution. The fourth amendment and the first amendment – and the fourth amendment language is crystal clear,” the former vice president told The Guardian.
“It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is,” said Gore, who added, “This is not right.”
Nor did Gore accept the results of the most recent public opinion polls, which show that a majority of Americans so far accept the NSA’s blanket surveillance.
“I am not sure how to interpret polls on this, because we don’t do dial groups on the bill of rights,” stated the former vice president.
“I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way,” the former vice president told the newspaper.
“Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” he added.
Gore’s solution to this issue was clear and straightforward.
“I think that the Congress and the administration need to make some changes in the law and in their behavior so as to honor and obey the constitution of the United States,” he stated.
“It is that simple,” added Gore.
