“The National Security Agency [NSA] has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008,” the Washington Post reports.
Regardless of how one evaluates the Post’s source for this information (Edward Snowden), the NSA’s big-brother tactics clearly violate the rights of American citizens.
Of course, the government has a right and an obligation to investigate potential criminals when it has sufficient evidence to warrant investigation. The fourth and fifth amendments to the Bill of Rights spell out the fundamental legal principles in this area. To pursue an investigation, the government need not have perfect or conclusive information—otherwise it could not investigate or arrest any suspected criminal. But, in order to investigate potential criminal activities of American citizens, the government must have just cause as determined by a constitutionally authorized court.
Government is properly the agent of the citizens to protect their rights. A government that spies on citizens without sufficient cause, as the NSA has obviously been doing, violates rather than protects citizens’ rights.
The primary reason the U.S. government is spying on and restricting the activities (as with airport “security” procedures) of U.S. citizens is that the U.S. government has failed to take appropriate action against Islamic terrorists—and, especially, the states supporting them—who continue to threaten U.S. citizens and America in general.
Americans who care to preserve our liberty and our security must demand that our government stop spying on peaceable citizens and start doing its job—which, in this area, means destroying the Islamic terrorists who have killed many Americans and are working to kill many more.
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Related:
- “No Substitute for Victory”—The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism
- The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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