No More Secret Courts!
I long ago gave up political parties and proudly count myself an Independent. I believe in liberty for all unlike either political party and thus neither is worthy of my loyalty. Members of political parties are unable to safeguard liberty due to their confused loyalties and that leaves dispassionate and objective citizens alone in the breach to aggressively defend against political ambition and maneuvering. At the intersection of politics and anything lies stupidity of the most dangerous type and one false step puts you on the slippery slope to tyranny. This is just one of the reasons why government is best kept small.
The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court is a secretive body. It is for this reason that it is controversial and will remain so. You may have recently heard about the reauthorization of section 702 of the act which allows our intelligence services to spy on non-US persons who have been selected by such agencies as representing a threat to the security of the United States. However, once a non-US person of interest is selected then if there is contact between such person and a US citizen such citizen is drawn into the net. One should not presume that such US citizen is up to no good as it could well be a reporter, innocent friend or family member, politician or other innocent. This is where the potential for the US government to violate an individual citizen’s fourth amendment rights pegs the danger section of the civil rights meter.
The media has been raging over the last few days in relation to the release of the House Intelligence Committee memo relating to the use of the “salacious and unverified” (The ex-FBI Director James Comey’s words not mine) “Trump Dossier” in order to obtain a surveillance warrant against Carter Page (a US citizen). As usual there are two distinct and competing narratives coming from the usual political and media suspects on whether this was or was not an abuse of power on the part of senior officials of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It seems that this “Dossier” was used to get what was desired from the court in order to spy on the Trump campaign via Carter Page without informing the court that said “Dossier” was in fact political opposition research paid for by the Hillary Clinton camp.
I’ve drawn my own conclusions. The use of the “Trump Dossier”, a piece of political opposition research, which was without doubt constructed by Hillary supporters and Trump haters, seems like an ironically “Soviet” style law enforcement tactic and a wholly inappropriate basis for a warrant to spy on an American. Unfortunately, I could see either party, Democrats or Republicans, using such a tactic given the opportunity to and control over the government bureaucracy (clearly the advantage in this regard continues to fall to Democrats for now but it could change in the future). Anyone who is not worried about this behavior and abuses of our government are not paying attention. If you believe Liberty is a natural state for an individual you should be concerned and paying close attention as this is just further proof that our government does not.
The citizens of America are divided and will remain so. Some in these divided groups want to use our Government to tyrannize their opposition. I’m not in favor of either party pursuing such objective. The federal government must become smaller, less intrusive and recommit to the rights granted us in our Constitution. Any other path is going to take us in a direction that will be disruptive to all our lives.
‘libertyaffair’
Copyright 2018