{"id":15391,"date":"2012-11-17T10:32:31","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T15:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=15391"},"modified":"2012-11-17T10:32:31","modified_gmt":"2012-11-17T15:32:31","slug":"the-reality-of-obamas-security-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2012\/11\/the-reality-of-obamas-security-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reality of Obama’s Security State"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Big Brother, Kill Lists, and Secrecy: What to Expect From Obama\u2019s Second Term<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

by Christian Stork<\/span><\/p>\n

Following Barack Obama\u2019s significant electoral victory, the ways in which the President will interpret his new \u201cmandate\u201d are still very much up for debate. While pundits, many of whom got the election seriously wrong, fumble to come up with new predictions, an analysis of Obama\u2019s track record and statements on national security policy can be quite illuminating. Two momentous stories of the past few weeks can help us evaluate current and future prospects for our Constitutional rights, a year after Osama bin Laden\u2019s death and a decade after 9\/11. One grim harbinger of what\u2019s to continue:\u00a0a nighttime drone strike in Yemen<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that killed three \u201cal-Qaida militants\u201d was carried out within 24 hours of Obama\u2019s victory speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

But even more important was the bombshell story that appeared in the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0on October 23, revealing the existence of a new database within the\u00a0National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that will list suspected terrorists and militants slated for extrajudicial assassination. The article\u00a0details<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the creation of a \u201cnext-generation targeting list called the \u2018disposition matrix\u2019\u201d which \u201ccontains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled\u201d to kill them, including the ability to map \u201cplans for the \u2018disposition\u2019 of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, on October 29, the Supreme Court\u00a0heard oral arguments<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in\u00a0Amnesty v. Clapper<\/em>, evaluating a lawsuit filed by journalists, human rights workers, and lawyers, who claimed that their jobs are unnecessarily hampered by the specter of the National Security Agency eavesdropping on their communications with clients overseas. Asdescribed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)<\/span><\/a><\/span>, \u201cthe [Supreme] Court will essentially determine whether any court\u2026 can rule on whether the [National Security Agency]\u2019s targeted warrantless surveillance of Americans\u2019 international communications violates the Constitution.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What do NSA\u2019s warrantless wiretapping program and the Obama administration\u2019s recently developed \u201cdisposition matrix\u201d have to do with one another? Two points resound in particular. First, both are only able to function in an environment of total secrecy. Also, they represent significant advances in the codification of a new norm for U.S. national security policy\u2014one very much at odds with the constitutionally limited Commander-in-Chief of common lore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps even more ominously, the infrastructure development of the Obama administration\u2019s policy of targeted killing signals a creeping move toward domestic application. As drone technology\u00a0continues to be imported home<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the convergence of the kill-list(s) within the NCTC bureaucracy\u2014which houses huge repositories of both domestic and foreign intelligence with no probable cause of criminality\u2014is a foreboding development in this saga of eroding checks and disappearing balance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Climbing Out of the Abyss, Jumping Back In<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Unknown to the American people and to much of their government until the late 1970\u2019s, NSA has enjoyed free rein to intercept the electronic communications of Americans and foreigners since its secret inception in 1952. To those who were familiar with it,\u00a0the uniform joke<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0was that NSA stood for \u201cNo Such Agency,\u201d an indication of its covert and prized status within the intelligence community.<\/span><\/p>\n

After\u00a0media revelations of intelligence abuses<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0by the Nixon administration began to mount in the wake of Watergate, NSA became the subject of Congressional ire in the form of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities\u2014commonly known as the \u201cChurch Committee\u201d after its chair, Senator Frank Church (D-ID)<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u2014established on January 17, 1975. This ad-hoc investigative body found itself unearthing troves of classified records from the FBI, NSA, CIA and Pentagon that detailed the murky pursuits of each during the first decades of the Cold War. Under the mantle of defeating communism, internal documents confirmed the executive branch\u2019s use of said agencies\u00a0in some of the most fiendish acts<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0of human imagination (including refined psychological torture techniques),\u00a0particularly by<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the Central Intelligence Agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cold War mindset had incurably infected the nation\u2019s security apparatus, establishing\u00a0extralegal subversion efforts at home<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0brutish control abroad<\/span><\/a><\/span>. It was revealed that the FBI\u00a0undertook a war<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to destroy homegrown movements such as the Black Liberation Movement (including Martin Luther King, Jr.), and that NSA had\u00a0indiscriminately intercepted<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the communications of Americans without warrant, even\u00a0without the President\u2019s knowledge<\/span><\/a><\/span>. When confronted with such nefarious enterprises, Congress sought to rein in the excesses of the intelligence community, notably those directed at the American public.<\/span><\/p>\n

The committee chair, Senator Frank Church, then\u00a0issued this warning about NSA\u2019s power<\/span><\/a><\/span>:<\/span><\/p>\n

That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything. Telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn\u2019t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. I don\u2019t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reforms that followed, as enshrined in the\u00a0Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0of 1978, included the establishment of the\u00a0Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)<\/span><\/a><\/span>: a specially-designated panel of judges who are allowed to review evidence before giving NSA a warrant to spy on Americans (only in the case of overseas communication). Hardly a contentious check or balance, FISC\u00a0rejected<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0zero\u00a0<\/em>warrant requests between its inception in 1979 and 2000, only asking that two warrants be \u201cmodified\u201d out of an estimated 13,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

In spite of FISC\u2019s rubberstamping, following 9\/11 the Bush administration began deliberately bypassing the court, because even its minimal evidentiary standard was too high a burden of proof for the blanket surveillance they wanted. So began the dragnet monitoring of the American public by\u00a0tapping the country\u2019s major electronic communication chokepoints<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in collusion with the nation\u2019s largest telecommunications companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

When\u00a0confronted with the criminal conspiracy<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0undertaken by the Bush administration and telecoms, Congress confirmed why\u00a0it retains the lowest approval rating<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0of any major American institution by \u201creforming\u201d the statute to accommodate the massive law breaking. The\u00a02008 FISA Amendments Act [FAA]<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0entrenched the policy of mass eavesdropping and granted the telecoms retroactive immunity for their criminality, withdrawing even the negligible individual protections in effect since 1979. Despite initial opposition, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama\u00a0voted for the act<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>as one of his last deeds in the Senate.\u00a0A few brave (and unsuccessful) lawsuits<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0later, this policy remains the status quo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seemingly Impossible to Stand (Up For Your Rights)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The latest challenge to government snooping,\u00a0Amnesty v. Clapper<\/em>, isn\u2019t even about Big Brother\u2019s legality in the first place. The defendants are appealing a federal circuit court\u2019s decision that granted legitimate \u201cstanding\u201d to the plaintiffs to bring suit disputing the electronic surveillance program\u2019s constitutionality.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Justice Department\u00a0maintains that the plaintiffs don\u2019t have standing<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to challenge the powers granted in the FAA because they are unable to claim with certainty that they were specifically wiretapped in the first place. Such a determination is impossible to make because all attempts to gather said information have hitherto been quashed by federal courts. They have overwhelmingly agreed with the government\u2019s assertion that disclosing such information would divulge state secrets. Thus the only way to prove aggrieved status, and then challenge government snooping, is through government admission.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite pledges to use the privilege sparingly, Barack Obama\u2019s administration has enshrined the Kafkaesque nature of American judicial proceedings in the War on Terror: the government claims it is a\u00a0state secret<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0whether you\u2019ve been targeted for surveillance, thereby invalidating any legal challenges you may present because you can\u2019t even prove you\u2019ve been a victim.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor\u00a0put it<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0ten seconds into the Solicitor General\u2019s argument: \u201cGeneral [Donald Verrelli], is there\u00a0anybody<\/em>\u00a0who has standing?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s decision in\u00a0Amnesty v. Clapper<\/em>\u00a0has the potential to determine how far the government can extend the cloak of secrecy over its national security activities. Notwithstanding the tough questioning by Sotomayor and her liberal colleagues on the bench,\u00a0legal scholars note<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that the court usually doesn\u2019t hear a case unless it sees legitimate ground to overturn a circuit court\u2019s decision\u2014which in this case would mean denying that the plaintiffs had standing to bring suit.<\/span><\/p>\n

National Clearinghouse for Treasonous Contentions<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Surreal judicial machinations aside, what are the real threats of the government\u00a0collecting all the communications and personal data<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that fall into NSA\u2019s surveillance net?<\/span><\/p>\n

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is a freshly minted bureaucracy\u2014within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)\u2014that houses and evaluates \u201cterrorism\u201d intelligence from the nation\u2019s 16 other spy agencies, including NSA. It was created to streamline interagency intelligence sharing but ironically, or perhaps indicatively, has led to\u00a0even more red tape<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to\u00a0a series of new \u201cguidelines\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0issued by the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and head of NCTC in March of 2012, the center now also acquires information mined from any government database (ranging from local law-enforcement data to employment history and student records). It can also buy data from private sector aggregators\u2014including\u00a0millions upon millions of lawful commercial transactions<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0over the past decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

Previously, as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)\u00a0noted<\/span><\/a><\/span>, \u201cthe intelligence community was barred from collecting information about ordinary Americans unless the person was a terror suspect or part of an actual investigation.\u201d When the NCTC acquired non-terrorism related data, such as that described above, it had to identify and discard it within 180 days. That regulation was scrapped in the new guidelines, which allow NCTC to collect innocuous data and \u201ccontinually assess\u201d information concerning innocent Americans for up to five years. The ACLU goes on to mention:<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps most disturbing, once information is gathered (not necessarily connected to terrorism), in many cases it can be shared with \u201ca federal, state, local, tribal or foreign or international entity, or to an individual or entity not part of a government\u201d\u2014literally anyone.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As revealed in a recent\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>expose, we now know the NCTC also coordinates counterterrorism operations such as the CIA\u2019s targeted assassination program. As one anonymous official told the\u00a0Post<\/em>, \u201c[i]t is the keeper of the criteria\u201d that determine who is killed by the President. How is this designation reached? Presumably through the same\u00a0ineffective<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0algorithms and data-mining technology mentioned above.<\/span><\/p>\n

FML: What Once Was TMI For TIA is Now A-OK<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately following 9\/11, the Pentagon unveiled the closest thing to an actual \u201cBig Brother\u201d program that had ever earnestly been considered in the United States:\u00a0Total Information Awareness (TIA)<\/span><\/a><\/span>. A pilot scheme designed to collate as much information as possible about as many people as possible within one massive database, TIA would have been accessible to government officials who could then extract actionable information about potential terrorists.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2003, Congress shut down the program after bipartisan objections to this massive domestic surveillance proposal reached a fever pitch. Among the concerns voiced was the need to protect the privacy of millions of Americans whose personal information \u2013including<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u201chuge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records\u201d\u2013 would be\u00a0stored and perused<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0by deficient computer programs aimed at detecting suspicious activity patterns, without any probable cause to suspect criminal wrongdoing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless of the corporate rush to massage\u00a0\u201cbig data\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in order to target consumers, when such data-mining technologies are placed at the disposal of the state, the result is to contravene the protection against \u201cunreasonable searches and seizures\u201d\u00a0enshrined in the Bill of Rights<\/span><\/a><\/span>. The Fourth Amendment forbids the issuing of \u201cwarrants\u201d that do not specify who is to be searched and for what purpose. But technological ubiquity and interconnectedness have called this fundamental Constitutional protection into question.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the Congressional backlash against TIA, the government\u2019s current data-mining operations\u00a0represent the realization of TIA\u2019s core purpose<\/span><\/a><\/span>: the acquisition and storage of massive amounts of personal data that can be mined to determine everything the government would ever want to know about a person. By utilizing pattern recognition software,\u00a0it can even lay out a timeline of your life\u2019s activities<\/span><\/a><\/span>: everything you\u2019ve ever done since the program was initiated, with predictive (albeit fallible) algorithms used to foresee where or what you\u2019ll be doing in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

The news of the Obama administration\u2019s \u201cdisposition matrix\u201d adds new icing to the cake. The\u00a0Post\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0article implies that the information culled from these databases can be used not just to track you, but to determine your \u201cdisposition\u201d toward violence against the U.S. government: your predilection for terrorist activities\u2014what could amount to a death sentence for crimes that have yet to be committed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only types of intelligence within these databases that can possibly be used to predict future criminal activity are suspicious commercial transactions (large bank transfers or the purchase of bomb-making materials, for example) or alarming speech. Despite assurances from the Obama administration that they\u2019re simply targeting \u201cbad guys<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d the adoption of preventive counterterror measures requires the (currently secret) deployment of evidence against a suspect before they commit a crime. To borrow a phrase from the science-fiction dystopia\u00a0Minority Report<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>, it requires conviction of a \u201cpre-crime.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Because there have been notably few successful terrorist attacks on US interests (outside of declared war zones, like Iraq and Afghanistan,\u00a0where the label \u201cterrorist\u201d lacks any objective meaning<\/span><\/a><\/span>) since 9\/11, it cannot conceivably be argued (nor has it) that the people the president is assassinating in Yemen and Pakistan have actually committed any acts of terrorism. So how did they get onto the list to begin with? Here, a close look at the most-discussed case arising from the targeted killing program is instructive.<\/span><\/p>\n

I Left My Heart\u2014and Right to Due Process\u2014in Albuquerque?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Anwar al-Awlaki\u2014the radical Islamist preacher from New Mexico who joined\u00a0al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u2014was\u00a0assassinated by a drone strike<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in Yemen on September 30, 2011. His case has been a centerpiece of debate regarding the kill-list because of his status as an American citizen outside a declared war zone, which\u00a0many argue<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0should make applicable Constitutional protections like the right to due process of law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Less often discussed, because they can never be definitively known, are the criteria leading to his placement on the kill list. Few claim that Awlaki was an innocent bystander\u2014he openly preached for violence<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0against the US military in retaliation for what he saw as unbridled aggression against Muslims across the world\u2014but aside from anonymous assertions made in the press and the\u00a0flourish of speeches from the White House<\/span><\/a><\/span>, no government official has ever presented any evidence that he was an \u201coperational commander\u201d in the organization. That is to say, it has never been determined or even legitimately claimed that he committed an act of terrorism or engaged in a conspiracy to commit such an act.<\/span><\/p>\n

What we do know is this: he was a\u00a0remarkably successful recruiter<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0of Western Muslims to the cause of al-Qaeda. His English fluency in particular made his sermons and speeches quite palatable to disaffected Muslims in the U.S. and Great Britain, including (allegedly) the Fort Hood shooter and the Underwear Bomber.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many will say, \u201cBut surely incitement to violence of this sort is a crime, right?\u201d Well, the lack of charges against him notwithstanding, it depends.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1969 the Supreme Court heard the case of\u00a0Brandenburg v. Ohio<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>, in which an Ohio-based Klansman was arrested for making a speech that advocated violence against government officials who, along with various minorities, \u201csuppress[ed] the white, Caucasian race.\u201d The statute he allegedly violated was a remnant of the\u00a01919 Red Scare<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that prohibited advocating for violence to achieve political or industrial reform.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brandenburg\u2019s lower-court conviction was overturned because his speech failed three elements of what later became known as\u00a0\u201cthe Brandenburg test\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0for criminal incitement\u2014intent, imminence, and likelihood. To hastily summarize, urging criminal activity against specific persons in a situation where it can be reasonably conceived such action will take place is a crime. However, championing violence as a general method of achieving political goals without a clear target, subjective intention, or reasonable presumption of accomplishment is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0a crime and is protected under the First Amendment.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, where does Awlaki figure into this precedent? To our knowledge, his speech did not meet the criteria set forth in the Brandenburg decision, and is thus protected by the Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which adds another layer of intrigue to the equation: could he have been added to the kill list not because of his criminal actions but because what he was doing\u2014as threatening as it was\u2014was\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0illegal under the law? Was assassination a convenient method of bypassing an arduous, and potentially unsuccessful, prosecution while demonstrating that\u00a0anyone<\/em>\u00a0who challenges US power can and will be killed?<\/span><\/p>\n

We will never definitively know the answers to those questions because they were eviscerated with Anwar al-Awlaki\u2019s flesh following the explosion of a Hellfire missile in Yemen 13 months ago. And not even the whisper campaign being conducted in the media against the dead cleric can explain why his son, an American minor,\u00a0was killed in a\u00a0separate<\/em>\u00a0drone strike<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0some two weeks later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter the Legal Labyrinth<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Because the Obama administration insists on keeping its national security policies furtive, the criteria for placement on the kill list remain off-limits in a court of law. Even if those placed on such a list somehow found out about it, they would be unable to challenge it in court\u2014since, according to the Catch-22 interpretation of the government\u2019s state-secrets privilege, knowledge of that designation can be considered a state secret.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to al-Awlaki\u2019s assassination, the ACLU and \u00a0Nasser al-Awlaki, the slain preacher\u2019s father,\u00a0brought suit<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to have the government disclose its reasoning in putting his son on a kill list. Although narrowly focused, the court\u2019s decisions, as well as the procedural hurdles faced by the plaintiffs, are an enlightening model of how such cases tend to be adjudicated in the federal judiciary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ten days after Nasser al-Awlaki retained counsel on his son\u2019s behalf, the Treasury Department\u2019s\u00a0Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC)<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0placed the son, Anwar, on a list that labeled him a \u201cspecially designated global terrorist.\u201d Placement there\u00a0made<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u201cit a crime for lawyers to provide representation for his benefit without first seeking a license from OFAC.\u201d Only after OFAC reluctantly gave lawyers the right to sue on behalf of their client (after\u00a0being sued<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0itself), was the case allowed to proceed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The court\u00a0determined<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that the elder Awlaki didn\u2019t have standing to ask why his son was listed as a \u201cspecially designated global terrorist,\u201d because technically Nasser wasn\u2019t the party subject to assassination. The judge presiding over the case also found that cases like this could not be adjudicated the way retroactive habeas cases arising from Guantanamo Bay are, because of the \u201c[im]propriety of a judge doing so in advance of what he characterizes as a military decision,\u201d as noted by Adam Serwer of\u00a0The American Prospect<\/em>. In sum, it was decided the court couldn\u2019t determine the legality of extrajudicial state murder until it occurs.<\/span><\/p>\n

To recap: you are placed on a kill list, making your assassination a priority of the state. First, you must fight in court to receive permission to\u00a0even have<\/em>\u00a0legal representation. Then you must present yourself and file suit in federal court, thereby disclosing your location and possibly enabling the very murder you\u2019re trying to halt (or, in this case, simply trying to figure out the justifications for). Moreover, the court cannot suspend your execution order because doing so would be preemptively second-guessing the executive.<\/span><\/p>\n

And even if you get that far, the government can still assert the state-secrets privilege to withhold vital information from the court and prevent meaningful challenge. If this warren of procedural minutiae and legal dilemmas seems designed to obstruct and preclude accountability, that\u2019s because it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Same Wine, Different Bottles<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Due process of law, as it pertains to national security, has now become a fictive concept only seen in the movies. \u201cPre-crime,\u201d whether determined by computer algorithm or\u00a0physical activity<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> is now a reality punishable by death.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the knowledge that some of the nation\u2019s largest domestic data-mining programs are now housed under the same roof as the \u201cdisposition matrix\u201d for determining who is threatening enough to kill by Hellfire missile, Americans should be acutely aware of the danger this presents. The potential for abuse is grave, and will remain so until the legislative and judicial branches of government tasked with checking executive power re-assert their Constitutional prerogatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

The partisan duopoly enjoyed by the Democrats and Republicans recently gave the American public a choice between two candidates who embraced a vast majority of the same policies, yet struck different tones and styles in their rhetorical delivery. Both parties have endorsed George W. Bush\u2019s once-controversial executive power grab. It is up to the people to begin a process that will stop this wholesale violation of the\u00a0Fourth Amendment\u2019s<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u201cright of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,\u201d and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments\u2019\u00a0due process<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0clause: \u201cnor shall any person . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law\u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With neither major political party willing to address this fundamental issue of our government\u2019s relationship to its citizenry, and no endpoint in sight for the War on Terror that is used to justify the excesses of our current surveillance state, we may very well ask ourselves: What was this election for, anyway?<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big Brother, Kill Lists, and Secrecy: What to Expect From Obama\u2019s Second Term by Christian Stork Following Barack Obama\u2019s significant electoral victory, the ways in..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-us-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/droneobama3_15391_8ead0.jpg?fit=514%2C360&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}