Obama On NSA Spying: “I Would Be Concerned Too, If I Weren’t Inside The Government”Zero HedgeAugust 11, 2013

In what is as close to saying 'trust us, we're from the government,' as it gets; President Obama's traitor-identifying, blame-pointing, cover-your-assing speech on Friday has done nothing to end the supposedly "critical NSA counter-terrorism tool," from being used on American citizens. People of America should be relieved, as the President stated unequivocally that he is "comfortable that the program is not being abused." If only American citizens were able to see all the moving pieces, Obama implied, they would say "you know what? These [government] folks are following the law," but because the program remains classified, it remains impossible to know what is really going on. Reassuring rhetoric aside, as the AP notes, Obama offered these inspiring words regarding the ongoing concerns that law-abiding citizens may still have beyond his assurances: "I would be worried too, if I weren't inside the government." Another teleprompter-less glimpse of what he really thinks? Perhaps; but for now, the NSA will continue to sweep phone records of all Americans with the possibility of creating similar databases of credit card transactions, hotel records, and Internet searches.

Via AP,

President Barack Obama made it clear Friday he has no intention of stopping the daily collection of American phone records. And while he offered "appropriate reforms," he blamed government leaks for creating distrust of his domestic spying program.

...

"I am comfortable that the program currently is not being abused," Obama said. "I am

comfortable that if the American people examined exactly what was taking place, how it was being used, what the safeguards were, that they would say, 'You know what? These folks are following the law.'"

Because the program remains classified, however, it's impossible for Americans to conduct that analysis beyond the assurances his administration has given.

"Understandably, people would be concerned," the president said. "I would be, too, if I weren't inside the government."

...

Every day, the NSA sweeps up the phone records of all Americans. The program was authorized under the USA Patriot Act, which Congress hurriedly passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The NSA says phone records are the only information it collects in bulk under that law. But officials have left open the possibility that it could create similar databases of people's credit card transactions, hotel records and Internet searches.

Obama said he welcomed the debate, but his national security team also said it never intended to tell Americans about the highly classified phone program, which it falsely denied existed.

...

Obama is creating an outside advisory panel to review U.S. surveillance powers. He did notsay who would be on that panel but over the past week, the president met secretly with technology business leaders, some of whom cooperated with the government surveillance and were unhappy to see their companies named in leaked government documents.

The government already has a panel, mandated by Congress, to conduct the same review. The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has already held one hearing on the surveillance systems and constitutional concerns and its five members have been given classified briefings on NSA operations.

...

As Obama spoke, the Justice Department released what Obama called "the legal rationale" for the surveillance. But the document was not a legal analysis and amounted primarily to arecitation of what the administration has already told Congress.

...

The administration says it only looks at the phone records when investigating suspected terrorists. But testimony before Congress revealed how easy it is for Americans with no connection to terrorism to unwittingly have their calling patterns analyzed by the government.

...

Even with the proposed changes, Obama will have to persuade Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act in 2015.

...

The White House chose to announce the changes and release the documents on a Friday afternoon in August when Congress was on vacation and much of Washington had cleared out.

The Obama Deception The Truth About Barry Soetoro AKA Barack Obama VIDEO BELOWhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw

Fall of the Republic Obama's Final Destruction Of America VIDEO BELOWhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU

The NSA is Turning the Internet into a Total Surveillance SystemAlexander Abdo and Patrick ToomeyThe GuardianAugust 11, 2013

Now we know all Americans'international email is searchedand saved, we can see how farthe 'collect it all' mission hasgone Another burst of sunlightpermeated the NationalSecurity Agency's black box ofdomestic surveillance lastweek.

According to the New YorkTimes, the NSA is searching thecontent of virtually every emailthat comes into or goes out ofthe United States without awarrant. To accomplish this astonishing invasion of Americans' privacy, the NSA reportedly is making a copy of nearly every international email. It then searches that cloned data, keeping all of the emails containing certain keywords and deleting the rest – all in a matter of seconds.

If you emailed a friend, family member or colleague overseas today (or if, from abroad, you emailed someone in the US), chances are that the NSA made a copy of that email and searched it for suspicious information.

The NSA appears to believe this general monitoring of our electronic communications is justified because the entire process takes, in one official's words, "a small number of seconds". Translation: the NSA thinks it can intercept and then read Americans' emails so long as the intrusion is swift, efficient and silent.

That is not how the fourth amendment works.

Whether the NSA inspects and retains these messages for years, or only searches through them once before moving on, the invasion of Americans' privacy is real and immediate. There is no "five-second rule" for fourth amendment violations: the US constitution does not excuse these bulk searches simply because they happen in the blink of an eye.

The government claims that this program is authorized by a surveillance statute passed in 2008 that allows the government to target foreigners for surveillance. Although the government has frequently defended that law as a necessary tool in gathering foreign intelligence, the government has repeatedly misled the public about the extent to which the statute implicates Americans' communications.

There should no longer be any doubt: the US government has for years relied upon its authority to collect foreigners' communications as a useful cover for its sweeping surveillance of Americans'

communications. The surveillance program revealed last week confirms that the interception of American communications under this law is neither "targeted" at foreigners (in any ordinary sense of that word) nor "inadvertent", as officials have repeatedly claimed.

Last week's revelations are a disturbing harbinger of future surveillance. Two months ago, this newspaper reported that the US government has been forcing American telecommunications companiesto turn over the call records of every one of their customers "on an ongoing daily basis", to allow the NSA to later search those records when it has a reason to do so. The government has since defended theprogram, in part on the theory that Americans' right to privacy is not implicated by the initial acquisition of their phone records, only by their later searching.

That legal theory is extraordinarily dangerous because it would allow the NSA to acquire virtually all digital information today simply because it might possibly become relevant tomorrow. The surveillanceprogram revealed by the New York Times report goes one step further still. No longer is the government simply collecting information now so that the data is available to search, should a reasonable suspicion arise at some point in the future; the NSA is searching everything now – in real time and without suspicion – merely on the chance that it finds something of interest.

That principle of pre-emptive surveillance threatens to subvert the most basic protections of the fourth amendment, which generally prohibit the government from conducting suspicion-less fishing expeditions through our private affairs. If the government is correct that it can search our every communication in case we say or type something suspicious, there is little to prevent the NSA from converting the internet into a tool of pervasive surveillance. Because of this very real possibility, these programs should be brought out of the twilight zone of the national security state and into the daylight, so that the public can decide for itself what privacy means in a digital age.

41%: Obama’s Approval Drops to Lowest Level in Gallup Poll Since 2011CNS NewsAugust 11, 2013

The percentage of Americans saying that they approve of thejob Barack Obama is doing as president dropped to 41% inthe Gallup poll's three-day tracking average, the lowest ithas been since Dec. 28, 2011.Obama's approval rating plunged in polling done the eveningafter he go a rare afternoon press conference.

In Gallup's three-day tracking period that ended on Thursday,Aug. 8, 44 percent had said they approve of the job he is doingand 46 percent said they disapproved. One day later, in thetracking period that ended on Friday, Aug. 9, Obama's approvalwas at 41 percent and his disapproval at 50 percent.

Which Shall It Be, Freedomof Speech or Not?Michael S. Rozefflewrockwell.comAugust 10, 2013

Can a man speak freely inAmerica without any fear of punishment or can he not? He cannot.Has the U.S. government concocted free speech “crimes” in order to suppress free speech? It has. Is the U.S. government investigating free speech activities with the notion that they may beterroristic? It is.

Being pro-liberty, I am pro-free speech. I think that liberty and being able to speak freely are part of what being a human being means. In addition, I think that free speech enhances human life. Favoring the human being, human life and its development, I favor free speech. Thisdoes not mean that I like or approve of everything that anyone says. I don’t, most assuredly. It doesn’t mean that groups of people may not voluntarily suppress free speech among themselves. Favoring free speech implies that I do not believe in forcibly curtailing speech.

If we wish, we can discuss free speech without reference to the U.S. constitution. The idea of free speech doesn’t depend on a constitution, but because the government is suppressing free speech and claiming

that it is doing so legally, I amgoing to discuss some specificcourt cases that reference theConstitution.

Being pro-liberty, I am not infavor of a system thatcentralizes law-making in oneman or a few men as the U.S.system under the Constitutiondoes. What if they make badlaws? What if the systemprovides no effective means toalter those laws? What if thesystem actively suppresses andundermines the availablemeans to alter those laws?What if great distress has to beendured for many years beforelaws are altered?

But in this article, I postpone speaking with my Spoonerite anti-Constitution hat on until the end. I mainly wish to explore how it is that the Supreme Court is undermining free speech under the cover of its claim to be the final arbiter of what U.S. law says. However, implicitly I am raising the question of what good a Constitution is under which rights written down in black and white can be effectively destroyed by the Supreme Court.

After the U.S. constitution went into effect in 1789, it was amended in 1791. The First Amendment concerned certain freedoms, including free speech.

Has the U.S. government subverted the First Amendment? It has and it is.

What does this amendment state? It reads in full:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the freeexercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The amendment is clearly, unambiguously and strongly expressed. Justice Hugo Black has written of its “emphatic command”. It leaves no room for doubt. Congress does not have the power to make a lawthat abridges freedom of speech. This means in any way. It means under any circumstances. In addition, the amendment says that Congress has no power under the Constitution to make a law abridging freedom of the press. There is to be free speech for any person whom the Constitution claimsto subject to its law and this includes members of the press. This article doesn’t deal with the recent attacks on freedom of the press.

Supreme Court decisions sometimes contain pro-free speech language. At other times, the decisions areanti-free speech. There is a history of First Amendment decisions. Reviewing them all is beyond the scope of this article. I propose to look at a few cases in order to show that in recent years the Supreme Court is undermining free speech.

As an example of a pro-free speech opinion, we have Justice Black in 1971 (New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713). This is the Pentagon Papers case. The U.S. government classifies documents. Among them was a study of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, 1945 to 1967. Daniel Ellsberg photocopied the study and gave 43 volumes of it to the New York Times, which began publishing it in 1971. According to the linked Wikipedia article:

“Later, Ellsberg said the documents ‘demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates’. He added that he leaked the Papers to end what he perceived to be ‘a wrongful war.’”

Although the Nixon administration might have decided to prosecute Ellsberg and the Times under the Espionage Act of 1917, it chose not to. Instead it “obtained a federal court injunction forcing the Times to cease publication after three articles.” The case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 in favor of the Times . Black defended the First Amendment vigorously:

“In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained

press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.”

Then, as now, the government argued that other parts of the Constitution allowed the government to suppress free speech. The Solicitor General of the U.S. said the following:

“Now, Mr. Justice [BLACK], your construction of . . . [the First Amendment] is well known, and I certainly respect it. You say that no law means no law, and that should be obvious. I can only say, Mr. Justice, that to me it is equally obvious that ‘no law’ does not mean ‘no law,’ and I would seek to persuade the Court that that is true. . . . [T]here are otherparts of the Constitution that grant powers and responsibilities to the Executive, and . . . the First Amendment was not intended to make it impossible for the Executive to function or toprotect the security of the United States.”

The government’s brief contained this language:

“[t]he authority of the Executive Department to protect the nation against publication of information whose disclosure would endanger the national security stems from two interrelated sources: the constitutional power of the President over the conduct of foreign affairs and his authority as Commander-in-Chief.”

This is the “inherent power” doctrine. What it amounts to is saying that just as Congress can enact any law that is “necessary and proper” to pursuing its powers, so the Executive can take any action necessary and proper to carrying out his constitutional duties. Black demolished this argument as

follows:

“In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of ‘national security.’ The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to ‘make’ a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law.”

He added

“To find that the President has ‘inherent power’ to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make ‘secure.’”

He criticized the government’s reliance on “national security” as well as the government’s keeping of “military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government”:

“The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.”

Justice Black cited an earlier case (De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353) in which “the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.” I will shortly cite a case decided in2010 in which the Court reached the opposite conclusion, thereby subverting the First Amendment. Black cited the language of Chief Justice Hughes in that case:

“The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained bypeaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.”

If the current U.S. government believed in and supported the First Amendment, if Obama, Holder, and various senators and congressmen actually believed in free speech and freedom of the press, and if theybelieved in what Black and Hughes wrote, they would be leaving Assange, Manning, Snowden and other whistleblowers alone, not accusing them, pursuing them, trying to or actually imprisoning them, while threatening and pressuring other governments over them. These men would not be in fear of theirlives. Instead, important and leading men and women in the U.S. government are busy attacking the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court in recent years is issuing decisions that are destroying free speech. In 2006, the Court handed down Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410. The decision was a close one, 5-4. The Wikipedia article on this case is a helpful summary.

Ceballos was a deputy district attorney who was a kind of whistleblower. He found “serious

misrepresentations” in a deputy sheriff’ssworn affidavit. Ceballos remonstrated withhis superiors and sent them a memorandum.Later, Ceballos alleged that he became thesubject of retaliatory actions by his superiors.They denied this, but they also claimed that hehad no First Amendment right of free speechin his memo. The first result was againstCeballos:

“The District Court granted their [thesuperiors’] motion for summaryjudgment, concluding that becauseCeballos wrote his memo pursuant tothe duties of his employment, he wasnot entitled to First Amendmentprotection for the memo’s contents.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the NinthCircuit reversed the District Court decision“holding that his criticism of the warrant inthe memo constituted protected speech underthe First Amendment.” Its reasoning was notthat of Justice Black. Had they followedBlack, they would simply have said that as acitizen Ceballos had a First Amendment right to free speech. No abridgment of it was possible for any reason, and that’s the supreme law of the land. Instead, the Court of Appeals relied upon a series of First Amendment cases decided by the Supreme Court concerning the speech rights of public employees. In these cases, we witness already Supreme Court decisions that undermine the First Amendment, i.e., destroy the right of free speech. The cases begin with Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968). Another one is Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138. The Wikipedia articleon Connick v. Myers is informative.

The manner in which the Court destroys free speech in these cases is to subject the speech of public employees to tests. These tests “balance” speech against other matters of “public concern”. They qualify speech. They restrict speech. Unless it passes certain criteria, the speech of public employees can be suppressed by the government and become of no account. The public employees are denied theirrights as citizens. Since the First Amendment makes no such division of the citizenry according to their employers, the Court’s constitutional reasoning is evidently flawed at the root.

The Ceballos case then went to the Supreme Court. It held

“When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”

I quote the Wikipedia article on the impact of this case:

“The outcry among whistle-blower advocates and First Amendment advocates was particularly extensive. Whistleblower lawyer Stephen M. Kohn called the ruling ‘the single biggest setback for whistleblowers in the courts in the past 25 years.’ Under the ruling,

Kohn says, public employees—all 22 million of them—have no First Amendment rights when they are acting in an official capacity, and in many cases are not protected against retaliation. Kohn estimates that ‘no less than 90 percent of all whistleblowers will lose theircases on the basis of this decision.’”

The second case I bring up that is even more clearly anti-free speech is Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 130 S. Ct. 2705 (2010). This was a 6-3 decision. The Wikipedia article contains some interesting reactions from a range of persons who are critical of the decision, from Jimmy Carter to Noam Chomsky..

Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. brought this case against Humanitarian Law Project. Counsel for Humanitarian Law Project was David Cole, a Professor at Georgetown Law School. He explains his side of the case in an article.

The law at issue is that portion of the Patriot Act in which a crime is created consisting of providing “material support” to organizations that the government has designated as “foreign terrorist organizations.” According to Cole,

“The particular speech in question in Humanitarian Law Project advocated only nonviolent, lawful ends; the plaintiffs principally sought to advocate for human rights and peace to and with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish organization in Turkey that the Secretary of State had designated as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’ They did not intend to further the organization’s illegal ends; indeed, they sought to dissuade it from violence, and to urge it to pursue lawful ends through peaceful means. Yet the Court held, by a vote of 6-3, that the First Amendment permitted criminal prosecution of such speech.”

He wrote that “For the first time in its history, the Court upheld the criminalization of speech advocating only nonviolent, lawful ends on the ground that such speech might unintentionally assist a third party in criminal wrongdoing.”

The opinion written by Justice Roberts for the majority confirms Cole. Roberts writes

“Most of the activities in which plaintiffs seek to engage readily fall within the scope of theterms ‘training’ and ‘expert advice or assistance.’ Plaintiffs want to ‘train members of [the] PKK on how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes,’ and ‘teach PKK members how to petition various representative bodies such as the United Nations for relief.’”

Roberts openly writes about the free speech prohibition:

“Plaintiffs want to speak to the PKK and the LTTE, and whether they may do so under § 2339B depends on what they say. If plaintiffs’ speech to those groups imparts a ‘specific skill’ or communicates advice derived from ‘specialized knowledge’—for example, trainingon the use of international law or advice on petitioning the United Nations—then it is barred.”

In other words, Congress can constitutionally pass a law that abridges free speech and the Patriot Act issuch a law.

Cole points out the “grave repercussions” of this decision:

“Most immediately, nongovernmental organizations working to resolve conflict or to provide humanitarian assistance may well be unable to operate where designated ‘terrorist

organizations’ are involved, because any advice or assistance they provide could be criminally prohibited. Under this law, for example, when the Carter Center, run by former President Jimmy Carter, monitored elections in Lebanon in 2009, and met with Hezbollah, one of the parties to the contest, to explain what the monitors would look for in a free and fair election, it committed a crime by providing ‘expert advice,’ a form of ‘material support,’ to a designated terrorist organization. And when former Attorney General MichaelMukasey, former Homeland Security advisor Fran Townsend, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge recently advocated for de-listing a designated terrorist group from Iran in coordination with a leader of the group, they too committed the federal felony of providing ‘material support’ in the form of ‘services’ to the organization.”

Let me now put on my anti-government and anti-Constitution Spoonerite hat. We are seeing tyranny and usurpation under the Constitution. Word by word, case by case, law by law, the Congress and the Supreme Court are overthrowing the First Amendment (and others).

There is no stability of law as the government now operates. Any freedom can be attacked.

The idea that there has to be a final arbiter of law, such as the Supreme Court, is flawed. There is now such an arbiter and the result is a government monopoly on law and instability. The government’s monopoly on law is the father of tyranny.

The Constitution has provided no barrier to the anti-liberty movement. In 1870 in No Treason, Lysander Spooner put it succinctly:

“The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it.”

This is as true today as it was then.

Spooner was thinking of the Civil War immediately past in which the federal government had gone way out of bounds, inflicting much misery on Americans. This record of improper government growth accompanied by immiseration has been repeated and amplified in the intervening 143 years.

We are seeing free speech and freedom of the press under attack. I have not discussed the latter in this article.

Either the Constitution did not place in the hands of the people the means to prevent these and other attacks, or it did not construct a government whose internal arrangements prevented this; or else the Constitution authorized these attacks. These three possibilities are not mutually exclusive. All can be and are operative.

They all lead to the same conclusion, which is that the Constitution and the State that it created have failed to secure the peace, keep the People free and encourage the growth of their prosperity.

Michael S. Rozeff is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

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