Constitutional Amendment for Privacy

This is an open letter submitted to my Senators and Congressman on November 18, 2013.
-----
I am writing to ask you to end government spying on ordinary American citizens, and to enact a Constitutional Amendment for Privacy.   The guarantee of privacy is a basic right of a free people.

The Privacy Amendment should prohibit indiscriminate data collection by both business and government.  My personal information is my property; it may not be taken without my explicit permission.  Further, commercial enterprises must not require my personal information as a condition of providing service to me beyond what is necessary for the delivery of that service.

Recent revelations from Edward Snowden have revealed the extent of government spying to the American people.  It seems the NSA has gathered all of my e-mails and keeps record of all of my reading on the Internet.  The NSA has worked very hard to keep the extent of their incursions a secret.

There are two reasons for secrecy in government.  The first reason is to protect Americans from our enemies.   The second reason is to hide what the government is doing from the people.

It is clear to me that we are in the second situation.   The NSA brazenly lied to Congress about the extent of its proposed programs when seeking budgetary authority for their data center in Utah.  They seek to avoid public knowledge of their actions, and to avoid Congressional oversight.   Such secrecy and deception does little to convey confidence in their integrity.

Domestic spying is a defining characteristic of despotic regimes.  At this time, anyone who says, “I have nothing to hide” is missing the point.  This amount of secret power will be abused.  We have many examples of the abuse of power in our own history.  These examples pale in comparison to the horrors which occurred in other countries through the past century.  America is not immune to such abuse; our only defenses are the Constitution, our courts and Congress.

The NSA should not collect nor read my e-mail. They should not collect the history of my Internet searches nor accumulate metadata about my telephone calls.  While these programs are in effect, I cannot write candidly, for fear some keyword or combination of words will somehow trigger a computerized alarm about my communications.  Freedom of speech doesn’t exist in a constant condition of surveillance. I recommend a recent column by Leonard Pitts, in which he worries about his Google searches while researching a novel about terrorism.

By what logic do we have a secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, approving spying programs on American citizens?  What place does a secret court hold in our democracy?  How has this court become a 34-year institution in our government?  The court is clearly a rubber-stamp for the NSA, having denied only 11 of 33,942 requests for domestic surveillance warrants from 1979 to 2012.  Will the court define secret offenses, and approve secret penalties and restrictions on citizens deemed to be security risks?  If you answer no, how do you know?

Domestic spying is inconsistent with what it means to be a free people.  The spying programs conducted by the NSA are expressly forbidden by the Fourth Amendment, but somehow continue.   It is up to you; it is up to Congress to put a stop to it and protect American freedom.

An Open Letter to President Obama about Domestic Surveillance

I am writing to protest the NSA’s broad programs of domestic surveillance, and ask for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of privacy.

I supported Mr. Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections through campaign contributions, social media and writings on the Internet.  I now feel betrayed by Mr. Obama on the issue of privacy and domestic surveillance.

The right to privacy is a fundamental American freedom, recognized by multiple Supreme Court decisions.   The right to privacy has been recognized as implicit in the First, Third, Fourth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.  Nevertheless, these are not sufficient, and we need a new Amendment, specifically defining and protecting the right of privacy against intrusion by government and business.

Funding for the NSA data center in Utah was obtained through misleading testimony to Congress. Authority for domestic surveillance was given by secret decisions by a secret court. Democracy cannot function when the actions of the government are taken in secret.  Secret surveillance, the secret court, and misleading testimony to Congress give credence to those who say we cannot trust the government.

Our constitution was carefully constructed in order to provide checks on the powers of government and protection of individual freedoms. The Fourth Amendment is a particular embodiment of that restraint on government. A 1989 Supreme Court ruling made a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment, and allowed wire-tapping on a case-by-case basis where a known security threat existed. The expansion of that ruling to perform comprehensive surveillance across the nation on the correspondence, reading and conversations of the citizenry is an outrage.

I believe that these powers of surveillance will be abused by future administrations, in ways small and large. History does not speak well of human nature, given the opportunity to use secret powers to perpetuate power. The NSA, with the permission of this administration, has built and institutionalized the apparatus for political repression in the United States.  Like the surveillance itself, the criteria to track or prosecute violators must also be secret, and the decision to prosecute is likewise secret, and beyond appeal.  At best, it resembles Vladimir Putin’s “managed democracy”.   At worst, it resembles the Stalinist terrors of the 1930’s.

I no longer feel free.  I cannot look at webpages or write an e-mail without thinking about how it might be misconstrued by a computer program or some government hack.  Under the current policies of NSA surveillance, I no longer live in a free country.

Shame.