are going to be backed up by who? Government? Isn't that the same Government that has approved legislation that allows them to monitor your conversations?

Given Echelon, they already monitor all conversation via cell phones, now they monitor Internet and US phone conversations as well, which brings them directly into our homes. This seems not to be the way it has been since 1776 but we must briefly (yea right) explore the past to confront the future as the article tries to do, so here is my limited view:

Great Britians original rule in North America continued for approximately two hundred years. During the latter parts of colonization, bitterness began to spread like wild fire among the colonists. They regreted the high taxes imposed on them and the fact that they were not a direct part of the governance.

This now seems like where we are headed to. Given the War of Independence was was fought with guns owned by farmers and private citizens, I see no question about the 2nd Amendment being used to backup the 1st Amendment, while the 9th and 14th Amendments are used to solidify the first two Amendments' blunt edges.

Shouldn't we care about the Amendments that where not ratified yet or where finally ratified recently?

"Amendment XXVII, ratified in 1992 (201 years late), limits the effective date of congressional pay raises to the next Congress AFTER the one which voted for the pay raise. That would seem to plug a gaping hole in the Constitution... but it didn't. Those worms didn't miss a beat. They enacted a law which provides a cost-of-living adjustment, a COLA. Now they automatically get raises based on inflation, but inflation for Congress is different than inflation for other folks. For example, Social Security provides about 1.0 to 1.9 percent (1997-2000.) Congress gets 3.0 to 5.0 percent. The congressional COLA law was passed in the wee hours of the morning and naturally the Republicans blame the Democrats, the Democrats blame the Republicans, and the press is much too busy with such important matters as Monica to publish how members voted or to point out that Representatives and Senators connived to circumvent the law."

Read more about the above and more here: <link>

So, when you think you have the right to freedom of the press, speech, etc... just remember, it can be changed, rearranged and taken away, by your military, under direct control of your government, called: Martial Law or President Suspending the Constitution in time of crisis. So, some of you still need to ask: Why should private citizens have firepower? I know I don't.

-DOH

Bravo!

Nobody monitors your conversation, unless it goes overseas to places like Somalia, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. What's wrong with that? How does that infringe on YOUR rights. Get real folks. Get an IQ.

intersurfa:

Nobody monitors your conversation, unless it goes overseas to places like Somalia, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. What's wrong with that? How does that infringe on YOUR rights. Get real folks. Get an IQ.

Interesting, you focus on one thing and think you know all the rest, lets start with this:

1) Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

2) From the debate on FISA: We conducted intelligence since World War II and we've maintained a sensitivity as far as sources and methods. It's basically a sources and methods argument. If you don't protect sources and methods then those you target will choose alternative means, different paths. As it is today al-Qaida in Iraq is targeting Americans, specifically the coalition. There are activities supported by other nations to import electronic, or explosively formed projectiles, to do these roadside attacks and what we know about that is often out of very sensitive sources and methods. So the more public it is, then they take it away from us. So that's the tradeoff.

Dude, it is not just 'Somalia, Syria, Iran, Lebanon', it is everyone and everything hooked to a communication line. Next time you slam someones IQ, go slam Clinton's, he is only 140 IQ, mine is higher. Why don't you look up what Echelon is or, better yet, you are intimately familiar already.

Also, I'm a semi-retired IT professional, done everything from networks to code, hardware to software in very large fortune 500 companies. Reading a network data stream is like trying to see the individual droplets coming over Niagara Falls. So, in order to 'see' that information, they need to target either specific addresses, emails, IPs, portals, etc... or have hundreds of acres of data centers, co-located around the country storing that data to be scraped, walked through, analyzed, decrypted, etc... If you know anything about big business, they throw hardware at every problem, until it is too big, then the call goes out for faster devices, faster network links and the people to support that.

Just ask anyone at the CDC (cult of the dead cow) what they have done forever in that think tank to make things faster to read, like your I/O interface card to the Network. Don't even think for one moment, that the microcode there doesn't have extra code to allow unlimited access to your boxes data stream, w/o reporting it to the OS.

Conspiracy theories are just that, theories. Mine is not coming from there, so go figure. And while your at it, ask your buddies in your analyst group to stop trying to discredit the truth, it is unbecoming of their intelligence. ;-)

-DOH

Your tag line "Get an IQ"; is pretty IQ impaired, as are your wrong definitive pronouncements. You DO work for News Corp., dontcha ? You're a Blatherer-In-Training for Fox----Admit it !

There have been some interesting articles discussing the interference of the FISA court in these proceedings. The interesting issue is that the government is *not* supposed to use such phone calls to get any search warrants for any purpose against any US person, or have any action taken against a US person on the basis of these calls. Hence this is not supposed to be an unreasonable search because the US person s not the target of the search.

The FISC (headed by none other than Colleen Kollar-Kotelly) has occasionally suspended the program when violations of constitutional rights in it have come to light. There is still an open question as to the extent of interceptions and extent to which civil liberties have actually been violated.

<link>

<link>

Hope this helps.

I looked through the laws and couldn't find the big about the public emergency powers. Can you tell me which section of HR 5122 you are referring to?

Digging right now, will let you know as soon as I have something concrete for you to chew on. :-)

It is interesting to note that I looked at the US Gov site and it is temporarily down, only for this article, amazing eh?

However, Wiki has reference:

<link>)

Whitehouses press release on it:

<link>

GovTrack has it:

<link>

Library of Congress:

<link>::

Still compiling more...

-DOH

Here is article I got my text from which has couple more references:

<link>

Hope this all helps.

-DOH