In 2019, agents of the federal and state governments persuaded judges to issue 99% of all requested intercepts. An intercept is any type of government surveillance – telephone, text message, email, even in-person. These are intercepts that theoretically are based on...
All Spying All the Time
During this summer of madness in Portland, Oregon, and sadness over COVID-19, two below-the-radar events occurred implicating the insatiable appetite of the United States government to spy on everyone in America. Regular readers of this column know that the feds have...
Spying on Journalists
Last week, this column argued that the only constitutional role for armed federal forces in Portland, Oregon, was to assist U.S. marshals in protecting federal property and personnel there – in this case, the federal courthouse and those who come to it. The column...
How Totalitarianism Begins
"The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own consciences."...
A Knee on Our Throats
For two months now, most of America has endured a government-imposed lockdown. I hate to use that word – lockdown – as it connotes locking prisoners into their cells during prison disturbances. But it is the word that the government itself uses when referring to its...
A Perfect Storm
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809)...
Take Rights Seriously, Even During a Pandemic
"If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned." ~ Justice George Sutherland (1862-1942) In his 2008 book "Taking Rights Seriously," the late professor Ronald Dworkin...
Repeal the Patriot Act
I have been writing for years about the dangers to human freedom that come from government mass surveillance. The United States was born in a defiant reaction to government surveillance. In the decade preceding the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the...
Punishing the Free Speech of Julian Assange
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." ~ First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution In the oral argument of the famous US Supreme Court cases known collectively as the Pentagon Papers Case, the late Justice William O. Douglas asked a...
A Primer on Domestic Spying
"The Framers ... conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men." – Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) While we were all consumed by impeachment, a pernicious...