Google "pressure cookers," get a visit from the Cops

Friends,

Did you see this??  Google 'Pressure Cookers' and 'Backpacks,' Get a Visit from the Cops

A woman searches the Internet for information about pressure cookers.  Her husband checks out backpacks online.  Then...six law enforcement investigators show up at their home and start asking questions.  

But the government assures us no one is reading our emails or spying on our Internet searches.  They are just collecting data -- a LOT of it -- in case they need it to protect us.

Yes, government has a responsibility to protect us, but it also has a rather solemn obligation to protect this, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Clearly, the President and Congress aren’t interested in protecting the 4th Amendment.  They are the ones attacking it.  So...It’s up to you and me. Will you help me?

America has fought wars and shed blood to defend the liberties embodied in the Constitution.  But who’s defending those liberties now?  It certainly isn’t the politicians.  That’s why the Our America Initiative has launched a special Live Free Project specifically to mobilize and give voice to Americans who are ready to push back against the assault on our freedoms.  Your contribution today at Stand Up 4 the 4th will help us knock on the government’s doors before they come knocking on ours -- just because somebody in the house Googled “pressure cookers”.

This week, I was on the Mike Huckabee Show talking about the NSA and other threats to liberty. Next week I will be in Los Angeles for more events and national media appearances. That’s my job with the Our America Initiative -- to speak up and speak out.  But I can’t do it alone.  We need to reach millions of Americans and help them take action.

Your contribution of $10, $25, $50, $100 or more will make that possible.

Liberty IS under attack, and the politicians won’t stop until we stand up and speak out loudly enough that they HAVE to listen.  You and I can make that happen.  I’m ready. Are you?

I look forward to hearing from you.  We have a great deal of work to do.

Thanks!

 

Gov. Gary Johnson

Honorary Chairman

P.S.  With your help, we CAN restore the 4th Amendment’s protections.  But we can’t wait.  Go to Stand Up 4 the 4th today and help us do some door knocking of our own.

Join Rand Paul in fighting the NSA

Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and their allies in both parties believe they can disregard the Constitution and seize your phone records without even seeking a warrant or informing you! 

Now, Senator Rand Paul has introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act (S. 1121) to explicitly forbid the federal government from looking at your phone records without a warrant or probable cause to believe you are engaged in criminal or terrorist activity. 

Passing this legislation will be one of the most crucial battles of the year. 

So please sign your Stand with Rand Petition and make your most generous contribution to help C4L recruit even more Americans to stand up to Barack Obama's surveillance state.

In Liberty,

John Tate
President

Source: C4L

Rand Paul - Big Brother Really Is Watching Us

Big Brother Really Is Watching Us
By Senator Rand Paul

Photo by the Associated Press

When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."

How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach "balanced," though many rightly consider it Orwellian.

These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—"particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?

No one objects to balancing security against liberty. No one objects to seeking warrants for targeted monitoring based on probable cause. We've always done this. 

What is objectionable is a system in which government has unlimited and privileged access to the details of our private affairs, and citizens are simply supposed to trust that there won't be any abuse of power. This is an absurd expectation. Americans should trust the National Security Agency as much as they do the IRS and Justice Department.

Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.

I also believe that trolling through millions of phone records hampers the legitimate protection of our security. The government sifts through mountains of data yet still didn't notice, or did not notice enough, that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was traveling to Chechnya. Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis.

To protect against the invasion of Americans' privacy, I have introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act. I introduced similar Fourth Amendment protections in December and again just last month. Both measures would have prevented the data-mining we're now seeing, but both bills were rejected by the Senate. We will see if this time my colleagues will vote to support the Constitution that they all took an oath to uphold.

I am also looking into a class-action lawsuit to overturn the decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed for this to happen. I will take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. My office has already heard much enthusiasm for this action.

The administration has responded to the public uproar by simply claiming that it is allowed to have unlimited access to all Americans' private information. This response is a clear indication that the president views our Constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" as null and void. 

If this is the new normal in America, then Big Brother certainly is watching and it's not hyperbolic or extreme to say so. Nor is it unreasonable to fear which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable or negligible.

Mr. Paul, a Republican, is a senator from Kentucky.

 

A version of this article appeared June 11, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Big Brother Really Is Watching Us.

Source: Wall Street Journal