Some basic questions arise about the Patriot Act and the use of the Patriot Act by the NSA and the FBI to gather intelligence.
1. Is the Patriot Act Constitutional, especially the "business records" interpretation where business records are expansively defined as all calls made in the US.
2. Is the Prism Program Constitutional, when used to trawl unlimited data about foreign nationals without a warrant?
3. Is there a structural flaw in the Constitutional framework of creating laws where the applied use of such laws are kept secret from the American People and no governmental process is designed to inform the public about them or more importantly challenge their legality in a public hearing in a Federal Court?
4. Is the FISA court as now operating, in reality a kangaroo court or rubber stamp with no teeth whatsoever ?
I think these are the basic questions that have arisen from the recent revelations of what the FBI and NSA have been doing and I would hope that those with some informed opinions on these basic questions would use this opportunity to address them.
To me the fact that Americans have no mechanism to become informed about what is being done with their private information, whether it be phone call records or whatever is the biggest threat to our liberty. There seems to be some sort of Catch 22, where citizens cannot challenge the legality of actions performed by the government either because they have no way of knowing about them, or in the cases where they do become aware of the government's actions, they are prevented from seeking redress in the Federal courts because the Justice Department can declare that to address the issue would endanger "National Security"
We need new democratic processes, whether a "Public Defender" who has equal jurisdiction in these matters as the Justice Department or some other mechanism where citizans are 1. Not kept totally in the dark and 2. Have a legal mechanism to challenge the governments actions.
Can anyone make the defend their case for either the Government or The People?