Wednesday, July 31, 2013

What?? US Court of Appeals 5th Circuit Rules that NSA cell phone tracking without warrant is constitutional?

by Karl Denninger

You do know that your phone is always communicating with the towers when it's turned on, right?  That's how it works -- it has to occasionally ping back and forth between the tower and device in order for a call to route to you, a text message to be delivered, etc.

Guess what?  There now is a court ruling that since you voluntarily "gave" that information to the cell company even though it would be impossible for you to have such a device and have it work without giving that data to them because your giving that data (your location) was "voluntary" it is not protected under the 4th Amendment and thus does not require a warrant.

The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Note that this is historical data.

That is, exactly what the NSA is grabbing from all cell carriers in bulk without a warrant.
"In bulk" means for everyone.

All the time.

The root of the problem here is not that it might lead to you "right now."  It's that the data, once acquired is never erased and thus becomes a record that can be usedat any time in the future if it becomes politically (or otherwise) expedient to use in order to implicate you in something.

The usual argument on the other side is something along the lines of "I'm not doing anything wrong so I don't care."  Uh huh.

You're a rather trusting sort, you know.  After all, there is no evidence that the government would ever turn into something evil at any time in your lifetime and then use that data to ex-post-facto link you to something they don't like -- right?

There's no history of governments doing things like this, is there?  Oh wait -- there is.  There are in fact dozens of such instances through history, and in virtually every single case the citizens who were ultimately murdered as a consequence never saw it coming 5, 10 or 20 years down the road because at the time they "consented" the evil thing wasn't happening -- yet.

The most-obvious of course is the Jews in Nazi Germany, but by no means the only example.  Indeed, the history when it comes to privately-owned arms is that material and serious constraints on their personal ownership tend to come 10 or 20 years before the citizens are murdered by their very own government.
This is much-more-insideous in that these "records" can be -- and will be -- used to link you to a political protest (e.g. "you were at the Washington Mall during the time that xxxx happened") and while today that's considered a protected activity who says it will be tomorrow?

The real error here is that "business records" are not accorded 4th Amendment protections.  Why not?  I give the cell company access to my location not because I want them to have it but because it is necessary for their systems to know where I am for the service I am contracting for to work.

The very premise under which the court ruled is incorrect -- if you and I agree that you may have some piece of information for the purpose of providing me a service or good that does not mean that I am giving you license to use it for whatever other purpose you may cook up later on.

If we cannot get our government to respect the fact that private citizens and private companies have the right to allocate information for specific purposes and that doing so does not give a general level of permission to either entity to then use that data outside of the specific purpose for which it was negotiated then we need a new government that does respect that fact.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=223192

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

OBAMA QUIETLY PUSHES FORWARD WITH ANTI-SUBURBAN CAMPAIGN

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF

I wrote here about President Obama’s plans to redistribute wealth from the suburbs to the cities, as exposed by Stanley Kurtz in his book Spreading The Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing The Suburbs To Pay For the Cites. Stanley returns to this theme in a post about the latest element of the president’s regionalist policy — the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.”
As Stanley explains, the apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities. Several administration critics have noticed the change and challenged it, even as the mainstream media declines to cover the story.
But, says Stanley, the underlying thrust of the rule change is more revolutionary than forcing racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs:
The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced “economic integration.” 
The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans, while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live cheek-by-jowl in “stack and pack” high-rises close to public transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse.
To help us understand this vision, Stanley turns to San Francisco and its “Plan Bay Area” program:

Essentially, Plan Bay Area attempts to block the development of any new suburbs, forcing all population growth over the next three decades into the existing “urban footprint” of the region. The plan presses 70-80 percent of all new housing and 66 percent of all business expansion into 150 or so “priority development areas” (PDAs), select neighborhoods near subway stations and other public transportation facilities. This scheme will turn up to a quarter of the region’s existing neighborhoods–many now dotted with San Francisco’s famously picturesque, Victorian-style single-family homes–into mini-Manhattans jammed with high-rises and tiny apartments. The densest PDAs will be many times denser than Manhattan. 
In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local housing market altogether.

The Obama administration has helped promote Plan Bay Area. It awarded the agencies that developed the program its second-highest “Sustainable Communities Grant” in 2012, citing the way Plan Bay Area “encourage[es] connections” between jobs, housing, and transportation. As Stanley says, this “encouragement” amounts to locating new residents –-poor and minorities included — in existing prosperous communities, replicating Manhattan-style “priority development areas.”

Stanley expects that HUD and other agencies will soon begin to press localities directly, rather than through the medium of California’s new regionalist scheme. The Sustainable Communities program will be its vehicle, along with suits against recalcitrant suburbs under the Fair Housing Law. As HUD Secretary Donovan admitted when he announced his agency’s new regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing,” the reg isn’t really focused on preventing “outright discrimination and access to the housing itself.”

Donovan also proclaimed: “Make no mistake: this is a big deal.” And so it is. While the MSM portrays the Obama administration as devoid these days of big ideas, in reality his big ideas are too controversial for him to discuss.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/obama-quietly-pushes-forward-with-anti-suburban-campaign.php

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

More Zimmerman Riots - Holylwood Riots covered up by LA Times

Guest post by:  Penny Hunter

LA Times Cover-Up:  When a  Riot is Not a Riot


" packs of young people were roaming along Hollywood and attacking people"  "As many as 40 robbers were believed to be involved"

"two young black men were detained in handcuffs before being released with the terse explanation that they had mistakenly been stopped because they matched the general description of the robbers. "  (ie.  young and black)

"The crimes did not appear to be related to the protests over the George Zimmerman acquittal"

REALLY?  What are we, stupid now?  So you expect us to believe that in the immediate wake of the Zimmerman trial, among riots in Oakland and Sanford FL, and even a live cat burning, over a trial which has been teaming with government sponsored race baiting since day one, suddenly by sheer coincidence, FORTY young black men all decide to roam the streets attacking people and looting.  And that isn't considered a riot, much less a Zimmerman Riot??  How can that NOT be related to the Zimmerman case?


MSM SOP:  Cover up the illicit actions of the Blue team.  Bring to light and skew the truth of any actions or inactions of the Red team.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

FUTURE HEADLINE: North Colorado secedes from Colorado, becomes 51st state!

According to CBS in Denver, “There’s a growing effort to create a 51st state out of parts of northeast Colorado.”
Organizers of the secessionist effort in a dozen rural counties in what some hope will become the state of “North Colorado” say their interest in breaking away stems from the fact that their “interests are not being represented at the state Capitol.”
We’re not talking here about a classic secession from the union, the kind Texas is always rumored to be on the verge of, but of the simple formation of a new state out of an existing one. West Virginia was created this way many moons ago, as were Maine, Kentucky, and Vermont.
Three other counties in Colorado and two in Kansas have also expressed interest in joining the secessionist movement. Leaders hope to have the measure voted on as early as November. Even if most voters decide that “North Colorado” is a good idea, however, the bill will still have to gain approval from the Colorado General Assembly and the U.S. Congress.
It may just be a temporary answer to the problem, anyway. Liberals have a way of invading the loveliest places in America and making them uninhabitable: e.g. Boulder, CO, Santa Fe, NM, and everywhere in California. What’s to stop liberals from moving in and undoing all the good secession might do? New Hampshire, where “Live Free or Die” was once taken seriously, is looking more and more like Massachusetts every day. With massive immigration, even Texas is not immune from the trend. Northern Colorado is a fast-growing area with lots of oil and gas that needs to be regulated.
Anti-secessionists love smugly to call Texas secession a pipe-dream on the basis that it “isn’t legal.” If you’re seceding, though, the goal is to break from the rules imposed upon you by the institution, so why would you stop and ask for its permission first? “Is it alright, parent, if I refuse to heed the rule you told me to obey?” 
And why are liberals against secession in the first place? Do they enjoy tormenting conservatives so much that they’d rather live in disharmony with them than let us go our separate ways? 
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/07/11/the-truth-about-secession/

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Obama Suspends the Law (without constitutional authority to do so)

    By 
  • MICHAEL W. MCCONNELL
President Obama's decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.
Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.
This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II's use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that "the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal."

To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.
Attorneys general under Presidents Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton all agreed on this point. With the exception of Richard Nixon, whose refusals to spend money appropriated by Congress were struck down by the courts, no prior president has claimed the power to negate a law that is concededly constitutional.
David G. Klein

In 1998, the Supreme Court struck down a congressional grant of line-item veto authority to the president to cancel spending items in appropriations. The reason? The only constitutional power the president has to suspend or repeal statutes is to veto a bill or propose new legislation. Writing for the court in Clinton v. City of New York, Justice John Paul Stevens noted: "There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes."

The employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act contains no provision allowing the president to suspend, delay or repeal it. Section 1513(d) states in no uncertain terms that "The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013." Imagine the outcry if Mitt Romney had been elected president and simply refused to enforce the whole of ObamaCare.

This is not the first time Mr. Obama has suspended the operation of statutes by executive decree, but it is the most barefaced. In June of last year, for example, the administration stopped initiating deportation proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, lived here at least five years, and met a variety of other criteria. This was after Congress refused to enact the Dream Act, which would have allowed these individuals to stay in accordance with these conditions. Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration.
Republican opponents of ObamaCare might say that the suspension of the employer mandate is such good policy that there's no need to worry about constitutionality. But if the president can dispense with laws, and parts of laws, when he disagrees with them, the implications for constitutional government are dire.

Democrats too may acquiesce in Mr. Obama's action, as they have his other aggressive assertions of executive power. Yet what will they say when a Republican president decides that the tax rate on capital gains is a drag on economic growth and instructs the IRS not to enforce it?
Of all the stretches of executive power Americans have seen in the past few years, the president's unilateral suspension of statutes may have the most disturbing long-term effects. As the Supreme Court said long ago (Kendall v. United States, 1838), allowing the president to refuse to enforce statutes passed by Congress "would be clothing the president with a power to control the legislation of congress, and paralyze the administration of justice."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323823004578591503509555268.html

Monday, July 8, 2013

Meet the SECRET Supreme Court of the United States

Meet the SECRET Supreme Court of the United States

by Mike

Background:

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1803, Pub.L. 95–511, 92 Stat. 1788, enacted October 25, 1978). The court oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States by federal law enforcement agencies (primarily National Security Agency and the F.B.I.). Congress created FISA and its court (also called the FISA Court) as a result of the Church Committee recommendations.[1]
 
 
They have no jurisdiction except for requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States.
 
The NSA PRISM wiretapping is not being used against foreign agents, but against US citizens, and PRISM does not wait for warrants.  To suggest that FISC has any jurisdiction to either authorize or oversee PRISM is laughable.


"This program, by the way, is fully overseen not just by Congress, but by the FISA Court — a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them, and that it’s being carried out consistent with the Constitution and rule of law. "
- President Barack Obama on June 7, 2013 (transcript here) 

Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court. 
- From the July 6, 2013 New York Times article: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. 
One of the most incredible things that has occurred in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks has been President Barack Obama’s laughable attempt to justify the spying by claiming the process has judicial oversight, as he did in the quote above. What he fails to mention of course is the fact that the FISA court that signs off on all these activities is a secret court, the opinions of which are never made public. Does he think the American public is so brain-dead it is incapable of recognizing the difference between a regular court of law and a secret one? Apparently he does.  For those of you that have yet to get up to speed on America’s “parallel Supreme Court,” which also disturbingly happens to constructs its own laws, please read the article below from The New York Times: 
WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say. 
The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions. 
The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said. 
Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court. 
The court has indicated that while individual pieces of data may not appear “relevant” to a terrorism investigation, the total picture that the bits of data create may in fact be relevant, according to the officials with knowledge of the decisions. 
Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said he was troubled by the idea that the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone outside the government, forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the American justice system. “That whole notion is missing in this process,” he said. 
Sorry, but secret courts pretty much destroy the rule of law entirely.  We should all be outraged, offended and motivated to change this for good.



Saturday, July 6, 2013

Are you prepared? Zimmerman-Martin riots begin in 5...4...3...2..

Reposted from BonnieGadsden

In light of the Trevon Martin racial hysteria, I'm doing a little research into the LA Riots of 1992 to see what we are to expect if fuel keeps being thrown on the fire and it rages out of control.  I found a series of posts on www.aussurvivalist.com from a man about his first hand experience in the riots


The  L.A. Riots:  A First hand experience

READ THE STORY AT:
http://whyguncontrol.blogspot.com/2013/07/are-you-prepared-zimmerman-martin-riots.html


Full Global Financial Collapse in next 12 months?


It looks like the collapse is at our doorstep knocking. With China, EU, UK, Japan etc. in full collapse mode. I am expecting to see major bank failures soon followed by bail-ins and extreme money printing later this year.

Think of this as 1996+/- in Japan. Seven years in after the Nikkei went kaput. The Japanese Central Bank apparatchik probably though the same. Not, and deflation still kicking their behind 17 yrs later.

Moral of the story is – If you save the Bankster you impoverish a sizeable percentage of the present population and you kneecap economic growth for the next generation.

I remember about 10 yrs ago hearing about “parasite singles” in Japan. About 4 yrs ago, I started hearing ” herbivore males”. All these are sign of an economically dead generation. A good majority of the Japanese kids coming of age since the Nikkei collapsed are member of this generation.


Japan’s decades of economic stagnation after pursuing a low interest rate policy should be a warning to all central banks, particularly the European Central Bank, according to Satyajit Das, a former banker and author of “Traders, Guns and Money”.


http://beforeitsnews.com/financial-markets/2013/07/the-market-trap-is-being-set-with-china-eu-uk-japan-etc-in-full-collapse-mode-major-bank-failures-soon-followed-by-bail-ins-and-extreme-money-printing-the-whole-world-is-turning-japane-2575376.html