A recent exchange of views between myself and Senator Feinstein (D - California).
The NSA and law enforcement officials now can, and probably do, track every GPS signal in the US, store it in their data centers in Texas, Georgia and Ft Meade, using it to mine every American Citizen movements and activities, coupled with their banking information, their email information and every phone call they make on any number. Yes, this means everything you do is subject to governmental tracking and scrutiny.
I believe that any freedom loving American would see the absolute Orwellian prospect of the Government legally tracking all our activities. The fact that they already do, justifying it through a number of Executive orders and poorly thought out legislation (for example the hastily passed, and patently unconstitutional PATRIOT act which is anything but), and that they hide behind secret courts (FISA or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) is scary to say the least.
Let's see what Senator Feinstein has to say on the issue:
Senator Feinstein's Statement
From: <senator@feinstein.senate.gov>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 10:32:33 -0500
To: Andrew Nygard <>
Subject: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to your message
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 10:32:33 -0500
To: Andrew Nygard <>
Subject: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to your message
Dear Mr. Nygard:
Thank you for your letter expressing your support for the "Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act" (S. 1212). I appreciate hearing your views, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.
In recent years, there have been a number of technological advances that make geolocational information easier to obtain. It is not just global positioning systems (GPS) that provide this type of information for travelers, cell phones and other communication devices can also reveal the location of their users. The increasing availability of geolocational information has also become an important crime fighting tool for law enforcement.
On June 15, 2011, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act. This legislation would modify federal law concerning the interception and disclosure of geolocational information, including requiring law enforcement to obtain a warrant in order to access this type of information from mobile telephones, GPS technologies, and other types of wireless communication devices. It has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member.
I appreciate hearing your thoughts on the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act. Please know that I support ensuring that Americans' constitutional rights are appropriately safeguarded, while giving law enforcement officials the tools they need to keep us safe and ensuring sufficient sharing of information for security purposes. Be assured that I will keep your comments in mind should I have the chance to consider this legislation in the future.
Again, thank you for writing. I hope that you will continue to write on matters that are of importance to you. If you have any additional comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841, or visit my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov.
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the nation are available at my website, Feinstein.senate.gov. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list. Click here to sign up. And please visit my YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for more ways to communicate with me.
Thoughts
So this is a scary response from the senior Senator from California. I've highlighted in red above the scary part - we need to balance the constitutional rights of Americans with the needs of Law Enforcement. Really? I beg to disagree. We established a set of principles we saw to be self evident 250 years ago that say we have the right to be free from such surveillance. To be sure the founders never saw such technology, or the prospect of such automated totalitarianism, but they established the principles by which we could evaluate what is right and wrong. Warrantless surveillance on the basic comings and goings, behaviors and activities of kurt Citizenry by the government is far beyond the pale. The needs of Law Enforcement officers play absolutely NO role in the calculus of this situation. If we are to remain a free society then the government, and corporations, need to ask us for access to our private information. I'm astounded that a US Senator wouldn't understand this, and would position the issue as some sort of balance between our basic rights as individuals and citizens of this great nation, and some undefined need to protect us from some undefined situation. Remember - we've been "at war" with Drugs, Poverty, and now Terrorism for 50 years now - pleas of exigent circumstances begin to mean less and less every day.
My Response
I sent this response to Senator Feinstein yesterday. I've yet to receive her reply:
Dear Senator Feinstein -
Your response is less than clear – do you support the right to privacy in regards to warrantless monitoring of American Citizen's locations via GPS location services built into devices, or do you not. Your statement that you see the need to balance private with law enforcement needs is concerning, perhaps even disturbing. As a former member of our nation's intelligence apparatus I know well the capabilities we have, and what can be done with it – to provide warrantless access to this ubiquitous information is akin to sanctioning 24x7 surveillance of all Americans, a truly Orwellian prospect that any freedom loving American would find repelling.
So once again I ask for your support and efforts towards clarifying the rights of Americans to freedom from warrantless surveillance. There is no balance to be met here.
Andrew Nygard
Question for all you out there
What's your position on this? Make your own statement to your elected representative.
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