Supreme Court Chips Away At Bill of Rights

The United States Bill of Rights suffered another blow on Wednesday. The high court ruled in a 5-4 decision that evidence of crime discovered during a constitutionally faulty search was admissible. Herring v. U.S., 07-513, marks another sad event as the United States Constitution continues its slow circle around the drain.

Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed that the long held “exclusionary rule” that limits the use of evidence discovered during a faulty arrest is admissible “…when police mistakes are the result of negligence…” according to the Chief Justice in an opinion written for the court. The dissenting judges who quietly abstained from the vote saw danger in the ruling. “The most serious impact of the court's holding will be on innocent persons wrongfully arrested based on erroneous information carelessly maintained in a computer database,” Justice Ginsberg stated.

The danger of heavy handed governments and police simply putting forth a belief, whether in error or not, opens a Pandora's Box that will result in wiretaps, email collection, and data mining on innocent Americans that will be very difficult to close. Simply by stating that an officer believes that this person or that has an active warrant will allow such an intrusion that private life will be further eroded as we are relegated to a life of “Big Brother” activities. Every facet of life is becoming more controlled by the state as we are acclimated into a life of servitude- a prison without bars.

A report in the New York Times has delivered on this fear. The “intelligence court”, I'm not sure which of the three branches of government that falls under, has stated in a rare opinion “is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved” (emphasis added). This affirms the decisions made possible by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 that random data mining of private correspondences, regardless of source or media, are fair game in the latest “war on whatever.”

Let us not forget about the Protect America Act of 2007. This is the nifty bit of legislation that gave the executive branch, the president, broad powers when it comes to monitoring your life. Your telephone calls, emails, web activity-all are subject to this act and done randomly. Have you forgotten where you put your car keys? Give the president a call…maybe he knows.