NSA Says: "Trust Us, We Won't Violate Your Privacy."

Emperor Alexander, after repeating his unsubstantiated claim that the NSA has disrupted 54 terrorist plots, claims that although the NSA is collecting every bit of communications that Americas make (other than the contents of sealed letters) we can trust them not to violate our privacy.

"Trust me" is not our governmental system. We are not free if the cops don't come tramping through our houses. I'll bet that 99% or better of Russian households during the Soviet era were never searched by the KGB, but that didn't mean they lived in freedom. But that's precisely the argument that Emperor Alexander is making.

What the NSA is doing is operating an electronic Panopticon. They have access to everything that we do online (unless you personally encrpypt it). They broke the encryption system for online banking. They broke (or they were given the keys) the encryption backing secure browsing. We have only the assurances of functionaries whose stock-in-trade is lying and disinformation that NSA employees/contractors aren't looking through your shit.

Hell, if the NSA's protections were so robust, how the fuck did Ed Snowden walk away with all the shit that he did?

Freedom and liberty are nonexistent when the NSA or the cops leave you alone because they don't think that you're worth their time. Freedom and liberty exist when they can't bother you without getting a warrant, and not just a blanket "go ahead, wiretap the fucking planet" warrant from the FISA court. The Congress since 2001, both Presidents Bush and Obama and the Supremes since long before then have eviscerated the Fourth Amendment to the point that the cops only need a search warrant when they feel like they probably have the time to get one. The judicially-created exceptions and exemptions to the Fourth Amendment have rendered it a shadow of its former self.

And we already know that the NSA has been feeding information to the cops and telling them to lie about where they got it. (They call it "parallel construction".)

Collecting our telephonic and online communications is a violation of our privacy, whether notr not anyone at the NSA ever looks at them. We have only the assurance of the NSA that some loyal Bushie or Obamadroid hasn't been looking at records for political purposes.

That's not good enough. We need robust and independent oversight of the NSA, not just the cookie-cutter FISA Court or DiFi's Committee.

We must demand that the NSA (and the DEA) stop electronic surveillance of American citizens without a warrant that is issed by a neutral and detached magistrate for every instance, not the blanket "go ahead and wiretap everyone" orders of the FISA Court.

Otherwise, we all might as well just go watch "Survivor" or any of those other vapid reality shows and forget about all those freedom and liberties that so many people have fought and died for over the last 240 years.

(Shout: "All hail Emperor Alexander.")