NSA: Legislators Unclear on the Concept, or These Idiots Write Our Laws?

First up, Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Boehner, both of whom say that Edward Snowden is a traitor.

One might have thought that before those two veteran legislators opened up their vomit-holes and began spewing legalistic opinions, they have bothered to go read the fucking law. This is the law on treason:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Snowden neither waged war against the United States nor did he adhere to the enemies of the United States. Without either of those two elements, he cannot be found guilty of treason. One would think that maybe either Boehner or or Feinstein would have a passing familiarity with the elements of a crime that they are accusing someone else of, but one would be wrong.

Which leads me to propose the Boehner-Feinstein Rule: Whenever those two agree on something, they're likely both wrong.

Second up is Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Ratfuck), who said that because Congress redid the Patriot Act to authorize the NSA to go into datamining against American citizens, what the NSA did under Obama was legal.

Hoyer does not get it. It's the fact that the NSA has been collecting data on Americans for seven something years (probably closer to a dozen years) that is the problem. That Congress is OK with it and that a rubber-stamp-wielding court is the problem. It's even worse that the government is now not breaking the law.

What Feinstein, Boehner, Lindsey Graham and the President are saying in this whole thing is: "You can trust us. We won't grossly invade your privacy." That is a near complete reversal of the bedrock principles of our nation. The foundation of our system of government is that government cannot be trusted to not trample on the rights, liberties and freedoms of the citizens. That's why most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights were written into the Constitution.

We have the right to be secure in our homes and effects, not that we can be secure in our homes and effects unless some faceless terrorcrat feels like listening into our phone calls or reading our emails. The Congress, the Executive and the FISA court have completely gutted the Fourth Amendment with permitting one stinking court order to authorize surveillance on every person with a telephone. Hell, they apparently didn't even bother going to the Rubber-Stamp Court to get an order to turn Google, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL and the rest into Stasi-style informants.

I am not sure that the standard political labels apply anymore. What we have, now, are people who want their individual freedoms back and those who are pro-police/surveillance statists, who are just fine with being watched by the authorities. Those of us who believe in the right to be left alone need to start speaking up and, we need to start making it harder for them to track us.

And finally, if you are trusting that cloud computing and data storage are safe and that your data will be secure in the cloud, I respectfully suggest that you rethink that.