Chicago, IL (PRWEB) June 07, 2013
The Guardian newspaper in London Wednesday night reported that the National Security Agency has long collected phone records from some one hundred million Verizon clients in the United States. The secret court order that allowed the NSA to get that, according to documents obtained by the Guardian, requires the phone company to hand the info more than to the NSA on an ongoing, everyday basis. The order covered international calls, as effectively as communications inside the United States, and customers were not conscious of it till the Guardian story was published.

The following statements from public policy professionals at The Heartland Institute a cost-free-market believe tank may possibly be used for attribution. For much more comments, refer to the contact info beneath. To book a Heartland guest on your plan, please speak to Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely(at)heartland(dot)org and 312/377-4000 or (cell) 312/731-9364.

What tends to make this news doubly distressing is that it comes to U.S. citizens from an overseas news source on practically specifically the anniversary of the day that the U.K. and the U.S., with each other with other allies, launched the D-Day invasion of Normandy to restore freedom to Europe.

The truth that this is a bipartisan difficulty extending across administrations is further proof, if any have been required, that energy tends to corrupt and absolute energy corrupts definitely, and that those who would trade liberty for security will quickly uncover that they have neither. All in all, this is a sad, sad way to commemorate one of the world’s most crucial anniversaries in the annals of freedom.

David L. Applegate
Policy Advisor, Legal Affairs
The Heartland Institute
media(at)heartland(dot)org
312/377-4000

Need to we be shocked at this news when the U.S. Supreme Court has just declared police could make the DNA of persons who have been convicted of practically nothing government property, potentially to be kept forever? When we have not too long ago noticed the Boston metropolitan region place beneath martial law and entire families dragged out of their residences at gunpoint by males dressed in military garb and backed up by armored vehicles and helicopters? When millions of travelers are subjected to virtual strip searches and physical groin gropes just to board a plane?

George W. Bush could have started a war on terror, and Barack Obama may possibly be speaking of eventually ending it, but it is already more than. The terrorists have won.

Steve Stanek
Study Fellow, Budget and Tax Policy
The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor
Budget & Tax News
sstanek(at)heartland(dot)org
815/385-5602

Privacy is very essential. We would like the government to get off our backs. The administration need to be more transparent and clarify why this unusually substantial search is actually needed.

Ronald D. Rotunda
The Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence
Chapman University
rrotunda(at)chapman(dot)edu
714/628-2698

The audacity of monitoring everyone’s phone calls in hopes of catching a little number of terrorists demonstrates the unconstitutionality and self-contradiction at the heart of mass government surveillance. There is no probable lead to for which to search any distinct individual’s get in touch with records, merely a probability that somebody, somewhere used a phone to assist in the preparing or commission of a crime. This reasoning nullifies the Fourth Amendment, the very point of which is that government can not search or seize ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ at random.

S.T. Karnick
Director of Investigation
The Heartland Institute
skarnick(at)heartland(dot)org
312/377-4000

The recent Obama administration attacks on personal liberties are frightening and lengthy: surveillance of the emails and phone records of journalists the IRS debacle the Benghazi scandal and cover-up drones and the National Defense Authorization Act that permits any person the government doesnt like to be held indefinitely, including U.S. citizens arrested on American soil. And now we discover of another attack on our liberty.

This action by the NSA, which possesses the most sophisticated array of gear and scientific personnel to listen to whomever it desires to, proves that the Obama administration is carrying out a plan of change you can believe in. Our Constitution is openly and brazenly violated and it reminds me of how Russians, Chinese, Cubans, and several a lot of other people lost their freedom and paid dearly with tens of millions of innocent lives.

Yuri N. Maltsev, PhD
Professor of Economics
A.W. Clausen Center for Planet Organization
Carthage College
ymaltsev(at)carthage(dot)edu 
262/551-5880

What is the difference among this and the Soviet dictatorship a lot of of us fled in hope of coming to a free of charge country?

Tibor R. Machan
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Auburn University
R. C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Enterprise Ethics and Cost-free Enterprise
Argyros School of Enterprise & Economics
Chapman University
tmachan(at)gmail(dot)com 
312/377-4000

If there is not a tremendous backlash that benefits from this news, it will show that we really have not discovered quite important lessons from history.

Hilary Till
Principal, Premia Threat Consultancy, Inc.
Policy Advisor
The Heartland Institute
media(at)heartland(dot)org 
312/377-4000

The bigger the amount of irrelevant data, the less difficult to hide factors that may well be essential. Monitoring everyone diverts focus from what may possibly be a genuine threat. Therefore, the administration undertaking this suggests that the purpose is not to find terrorists but to discover nonsupporters of Obama.

Jane M. Orient, M.D.
Executive Director
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
janeorientmd(at)gmail(dot)com
520/323-3110

Our constitutional liberties are practically unbounded. The government’s capacity to infringe upon them is certain, delineated and delimited. Therefore the government’s all-encompassing, boundless data grab from (at least) Verizon is an egregious assault on the individuals.

The government wants to get certain court permission for certain, finite information. They need to not ask for or be granted such blanket, open-ended data-grab authority. That they asked for and received permission for data-grab authority in advance of the grab on an ongoing, rolling basis is worse still.

This is just the most recent example but maybe the worst of the Obama administration’s complete disregard for the Constitution and the freedoms from government overreach it guarantees us. Here’s hoping the gorgeous totality of all we’ve lost will trigger us to rise up and demand that it all be restored.

Seton Motley
President, Significantly less Government
Policy Advisor, Telecom
The Heartland Institute
smotley(at)lessgovernment(dot)org
312/377-4000

This report validates the unheeded warnings of skeptics at the time the Patriot Act was drafted that rather than employ the law to investigate and quit genuine terrorist threats, the government would use it as a giant fishing net to gather as a lot details as it could about citizens as they go about their company, no matter whether or not they are beneath suspicion. That is specifically what’s occurred.

There is totally no justification or rationale for this unprecedented level of surveillance on millions of ordinary Americans. The FBI and NSA should suspend the FISA order quickly. Further, this abuse of power need to give Congress the impetus t
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