I used to be a republican. Now, like most of the country, I fail to identify with any party. Politicians are so far out of touch with the people, groups that I once considered to be nutjobs, like the libertarians, are now starting to look like the only somewhat-normal party around.
HR 6304 (FISA 2008) was passed by the Senate on July 9th, including my own representatives from NH (Sununu and Gregg, who I will be voting out next term). Yet FISA strikes at the very heart of what the 4th Amendment was designed to prevent. At the time, the British used “writs of assistance” to search people’s property for evidence of any possible crime, even without any knowledge that a crime had been committed. This allowed the government to go snooping around in people’s homes for charges they could drum up against them, such as smuggling or other crimes that the government considered “security” risks. It was an egregious abuse of the people, which the advocate-general at the time, James Otis, condemned as “an instrument of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other”. The 4th Amendment was put in place to protect the citizens from exactly what FISA does, and insisted that warrants be issued based on probable cause, supported by oath, and to be detailed in its criteria. As a result, today’s warrants have to be specific in the kind of evidence they are justified to look for, and a judge must determine probable cause. FISA fails to adequately deliver on either of these accounts, but more importantly it puts this new form of writs-of-assistance under a shroud of secrecy so the people won’t see to just what extent the system is being abused.