4th Amendment & The People Under the Eaves

By: The Mystic | 24July2000

Eaves: The projecting overhang at the lower edge of a roof. Eavesdrop [1]: The place where rain falls from the eaves, often marked by a water dropline on the ground. Eavesdrop [2]: To listen secretly to the private conversation of others. From a person standing within the eavesdrop [1], close enough to hear a conversation within a house. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Amendment IV to the U.S. Constitution If you like horror flicks, I recommend Wes Craven's movie, "The People Under the Stairs". Much more frightening -- and you won't have to rent a video to experience it -- are the people under the eaves. Craven's movie is fiction. The interception and examination of your communication, reading and buying habits and even your DNA by US Government agencies -- the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to name a couple -- is a fact. Echelon Much about how the automated global interception and relay system known as Echelon works is supposed and inferred, because the system 'officially' doesn't exist. What that means is that members of taxpayer-funded intelligence agencies will lie to you with a straight face if you ever get a chance to ask one about Echelon. (Australia and New Zealand have admitted that Echelon exists; the US continues to deny it.) One way to handle a fascist. It is operated by the intelligence agencies in five nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the NSA taking the lead. Like a great vacuum cleaner of the electromagnetic spectrum, Echelon indiscriminately sucks up (reportedly) as many as 3,000,000,000 telephone calls, Internet downloads, email and satellite communications each day, using radio antennae, Internet packet sniffers at key junctions as well as taps on underwater telephone cables. These communications are fed into a network of computers referred to as Dictionary, and sorted for addresses and key words, according to the purposes of its users. Echelon is designed primarily for non-military targets, i.e., your personal phone calls and business communications, et cetera. Besides "protecting national security" (a phrase used to justify any number of government abuses), Echelon can also be used for industrial espionage, to stifle political dissent, and to spy on private citizens. There is no way to know how Echelon's growing capabilities are being put to use and abuse because there are no safeguards, nor control by elected officials. Even the US Congress has -- so far -- been unable to determine Echelon's operations and legality. Theoretically, the US can't use Echelon to spy on its own citizens' communications, but since all the partners freely share information with each other, this is of little comfort. It is also an interesting little end-run around the Fourth Amendment requirement that a specific warrant is required for a search. Carnivore The FBI is apparently exasperated that citizens are concerned and/or opposed to their new Internet traffic tap called Carnivore. Carnivore is designed to be installed onto your Internet Service Provider's network, and monitors all the traffic flowing through that ISP. The official story is that it will only sort out and record traffic related to specific targets, as defined by a search warrant. However, Carnivore has access to all traffic on the network, unlike how a traditional telephone tap works, where only the phone line of the target is affected. Why are FBI officials surprised that people care? I assume that: They arrogantly believe anything they dream up that will make law enforcement easier is a good thing; Establishing law and order in America the Police State is a lot easier than doing so in America the Free; They aren't overly concerned with insignificant details like the Bill of Rights; FBI officials are feebs. Given that Attorney General Janet Reno -- to whom the FBI answers -- didn't know that Carnivore had been put into service until she read about it in the New York Times, how much oversight and control will there likely be over Carnivore's extra-legal capabilities? Obviously (to anybody with a measurable IQ, which apparently doesn't include FBI decisionmakers), a computer program that monitors and searches through all of an ISP's traffic -- including yours -- to find whatever may be targeted by a search warrant is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. CODIS The COmbined DNA Identification System is a FBI-administered forensics laboratory and computer system. It currently consists of the Convicted Offender Index, which contains DNA profiles taken from samples drawn from individuals convicted of felony sex offenses (and other violent crimes) and the Forensic Index which contains DNA profiles developed from crime scene evidence. CODIS searches these two indices for matching DNA profiles. DNA evidence is very reliable -- much more reliable than traditional methods of identifying criminals, particularly eyewitness accounts. DNA has recently been used as evidence to release innocent prisoners from death row in American prisons. While access to CODIS is still being implemented throughout the nation, so far, CODIS has provided the necessary information to convict several rapists and other sex and violent offenders. With all the good that CODIS has done and can do in the future, what's the problem with it? In spite of the fact it is being labeled a "genetic fingerprint", sampling a person's DNA is not the same as recording a fingerprint. A fingerprint is only useful to confirm the identity of an individual. A specimen of your DNA holds a hell-of-a-lot more than a confirmation that you are who you are. Your DNA carries a huge amount of personal and private data that isn't necessarily the business of anybody who might have access to it. DNA can provide information regarding your family relationships, the intimate workings of your body, your predisposition to over 4000 genetic conditions and diseases, and possibly your potential for aggression, substance addiction, criminal tendencies and sexual orientation. (Bear in mind that a person may have a predisposition for aggression or criminal behavior without actually being aggressive or criminal.) If they are only taking samples from those convicted of sex or other violent crimes, who cares? New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir advocates keeping DNA samples of persons arrested for any crime in New York City. Considering how people in American are regularly arrested, searched and jailed for minding their own business (victimless crimes, false arrests, even strip-searches for traffic violations), banking genetic material should concern you! Furthermore, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has suggested that genetic samples should be taken from everyone at birth. Traditional method of dealing with autocrats. Probably most people realize that Safir and Giuliani constantly compete with each other for Fascist of the Quarter, but the point is that anytime a system is set up with massive potential for abuse, some shit-for-brains in power is going to abuse it. Given what can be discovered from genetic information, how long will it be before a jury convicts, partly on the basis of some lab's determination that a person displays genetic markers that indicate a propensity for violence? With certain government officials expressing a willingness to build a comprehensive database of our DNA information, how long might it be before information from said database was sold to your health insurance company or for the use of your potential employer? This is not a straw man argument. Three states -- South Carolina, Florida and Colorado -- sold 22,000,000 drivers' photo images and personal data from motor vehicle license files to a private company in New Hampshire. Recently, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy was caught leaving computer cookies on hard drives of people accessing their web sites via searches that included drug terminology, in violation of their own published policies. The moment CODIS is utilized for any purpose beyond helping identify sex criminals, it has gone too far. Privacy Government secrecy has always been inversely proportional to your privacy and right to be left alone. Authoritarianism doesn't work in an environment where citizens have full knowledge about what its government is up to. Unfortunately, the United States hasn't enjoyed an environment of openness for decades. Instead, we are beset with the sneaky little people under the eaves who don't give a rat's ass about your privacy. If you believe that US citizens are "secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects", you are either terminally misinformed or a chronic fool. There are days when I wonder how the sons-of-bitches have gotten away with it. We have been too distracted to notice -- or too apathetic to care -- that our most important rights are slowly swirling down the fetid toilet of public policy. It's past time to get informed and active, start writing emails and letters, making phone calls -- or whatever else may be necessary -- to pull it all back and force government into its rightful place. If whatever else includes occasionally spilling the blood of autocrats and their lackeys -- well -- that's one of America's earliest traditions, isn't it?