More often than not I look to the judiciary to reign in overreaching by the executive, but more and more the judiciary seems entirely complicit in what I personally consider to be affronts to the basic ideas on which the Constitution was written.
It seems to me that secrecy is the default state of the federal government now, not the exception, and between the NSA and gag orders keeping me (or you) from knowing you're privacy is being violated, my right to defend myself and redress against the government are both violated.
The Founding Fathers knew the price paid by the general public when government acted for its own gain first, and held dominion over the population. Their attempt to reign in its powers and make it truly a collective representation of the will of the people was in reaction to oligarchy and monarchy - both of which make the relationship between the people and their government adversarial at best.
The U.S. government - and more and more, state and local governments - feel entirely adversarial to the people they claim to represent. Lobbies, super pacs, laws written by the entertainment industry and so on make it pretty clear we're bound to an oligarchy which attempts to masquerade itself as a democracy. There is rarely cooperation between the general public and their government - more often, the general public finds itself universally against (SOPA) or universally disgusted by (NSA, Snowden) the actions of the government that claims to be their mouthpiece, working for justice for all.
So long as the judiciary upholds the government's power grabs against the people, there's little that can be done.
Edit: kudos to Google for fighting as hard as they could for the Fourth Amendment (and First). At least someone is. Secrecy was desired because of the huge public backlash the last time they acted so egregiously. Instead of the Judiciary acknowledging how out of bounds the last action was, they instead agreed public knowledge of bad acts was an unnecessary burden on government overreach.
Edit 2:
However, the Justice Department asserted that “journalists have no special privilege to resist compelled disclosure of their records, absent evidence that the government is acting in bad faith,”
I contend that this seizure of private data, with a threshold of evidence far below a Fourth Amendment level, ignoring historic protections for journalists based on the absolute importance of their work in keeping the government in check, is the government acting in the worst faith possible.
Whilst the rights of Americans is important and the 4th amendment a key continent those rights, we should not forget that the privacy invasions are not limited to those in the US.
More importantly, those outside the US have NO rights under the US constitution. To the contrary we have about as much rights as a chimpanzee, unless we are at war with the US and if we are lucky we won't be declared non-combatants, imprisoned in some black or quasi illegal prison for 15 years and ideally will be treated fairly under the Geneva Convention.
It seems to me that secrecy is the default state of the federal government now, not the exception, and between the NSA and gag orders keeping me (or you) from knowing you're privacy is being violated, my right to defend myself and redress against the government are both violated.
The Founding Fathers knew the price paid by the general public when government acted for its own gain first, and held dominion over the population. Their attempt to reign in its powers and make it truly a collective representation of the will of the people was in reaction to oligarchy and monarchy - both of which make the relationship between the people and their government adversarial at best.
The U.S. government - and more and more, state and local governments - feel entirely adversarial to the people they claim to represent. Lobbies, super pacs, laws written by the entertainment industry and so on make it pretty clear we're bound to an oligarchy which attempts to masquerade itself as a democracy. There is rarely cooperation between the general public and their government - more often, the general public finds itself universally against (SOPA) or universally disgusted by (NSA, Snowden) the actions of the government that claims to be their mouthpiece, working for justice for all.
So long as the judiciary upholds the government's power grabs against the people, there's little that can be done.
Edit: kudos to Google for fighting as hard as they could for the Fourth Amendment (and First). At least someone is. Secrecy was desired because of the huge public backlash the last time they acted so egregiously. Instead of the Judiciary acknowledging how out of bounds the last action was, they instead agreed public knowledge of bad acts was an unnecessary burden on government overreach.
Edit 2:
However, the Justice Department asserted that “journalists have no special privilege to resist compelled disclosure of their records, absent evidence that the government is acting in bad faith,”
I contend that this seizure of private data, with a threshold of evidence far below a Fourth Amendment level, ignoring historic protections for journalists based on the absolute importance of their work in keeping the government in check, is the government acting in the worst faith possible.