American Police State Part II

Yesterday, I discussed how the FBI and military spies on ordinary, law-abiding Americans just like you.
As part of the Freedom of Information lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) produced documents to prove this fact. According to their information, the FBI has issued enough national security letters since October 2001 to fill five pages of logs.
There’s no way to tell exactly why the FBI issued all these national security letters. You can’t tell because they blacked out certain sections of the log pages, supposedly for “security reasons.” The government then refused to provide further information on how the letters were used.
In 2007, then U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez told the newly Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee he knew of no instances where the letters had been abused under the PATRIOT Act.
Later FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that there had been thousands of times when FBI agents have misused the letters. But he passed it off as a misunderstanding, rather then willful violation of the law.
The truth is that the government really doesn’t need these enormous police powers.
Under the Constitution and other U.S. laws, the government already has the authority to investigate and prosecute anyone. The government just needs to have probable cause that a person has committed, or is planning to commit, a crime.
The government also has the authority to put individuals under surveillance, whether or not that person is suspected of any crime. The government just needs probable cause to believe that individual works as a spy or represents a foreign power.
But until now, the government had to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause for each case.
While destroying our liberty and privacy, these broad new police powers aren’t likely to increase our national security or safety. But they definitely have destroyed our rights under the U.S. Constitution.
If you still needed a good argument to convince you to move some of your cash, assets and business records offshore, out of reach of the FBI, this is it.