ibenez wrote:
You guys must all be criminals - because I see no problem with this.

Why should criminals be the only people concerned about Constituional rights? Why have a Constitution at all if it only applies to criminals? What is the point of having a "free country" if freedom is only something that one enjoys when one breaks the law and isn't caught? I see multiple concerns here:

1. The FBI and DHS are doing just fine on this front. Any technology projects these people wish to pursue can be pursued in that context. There is no evidence of need.

2. Domestic spying requires 4th Amendment proceedures, which the Pentagon is not designed to handle and will not handle well.

3. The purpose of the Military is to protect the citizens from external threats, not to protect the government from it's citizens or to protect the citizens from eachother. We handle those different situations in different ways because we have a system of limited government which respects the rights of citizens. When you blur the lines between these different situations by taking organizations which are not designed to respect people's rights and having them deal directly with citizens on the government's behalf, you are essentially concluding that you will not respect citizen's rights anymore. If you don't respect citizen's rights, you're not a "free country."

4. The arguement that only criminals need bother with rights is a invitation to a police state, in which everyone is always suspect and everyone is always looking over his shoulder. This was the lesson of East Germany... that an omnipresent surveillance creates a culture of fear and suspicion.

RE: Pentagon Expands Domestic Surveillance