A Quote by Nat Hentoff

The Fourth Amendment is on life support and the chief agent of that is the National Security Agency. — © Nat Hentoff
The Fourth Amendment is on life support and the chief agent of that is the National Security Agency.
We've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.
What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.
We need to put the security back in the National Security Agency. We can't have the national surveillance agency.
Critics have stepped up their attacks on the President for authorizing the National Security Agency to listen to international communications of known al Qaeda members or affiliated terrorists during a time of war. The American people expect their leaders to stay a step ahead of the enemy, and the National Security Agency authorization is a critical tool in the War on Terror that saves lives and protects civil liberties at the same time.
We have a media that goes along with the government by parroting phrases intended to provoke a certain emotional response - for example, "national security." Everyone says "national security" to the point that we now must use the term "national security." But it is not national security that they're concerned with; it is state security. And that's a key distinction.
Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.
It's becoming less and less the National Security Agency and more and more the national surveillance agency. It's gaining more offensive powers with each passing year.
I was lecturing at the Columbia Journalism School of Education. I asked them about what was happening to the Fourth Amendment. I said, "By the way, do you know what is in the Fourth Amendment?" One student responded, "Is that the right to bear arms?" It's hard to believe these are bright students.
What the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President and the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of the President.
...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.
For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
It strains credulity to suggest that an agency charged with gathering intelligence affecting the national security does not have an 'intelligence interest' in drone strikes, even if that agency does not operate the drones itself.
The 'Scowcroft Model' recognizes - and embraces - the unique but necessarily modest place the National Security Council and the national security adviser occupy in the American national security architecture.
When they took the Fourth Amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the Sixth Amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the Second Amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the First Amendment, and I can't say anything at all.
The media has been very bad about informing us about what is going on. They focus on surface things. They do not focus enough on the fact that the Fourth Amendment is on life support and that we need a return to transparency in government.
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