Chilling Free Speech

Andrew P. Napolitano

Earlier this week, the federal government’s National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science —encouragement that it achieves by awarding grants to scholars and universities— announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media. The NSF dubbed the project Truthy, a reference to comedian Stephen Colbert’s invention and hilarious use of the word“truthiness.”…….We already know the National Security Agency has the digital versions of all telephone conversations and emails sent to, from or within the U.S. since 2005. Edward Snowden’s revelations of all this are credible and substantiated, and the government’s denials are weak and unavailing — so weak and unavailing that many NSA agents disbelieve them. But the government’s unbridled passion to monitor us has become insatiable. Just two months ago, the Federal Communications Commission, which licenses broadcasters, threatened to place federal agents in cable television newsrooms so they can see how stories are generated and produced. The FCC doesn’t even regulate cable, yet it threatened to enhance its own authority by monitoring cable companies from the inside.   What’s going on here?......The government is worried about speech.  Big deal. Speech is none of the government’s business. History teaches that the remedy for tasteless speech is not government repression — it is more speech. In a free society, when the marketplace of ideas is open and unfettered, the truth is obvious. But in a repressive society, the truth becomes a casualty. Which society did the Framers give us?

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The Government and Freedom

By Judge Andrew Napolitano | Oct 16, 2014

Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey gave an interview to "60 Minutes" during which he revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. He rightly distinguished what FBI agents do in their investigations of federal crimes from what the NSA does in its intelligence gathering, when the two federal agencies are looking for non-public data.

The FBI requires..... articulable suspicion to commence an investigation and probable cause to obtain a search warrant.  It does this because its agents have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution ….Yet..... his agents can and do write their own search warrants -- just as British agents and soldiers did....[these] national security letter[s] is a search warrant in which one federal agent authorizes another federal agent to search for and retrieve data held by third parties....Five federal judges have held this section of the Patriot Act to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.... The Patriot Act also prohibits the recipient of an agent-written search warrant from telling anyone about it -- that includes a lawyer in confidence, a priest in confession, a spouse in the home, even a judge in open court.... Two federal judges already have found this section of the Patriot Act to be violative of the First Amendment.... Comey's agents have written more than half a million of their own search warrants… the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our rights even when it does so in secret…. no government violation of rights is harmless....Much More Here.....