Andrew Napolitano Says Patriot Act Replacement Would be Even Worse
How do we know the new "Freedom Act" is bad? Because the NSA supports it.
About two years ago, Americans learned that the feds were spying on all of us all the time and relying on their own unnatural reading of words in the Patriot Act to justify it. Fast-forward to today, and the feds now have immediate access to our phone calls in real time. They can turn on our cellphones in our pockets and purses and use them as listening devices without us knowing it, and they have physical access to all telephone carriers' equipment whenever they wish.
Some members of Congress reject this. But, notes Andrew Napolitano, other senators—foremost among them Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—are merely pretending outrage by offering a Band-Aid to replace the Patriot Act called the Freedom Act. The Freedom Act gets the NSA physically out of the telecoms' offices, but lets them come back in digitally whenever one of these secret FISA courts says so, and the standard for saying so is not probable cause as the Constitution requires. It is whatever the government wants and whenever it wants it. The so-called Freedom Act, argues Napolitano, would actually legitimize all spying all the time on all of us in ways that the Patriot Act fails to do.