Justice Scalia: 'Foolish' to Have the Supreme Court Decide If NSA Wiretapping Is Unconstitutional

[truth_seeker]

Justice Scalia: 'Foolish' to Have the Supreme Court Decide If NSA Wiretapping Is Unconstitutional

Breitbart TV 19 Apr 2014, 10:44 AM PDT

Thursday in an interview conducted at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg talked about their views of the First Amendment. Moderator Marvin Kalb questioned Scalia about whether the NSA wiretapping cloud be conceivably be in violation of the Constitution:
 
Justice Antonin Scalia said, "No because it's not absolute. As Ruth has said there are very few freedoms that are absolute. I mean your person is protected by the Fourth Amendment but as I pointed out when you board a plane someone can pass his hands all over your body that's a terrible intrusion, but given the danger that it's guarding against it's not an unreasonable intrusion. And it can be the same thing with acquiring this data that is regarded as effects. That's why I say its foolish to have us make the decision because I don't know how serious the danger is in this NSA stuff, I really don't."
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Sounds like Justice Scalia feels it might be "reasonable" to conduct "searches" to guard against terrorism?
Common sense guy. This won't please the Rand Paul faction, however.

[Oceander]

Justice Scalia: 'Foolish' to Have the Supreme Court Decide If NSA Wiretapping Is Unconstitutional

Breitbart TV 19 Apr 2014, 10:44 AM PDT

Thursday in an interview conducted at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg talked about their views of the First Amendment. Moderator Marvin Kalb questioned Scalia about whether the NSA wiretapping cloud be conceivably be in violation of the Constitution:
 
Justice Antonin Scalia said, "No because it's not absolute. As Ruth has said there are very few freedoms that are absolute. I mean your person is protected by the Fourth Amendment but as I pointed out when you board a plane someone can pass his hands all over your body that's a terrible intrusion, but given the danger that it's guarding against it's not an unreasonable intrusion. And it can be the same thing with acquiring this data that is regarded as effects. That's why I say its foolish to have us make the decision because I don't know how serious the danger is in this NSA stuff, I really don't."
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Sounds like Justice Scalia feels it might be "reasonable" to conduct "searches" to guard against terrorism?
Common sense guy. This won't please the Rand Paul faction, however.

Actually, what Scalia says exemplifies precisely why the NSA is so potentially troubling - apparently nobody outside of the NSA itself can know just exactly what the NSA is up to and whether what it's doing is reasonable or not.  That might, conceivably, make it a political question the Court might decline to take on, but it doesn't make it a foolish question.

If what the NSA does is unreviewable and presumed constitutional, then why not simply run everything possible through the NSA to insulate it from review?  Why not run FBI searches through the NSA, thereby making it impossible for a reviewing court to determine if an accused person's constitutional rights were violated when the search was conducted?  The propriety of a search is often determined by what was in the affidavit of the person seeking the search warrant; making it impossible to obtain and review the basis underlying an NSA search, even if done via warrant (see FISA), and thereby making it impossible to vindicate the constitutional rights of someone being prosecuted based on the fruits of an NSA search.