Thursday, March 22, 2012

Is the CIA spying on you?

Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey judge-turned-Fox News judicial analyst who has perhaps emerged as the premier voice of libertarianism in cable news (now that Glenn Beck is gone), believes it could be.

He reasons:
When Congress created the CIA in 1947, it expressly prohibited the agency from spying on Americans in America.

Nevertheless, it turns out that if your microwave, burglar alarm or dishwasher is of very recent vintage, and if it is connected to your personal computer, a CIA spy can tell when you are in the kitchen and when you are using that device. The person who revealed this last weekend also revealed that CIA software can learn your habits from all of this and then anticipate them.

Acting "diabolically" and hoping to "change fingerprints and eyeballs" in its "worldwide mission" to steal and keep secrets, the CIA can then gut the Fourth Amendment digitally, without ever physically entering anyone's home. We already know that your BlackBerry or iPhone can tell a spy where you are and, when the battery is connected, what you are saying. But spies in the kitchen? Can this be true?

Who revealed all this last weekend? None other than Gen. David Petraeus himself, President Obama's new director of the CIA.

I wonder whether he knows about the Fourth Amendment and how the Supreme Court has interpreted it and that federal laws prohibit his spies from doing their work in America. I wonder whether he or the president even cares.

Do you?

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