Anonymous asks: “Off topic: What do you think of the ruling of the court case over the NSA data-collection-whatever?”

I haven’t studied the case or ruling beyond what was in the headlines and a few articles. However, I think it’s safe to say that capturing virtually all internet traffic is unreasonable and unwarranted (and I have a pretty broad definition of “reasonable”), thus violating the Fourth Amendment.

I think I could tolerate the NSA capturing all internet traffic if it were reasonable. But is there any evidence to show that it’s reasonable? Has there been any effort made to demonstrate that it’s reasonable?

I’d like to be able to defend the NSA here. After all, the world is a scary place, national security is an increasingly complex matter, and the bad guys use the internet, so why not monitor and use the internet to catch them?

More specifically, I’d like to be able to defend the NSA by saying something along these lines: “Because the world is a scary place, national security is an increasingly complex matter, and the bad guys use the internet, the NSA needs to be able to do A, B, and C. But doing D, or anything beyond that, would clearly be going too far, so it can’t and doesn’t do D.”

But over the last few years, we’ve learned that the NSA does do D. And E. And F. Come to think of it, when’s the last time you saw a story confirming that the NSA does not have a particular ability or capacity? That there’s some limit to its data collection or intelligence gathering or spying? Hasn’t literally every NSA story been about how it has more power than we knew?

I’m sure that the Obama folks would simply say, just like the Bush folks did, “At some point, you have to trust us.” But if the left didn’t trust Bush with this sort of power, and the right doesn’t trust Obama with this power, and the middle doesn’t trust anybody with this power, then… we have a problem. Go after the bad guys, sure, but… Jeez.

I already assume the President won’t do anything to reign in the NSA; it’s not in the nature of the office or the office-holder, regardless of party. We’ve seen a federal court show that it’s willing to do something; hopefully other courts and the Congress will follow suit.

…

Another point, that might’ve been worth considering, say, 14 or 15 months ago: Will anyone ever again believe that a President doesn’t spy on his campaign opponents? Or can we safely assume that every President from here on out is a Lyndon Edgar Nixon?