the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."
"...remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance."
If by "all men", the founders most definitely did intend to leave out blacks and women, why on earth would you assume they nonetheless intended to include foreigners?
See U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265-267:
"""
The Fourth Amendment provides:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That text, by contrast with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, extends its reach only to "the people." Contrary to the suggestion of amici curiae that the Framers used this phrase "simply to avoid [an] awkward rhetorical redundancy," Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 12, n. 4, "the people" seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by "the people of the United States." The Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to "the people." See also U. S. Const., Amdt. 1 ("Congress shall make no law. . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble") (emphasis added); Art. I, § 2, cl. 1 ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the people of the several States") (emphasis added). While this textual exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community. See United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279, 292 (1904) (Excludable alien is not entitled to First Amendment rights, because "[h]e does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law")."""
The framers were not "global citizen" radicals circa 2013. They were very conscientiously creating a social compact to govern a country of a well-defined set of people. It is entirely natural to assume, as has been assumed, that they did not intend Constitutional rights to be universal.
The rights recognized by the Constitution are human rights. We are not granted those rights by any law. Our Constitution simply recognizes rights we inherently possess due to the fact we are human beings.
To say that other people do not possess those rights implies that the Constitution is granting US citizens those rights, not simply recognizing those rights. Its a subtle but very important difference.
You evolve the meaning of a phrase when you decide that a digital Word document on a USB key is a "paper" within the meaning of the 4th amendment. Changing something fundamental like the scope of rights in the document, changing it from a social compact, a contract among a community of people, into some universal statement of principles applicable to anyone isn't evolving the meaning, it's rewriting the document and an exercise in historical revisionism.
You are familiar American history, right? Or is this a troll?
The origins of the revolutionary movement were demands for equal treatment as British citizens (foreigners). Thus the rhetoric of "no taxation without representation" and the initial focus on appealing to the British Monarchy for redress. Pedantic legalism aside, arguing that the founders of the American republic saw morality as nationally rather than divinely circumscribed ("under God") is shockingly wrong.
Utter historical revisionism. The founders were upset that they were part of the community of englishmen but not treated the same as other englishmen. They did not hold themselves out to be foreigners then demand universal rights from the English king.
The 4th amendment did not come out of nowhere. It is not a distillation from first principles of rights common to humanity. Its a codification of what the framers believed was a right of englishmen in the English constitution.
This isn't "pedantic legalism." Its about the nature of the country we live in. The Constitution was rooted in the magna carta (rights common to subjects of the English king) and the unwritten English constitution (rights common to englishmen). It is a social compact, among a community, not a universal declaration of rights.
The Declaration of Independence explicitly states that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Rights are divine in origin. They are not contingent on being British or American, or belonging to any particular social compact.
Beyond the founding documents of the American Republic, this is self-evident in many other early republican writings. If you've read Thomas Paine ("Rights of Man") you'd know he even picks a fight with Edmund Burke over this very issue when it comes to the French Revolution, with Paine supporting the cause of the French people on the grounds that they held "natural rights" to liberty. It was Burke (who believed in the social compact) who opposed the revolution because of its violence and social unrest.
It was Paine's position which dominated among American republicans. Among many others, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin supported the French Revolution and linked the struggle to the struggle for "the liberty of the whole earth". Their conceptualization was here and elsewhere repeatedly and consistently one of rights belonging universally and naturally to man, regardless of his language, or country, or existing social compact.
It could very well be that no US government agencies are spying on Americans. Think outsourcing the "grunt work" to foreign partners or subsidiaries. The CIA rendition flights to Jordan are a good example.
- Edward Snowden
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-n...