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As the Constitution is the "supreme law of the land", nothing "unconstitutional" can simultaneously be "legal."
You have it wrong. Congress passes law to say, intercept all phone calls and store them. Until a court strikes it down is assumed constitutional and legal. You challenge it and then it becomes illegal and unconstitutional. (The court also changes its mind from time to time so it's not an exact science.)
Wrongly assumed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have it wrong. Congress passes law to say, intercept all phone calls and store them. Until a court strikes it down is assumed constitutional and legal. You challenge it and then it becomes illegal and unconstitutional. (The court also changes its mind from time to time so it's not an exact science.)
It doesn't become unconstitutional when a court says so. From its inception either it is, or it isn't. The issue simply isn't decided until the court says so.
From a practical point of view there's no difference, we can split hairs if you want.
> As for Section 702 of FISA, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But PRISM, as opposed to "upstream collection", isn't (necessarily) about searching foreigners abroad, or even at the border. It's about searching their stuff held on servers (sometimes) located inside the US and run by US companies as part of a business agreement with those f…
| However I have heard it suggested (IANAL) that
| sufficient legal cleverness can allow this to be
| characterised as a border search.
As the Constitution is the "supreme law of the land", nothing "unconstitutional" can simultaneously be "legal."
Until the SJ rules that a law is unconstitutional, it is still a law. When they make a ruling, it stops being a law. I'm disappointed in the number of people who care more about legal vs illegal than about right vs wrong. Laws can be constitutionally proper and yet wrong.
That's why so many people here defend companies like Google or Facebook for legally manipulating their accounting to pay less taxes.
Right/wrong is what the legislators are supposed to worry about when making the law, but once the law is set that's the framework.
So arguing about the legality does have a point here, as it indicates what parts of the law must be changed or erased completely to make our conceptions of right/wrong line up with what the law thinks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't become unconstitutional when a court says so. From its inception either it is, or it isn't. The issue simply isn't decided until the court says so.
It doesn't become unconstitutional when a court says so. From its inception either it is, or it isn't. The issue simply isn't decided until the court says so. From a practical point of view there's no difference, we can split hairs if you want.
I do find arguments based on strict legality to be just a tad strange. Just because something is strictly legal doesn't mean that it's right, nor that it's in the spirit that the law originally intended. I mean, it was legal to exterminate Jews in Nazi Germany, send millions to death camps in Soviet Russia and starve 10s of millions to death in Communist China. Strict legality is particularly low bar to pass. What ha…
Same here. A lot of this was going on in the 2000s. I'd ask them, so if it was legal to kick toddlers in the face, you'd be okay with that? They define "sheeple".
> As for Section 702 of FISA, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But PRISM, as opposed to "upstream collection", isn't (necessarily) about searching foreigners abroad, or even at the border. It's about searching their stuff held on servers (sometimes) located inside the US and run by US companies as part of a business agreement with those f…
| However I have heard it suggested (IANAL) that | sufficient legal cleverness can allow this to be | characterised as a border search. Every airport is considered a 'border.' So even cities that are greater than 100 miles from a land border, or the ocean have a 100 mile circle around their airport where 'border searches' can happen. It doesn't take much legal cleverness to apply this to foreigners accessing US-based…
I do find arguments based on strict legality to be just a tad strange. Just because something is strictly legal doesn't mean that it's right, nor that it's in the spirit that the law originally intended. I mean, it was legal to exterminate Jews in Nazi Germany, send millions to death camps in Soviet Russia and starve 10s of millions to death in Communist China. Strict legality is particularly low bar to pass. What ha…
The much more deep rooted question is "is this good?" Every aspect of law in the United States can be changed and rewritten according to the conscious of the people, though this takes a long time to do. Legality is temporary. Under ideal circumstances we would debate "right vs wrong" and change laws accordingly.
As the Constitution is the "supreme law of the land", nothing "unconstitutional" can simultaneously be "legal."
You have it wrong. Congress passes law to say, intercept all phone calls and store them. Until a court strikes it down is assumed constitutional and legal. You challenge it and then it becomes illegal and unconstitutional. (The court also changes its mind from time to time so it's not an exact science.)