Saturday, February 7, 2015

Government Surveillance

16-Year-Old Launches Organization to Battle Warrantless Surveillance Posted on February 6, 2015 Written by freedomoutpost.com
Bran­don Keibler is just your ordi­nary 16-year-old from South­ern Indi­ana. At least that’s what some peo­ple might think. How­ever, hav­ing become an activist at four­teen and help­ing to estab­lish the Restore the Fourth orga­ni­za­tion, this young man has just launched an orga­ni­za­tion to encour­age grass­roots efforts aimed at a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that wishes to dis­re­gard the fact that they are bound by law to gain a war­rant before they search or seize any­thing of any Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. This also includes war­rant­less sur­veil­lance of individuals.
Project Dig­i­tal Pri­vacy was launched on Jan­u­ary 24, 2015 as a result of increased social activism in regards to gov­ern­ment surveillance.
Accord­ing to the organization’s web­site, “Tech­nol­ogy and global com­mu­ni­ca­tion has reached a steady rate of advance­ment, with new forms of com­mu­nica­tive devices and con­cepts being formed every day. As such, it is in the best inter­est of both cit­i­zens of the United States and the world to keep it from becom­ing cor­rupted in any man­ner — to pre­serve the pow­er­ful and ever evolv­ing nature of these advance­ments. We are an orga­ni­za­tion that is ded­i­cated to non-violently end­ing war­rant­less dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance at the local level.”
What we’re try­ing to do at Project Dig­i­tal Pri­vacy is to end war­rant­less sur­veil­lance at the local level by police depart­ments through the use of leg­is­la­tion and res­o­lu­tions in cities and coun­ties,” he told Free­dom Outpost.
In a sim­i­lar method to how Dan John­son of Peo­ple Against the National Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (PANDAA) is orches­trat­ing a move­ment to nul­lify the 2012 NDAA with its uncon­sti­tu­tional indef­i­nite deten­tion sec­tions, Keibler is hop­ing to do the same in a fight against crim­i­nal war­rant­less sur­veil­lance by peace offi­cers. In fact, he said that the model of his orga­ni­za­tion is based on Johnson’s.
In a press release by release by Project Dig­i­tal Pri­vacy, Keibler wrote:
The goal of the orga­ni­za­tion is to end war­rant­less dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance by local police forces in which pro­grams, like STINGRAY, tap into and col­lect meta­data on cell phones, com­put­ers, and more, with­out warrant.
These pro­grams, while very intru­sive and dis­turb­ing, have not been pub­licly shown to pre­vent crime because, in cities like Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, police have been extremely reluc­tant to release the results of war­rant­less sur­veil­lance programs.
Our orga­ni­za­tion is being launched because of the recent pub­lic atten­tion to war­rant­less sur­veil­lance. We strongly believe that every per­son val­ues the nat­ural rights bestowed upon them – one of those being secu­rity and pri­vacy, both in per­son and effects. We believe that with the recent uses of pro­grams like STINGRAY by local police depart­ments, the secu­rity and pri­vacy of an indi­vid­ual are threatened.
Accord­ing to the organization’s mis­sion state­ment, they are seek­ing to “non-violently end local and state level war­rant­less dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance in the United States, includ­ing that allowed through the USA PATRIOT Act – Sec­tion 215, National Defense Autho­riza­tion Act for the Fis­cal Year of 2014 – Sec­tion 1061, The For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act of 1978, and any sim­i­lar laws, by any non-violent means, includ­ing through the use of local leg­is­la­tion, spread­ing dig­i­tal tools, encour­ag­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials who are work­ing to stop sur­veil­lance, and fight­ing to keep laws expand­ing upon war­rant­less sur­veil­lance from pass­ing at any level.”
Keibler said that he was in the process of get­ting res­o­lu­tions put for­ward in two towns in Penn­syl­va­nia and a county in Florida with a pop­u­la­tion of one million.
Under the US Con­sti­tu­tion, the peo­ple are to be pro­tected from this kind of inva­sion of pri­vacy. The Fourth Amend­ment reads:
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.
The PDP web­site also has a model res­o­lu­tion that can be down­loaded and used as a basis for activists to sub­mit to their local gov­ern­ments. You can also con­tact Bran­don if you are inter­ested in join­ing his orga­ni­za­tion and part­ner­ing with him.

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