PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project

Fri Jun 21 22:23:59 UTC 2013

On Jun 21, 2013, at 8:31 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> On Jun 21, 2013, at 5:10 PM, Phil Fagan <philfagan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I would think this is only an issue if they throw out the Fourth in that when
>>> they use that data collected "inadvertantly" to build a case a against you
>>> they use no other data collected under a proper warrant.
>> 
>> That statement ignores a longstanding legal principle known as "fruit of the poison tree".
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> In spite of what you may have seen on TV, law enforcement is not
> required to ignore evidence of a crime which turns up during a lawful
> search merely because it's evidence of a different crime. Fruit of the
> poisonous tree applies when the original search for whatever it was
> they were originally looking for is unlawful. Supposedly the FISA
> court found the NSA's troll for terrorists to be lawful. Once that's
> true, evidence of any crime may be lawfully introduced in court.

True… The question here, however, is whether these are really lawful searches.

If we eliminate the need for any sort of check and balance and allow gross general permanent wiretapping, then there pretty much isn't a fourth amendment.

I would argue that the FISA court has far overstepped its mandate (or at least failed to uphold its oversight role) and that the searches are, in fact, still unconstitutional.

Owen