MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘fifth amendment’

Dismantling the Constitution: Police No Longer Have to Honor the Right to Remain Silent

Posted by M. C. on July 18, 2022

by John W. Whitehead

In other words, concludes legal analyst Nick Sibilla, “the Supreme Court has effectively created a new legal immunity for cops accused of infringing on the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.”

Dismantling the Constitution: Police No Longer Have to Honor the Right to Remain Silent

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of every constitutional principle that serves as a bulwark against government tyranny, overreach and abuse.

As usual, the latest assault comes from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 6-3 ruling in Vega v. Tekoh, the Supreme Court took aim at the Miranda warnings, which require that police inform suspects that they have a right against self-incrimination when in police custody: namely, that they have a right to remain silent, to have an attorney present, and that anything they say and do can and will be used against them in a court of law.

Although the Supreme Court stopped short of overturning its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, the conservative majority declared that individuals cannot hold police accountable for violating their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

By shielding police from lawsuits arising from their failure to Mirandize suspects, the Supreme Court has sent a message to police that they no longer have to respect a suspect’s right to remain silent.

In other words, concludes legal analyst Nick Sibilla, “the Supreme Court has effectively created a new legal immunity for cops accused of infringing on the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.”

Why is this important?

In totality, the rights enshrined in the Fifth Amendment speak to the Founders’ determination to protect the rights of the individual against a government with a natural inclination towards corruption, tyranny and thuggery.

The Founders were especially concerned with balancing the scales of justice in such a way that the innocent and the accused were not railroaded and browbeaten by government agents into coerced confessions, false convictions, or sham trials.

Indeed, so determined were the Founders to safeguard the rights of the innocent, even if it meant allowing a guilty person to go free, that Benjamin Franklin insisted, “It is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer.”

Two hundred-plus years later, the Supreme Court (aided and abetted by the police state, Congress and Corporate America) has flipped that longstanding presumption of innocence on its head.

In our present suspect society, “we the people” are all presumed guilty until proven innocent.

See the rest here

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Fingerprint unlocking: Is it secure?NO!

Posted by M. C. on February 3, 2022

The fifth amendment does not prevent the man from forcing you to finger unlock.

Fingerprints aren’t data banked? suuuuuure.

Using a fingerprint to unlock electronic devices and even homes is very common these days. Fingerprint security is incredibly convenient, but is it more or less secure than using a pin or password? It turns out fingerprints are more like usernames than passwords: they’re unique, static, and identifiable as belonging to you. We dive into some of the vulnerabilities you need to be aware of with biometric security, and the best ways to protect your devices.

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Edward Snowden Responds After Trump DOJ Sues Whistleblower Over New Memoir the US Government “Does Not Want You to Read”

Posted by M. C. on September 19, 2019

https://www.activistpost.com/2019/09/edward-snowden-responds-after-trump-doj-sues-whistleblower-over-new-memoir-the-us-government-does-not-want-you-to-read.html

By Julia Conley

Citing what First Amendment advocates have called an “unconstitutional” system of controlling what federal employees can and cannot say about their work, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden over the publication of his new memoir.

The day the book Permanent Record was released, the DOJ filed its lawsuit claiming Snowden had published without submitting the book for “pre-publication review.”

The DOJ is not seeking to block publication of the book but is instead arguing that Snowden should not profit from the story of his 2013 decision to leak files about the NSA’s phone and email spying program since he didn’t have permission from the government to share the information.

The government wants all proceeds from the book and is asking MacMillan Publishers to keep any revenue from being transferred to Snowden.

Government approval is required of federal employees before they write or speak publicly about their work—a requirement that the ACLU says has kept millions of Americans from being able to speak openly about the government.

Snowden tweeted about the lawsuit shortly after it was reported, including a link to his book’s page on Amazon and the words, “This is the book the government does not want you to read.”

“Mr. Snowden wrote this book to continue a global conversation about mass surveillance and free societies that his actions helped inspire,” said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and a lawyer for Snowden. “He hopes that today’s lawsuit by the United States government will bring the book to the attention of more readers throughout the world.

“This book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations,” added Wizner. “Had Mr. Snowden believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review. But the government continues to insist that facts that are known and discussed throughout the world are still somehow classified.”

The Movement for a People’s Party decried the Justice Department for continuing its “war on whistleblowers” targeting Snowden and others who in recent years have publicized government secrets, including war crimes.

The ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute are currently challenging the pre-publication review in court, arguing it violates the First and Fifth Amendments.

“The prepublication process in its current form is broken and unconstitutional, and it needs to go,” Brett Max Kaufman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, said in April when the groups filed suit. “It’s one thing to censor the nuclear codes, but it’s another to censor the same information high schoolers are pulling from Wikipedia. Prepublication review gives the government far too much power to suppress speech that the public has a right to hear.”

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, called the agreement that demands federal workers’ silence a “far-reaching censorship system” that “simply can’t be squared with the Constitution.”

“The government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide national-security secrets,” said Jaffer, “but this system sweeps too broadly, fails to limit the discretion of government censors, and suppresses political speech that is vital to informing public debate.”

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Zuckerberg Wants Facebook to Build a Mind-Reading Machine

Posted by M. C. on March 12, 2019

Zittrain made a law-professor joke about the constitutional right to remain silent in light of a technology that allows eavesdropping on thoughts. “Fifth amendment implications are staggering,” he said to laughter. Even this gentle pushback was met with the tried-and-true defense of big tech companies when criticized for trampling users’ privacy—users’ consent. “Presumably,” Zuckerberg said, “this would be something that someone would choose to use as a product.”

To be fair, Facebook doesn’t plan to actually enter our brains. Don’t be too sure.

When you opt out…are you really out?

What use could the government or your local Fife make of this?

https://www.wired.com/story/zuckerberg-wants-facebook-to-build-mind-reading-machine/

 

For those of us who worry that Facebook may have serious boundary issues when it comes to the personal information of its users, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments at Harvard should get the heart racing.

Zuckerberg dropped by the university last month ostensibly as part of a year of conversations with experts about the role of technology in society, “the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.” His nearly two-hour interview with Harvard law school professor Jonathan Zittrain in front of Facebook cameras and a classroom of students centered on the company’s unprecedented position as a town square for perhaps 2 billion people. To hear the young CEO tell it, Facebook was taking shots from all sides—either it was indifferent to the ethnic hatred festering on its platforms or it was a heavy-handed censor deciding whether an idea was allowed to be expressed.

Zuckerberg confessed that he hadn’t sought out such an awesome responsibility. No one should, he said. “If I was a different person, what would I want the CEO of the company to be able to do?” he asked himself. “I would not want so many decisions about content to be concentrated with any individual.”

Instead, Facebook will establish its own Supreme Court, he told Zittrain, an outside panel entrusted to settle thorny questions about what appears on the platform. “I will not be able to make a decision that overturns what they say,” he promised, “which I think is good.”

All was going to plan. Zuckerberg had displayed a welcome humility about himself and his company. And then he described what really excited him about the future—and the familiar Silicon Valley hubris had returned. There was this promising new technology, he explained, a brain-computer interface, which Facebook has been researching. Read the rest of this entry »

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We should recall anyone who Voted for the National Defense Authorization Act

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2012

Below is my latest letter sent to the Erie Times News-I would surely like to see a recall movement in PA.

The Patriot Act has essentially repealed the 4th Amendment.  Now the Fifth Amendment which says we cannot incriminate ourselves, cannot be held without being charged or cannot be denied legal representation and that we have a guarantee of a speedy trial is toast.  This is due to the National Defense Authorization Act, sponsored by Senators McCain and Levin who never saw a war they did not like.  Read the rest of this entry »

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