https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/us_customs_open.html Here, Schneier commends the ACLU for improving civil liberties protections.
A large issue in our modern era is apparently how US laws are being interpreted far outside what people expect.
The ACLU has done nothing in this matter. They are protecting civil liberties through the most ineffective and indirect mechanisms imaginable, anyone who spends millions of dollars per year with their lack of accomplishments must be doing something wrong. The executive issues signing statements saying that the judicial branch overrules Congress, whereas Congress writes the laws. Congress will always overrule the Supreme Court when it comes to reasonable interpretations of laws, it appears as if Congress has to explicitly state it so, which Congress has not done.
I just thought everyone should be aware that the Holocaust was strictly legal. So was the Soviet gulag. The law itself is not a prophylactic against immorality.
He hears a rumor from one place, and then goes thoroughly investigates it. (makes me wonder how anything was Top Secret with Bavarian fire drills)
Of course it doesn't seem like the ACLU ever asked him about any of it... or famed Jason Leopold for that matter.
So what matters? Either federal intrusions are wholly legal, or they are illegal. Somehow they have proven to be wholly legal over time, besides the meek complaints by the ACLU that it's still illegal. Or maybe the NSA is filled with thousands of men acting with impunity, who know what they are doing is illegal. The most frightening possibility of all, no?
On a wholly different topic, I wonder why certain crimes are still possible to commit through the internet. Congress can always mandate ID for some services or cut funding for other services.