How the Executive can override Congress and the ACLU

[Ryan Carboni]

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/us_customs_open.html Here,
Schneier commends the ACLU for improving civil liberties protections.

http://www.rstreet.org/2014/11/19/yes-the-government-can-open-your-mail-without-a-warrant/
A John Conyers requested the DoJ view on the matter, to investigate it.
Governmentattic requested the documents in 2010, was released to them in
2012, and they finally posted it in 2014.


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.

Anyway, Seymour Hersh has done incredible reporting, he talks about it
here:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?311093-1/seymour-hersh-investigative-journalism
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.
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