Structural Violence Defense 4th Amendment

Structural Violence Defense

4^th Amendment

Alt causes to 4^th amendment protections

Science-fiction writers have fantasized for years about the government monitoring everything we do. For example, there's a classic scene in the 2002 movie The Bourne Identity, which portrays young government agents glued to computer monitors in a crowded room. In seconds, they are able to track almost everywhere Jason Bourne, the main character, has been and where he's going — his flights, train trips and hotels.

One agent gets a photo of Bourne talking to a woman in an alley from a surveillance camera hundreds of miles away. Almost instantly, they identify her, apparently using facial recognition software, and pull up the digital records of her life — including her family biography and her utility bills from three countries.

The woman is just a bystander, but the movie suggests that the minutiae of someone's life can make anyone look guilty.

"I don't like her," the unit chief mutters. "I want to go deep. I want to know every place she's slept in the last six years."

Back in the real world, could government agents really sit in a room and gather that information in 60 seconds or less? "No," says Kevin Bankston, senior attorney with the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology. But "that is the world we're moving toward."

He says one reason is the digital revolution itself. For instance, Facebook uses software now that identifies people from photos. Stores are reportedly using facial recognition programs, so the staff can learn the names of customers almost the moment they stroll through the door.

Bankston says there's another reason the government is beginning to obtain digital records faster and faster — if not yet instantly as it does in movies: The laws that regulate the government were written back in the analog age, so the government often doesn't have many legal restraints. America's founders were not thinking about computers when they wrote the Bill of Rights.

The Fourth Amendment of the Bill Rights, ratified in 1791, has traditionally been Americans' "principal constitutional protection against government spying," says David Cole, a lawyer who teaches constitutional law and national security at Georgetown University. As the amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

But Cole and other legal analysts say the world of computers has weakened the Fourth Amendment. "In the modern digital age," he says, "it means very, very little."

Here's why: Let's say the police or FBI wanted to gather intimate details about your life back in the old days — meaning, before computers came along. Whom are you meeting? What are you reading? What are you writing in your diary? What kinds of products have you been buying? Where are you going to travel and where will you stay?

One of the best ways to get that information would have been to search your home, bug it and wiretap your phone. Based on the Fourth Amendment, that meant the police would have needed a search warrant. And to obtain a warrant, law enforcement officers must convince a judge that they have probable cause that the place they want to search, or the person they want to bug, is likely to reveal evidence of a crime.

"When I send an email, I've shared it with the Internet provider," Cole says. "When I search the Web, I've shared it with the Web company. When I walk around with my cellphone, I'm sharing with the cellphone company my whereabouts. All of that information has lost its constitutional protection, and the government can get it without having to make any showing that you're engaged in illegal activity or suspicious activity."

And instead of a search warrant, the police might just need a subpoena — which is "trivially easy to issue," says Bankston of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Law enforcement doesn't need a judge's approval to obtain subpoenas — prosecutors can sign them on their own, as can authorized employees at federal and state agencies. And law enforcement agents don't need evidence that there's likely a crime. They need only to be able to show that the records they want are relevant to an investigation.

14^th Amendment

14^th amendment’s legitimacy is safe.

SPLC 14 Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, Issue Number: 99 “Attacking the 14th Amendment” http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/summer/attacking-the-14th-amendment

Not surprisingly, the courts have not been impressed by such legal gymnastics. Where plaintiffs have claimed they do not have to pay federal taxes as organic sovereigns, the "argument has been consistently and thoroughly rejected by every branch of the government for decades. Indeed, advancement of such utterly meritless arguments is now the basis for serious sanctions imposed on civil litigants who raise them." United States v. Studley, 783 F.2d 934 (9th Cir. 1986). The fact that the United States Supreme Court has soundly rejected attacks on the Fourteenth Amendment for more than a century adds to the Amendment's legitimacy. See Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922). Courts adhere to the concept of stare decisis, a doctrine designed to create a secure and certain legal system by requiring courts to "abide by, or adhere to, decided cases." Black's Law Dictionary (6th ed.). If this doctrine means anything, it means that, after more than a century of Supreme Court acceptance, the validity of the Fourteenth Amendment and its ratification process is no longer subject to challenge. The Fourteenth Amendment was championed by a victorious government as the result of the Civil War. Questioning the Amendment at this late date is tantamount to fighting the war all over again. Having lost on the battlefield, it is no surprise that those who question the Amendment's legitimacy have lost in the courts.

14^th amendment causes spikes in illegal immigration

Jhalani 14 14th Amendment increases problems with illegal immigration January 26, 2014 - 11:38pm http://www.saratogafalcon.org/content/14th-amendment-increases-problems-illegal-immigration

The very first lines of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution read, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This simple sentence has sparked a debate over the possible solutions and complications surrounding one of America's most controversial issues: illegal immigration. The 14th amendment, which introduces birthright citizenship, has encouraged some illegal immigrants to try to have children in the United States, which has created a host of problems for our nation. ]Illegal immigration is an issue that has plagued our nation for too long; it has created racist barriers, driven states into debt and caused Americans to contradict the very principles their country was founded upon. The catalyst for this ongoing problem has been abuse of the 14th amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship. The 14th amendment, which was established after the civil war to provide equal rights to former slaves, has exacerbated the problem of illegal immigration because it established the idea of "birth right" citizenship, a concept that created a myriad of problems regarding illegal immigration in the United States. The most obvious problem with birthright citizenship is that it encourages illegal immigrants to try to have children in the United States. Immigrants know that their children will be granted full United States citizenship if born on American soil, and therefore will have access to welfare and other state social programs. These babies, called "anchor babies," help illegal alien parents escape deportation, and are being subsidized with taxpayer money. Although these parents are not offered citizenship, they do have a chance to live with their American born children until they reach the age of 21, after which they are at risk of deportation. This lose-lose situation costs money to maintain, and is immoral because families can be split up after the children reach adult age. The costs involved with illegal immigration grow every year and will continue to escalate if the interpretation of the 14th amendment is not altered. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that the births of children of illegal aliens costs nearly $6 billion, which are funded mainly through Medicaid programs, federal money and American taxpayers. In addition to the costs of their births, these "anchor babies" will drain an estimated $5 billion for education, including bilingual studies and special needs. According to the California Department of Social Services, California, which has a high concentration of illegal immigrants, pays an estimated $553 million for welfare to support this group.

Alt causes to legitimacy- some people don’t think it was ratified.

McDonald 14 Was the Fourteenth Amendment Constitutionally Adopted? http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/was-the-fourteenth-amendment-constitutionally-adopted/ By Forrest McDonald on Apr 23, 2014

To turn now to substantive aspects of the question, the first irregularity-the passage of the amendment by an incomplete Congress-can be disposed of rather briefly. The final vote in the House of Representatives was 120 to 32, with 32 abstentions-far more than the requisite two-thirds majority. But the eleven states of the erstwhile Confederacy were entitled to and had elected 61 representatives who had been denied seats, all of whom would doubtless have voted in the negative. Had their votes been cast, the majority would have been only 56 percent. Besides, the majority included representatives from the newly admitted states of West Virginia and Nevada, the constitutionality of whose statehood was doubtful. In the Senate a similar situation pertained. The vote there was 33 to 11, with 5 abstentions. If the twenty-two seats of the former Confederate states were added in the negative column, there would have been a tie vote, and if the four seats held by West Virginia and Nevada were subtracted from the affirmative column, the aye votes would have fallen short of even a simple majority.

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