🚀 go-pugleaf

I strongly support the right to individual privacy and I disagree
that our society wouldn't be grievously harmed if the NSA and its
functions disappeared. The world is bristling with infernal devices;
we need timely warning and wideranging intelligence.


I have come to the position that it is practically speaking impossible to
wall off legitimately private goings-on from the scrutiny of official
agencies (and from unsanctioned private agents as well). 

The proper approach to safeguarding and extending our right to privacy
(and the other civil liberties which are largely contingent upon this
one) is a legal and procedural one, basically an extention of the now-
threatened "exclusionary rule" that (once) absolutely exculpated a
defendant against whom evidence had been adduced by unconstitutional
means forbidden by the fourth and fifth amendments. We can't, and for our
safety shouldn't, restrict intelligence gathering by NSA and ilk, foreign
or domestic, but we can enact extremely heavy penalties for the use of
information gathered "inadvertently" from domestic sources, i.e., no
sumptuary laws should be enforced using such product, massive damages 
should be awarded against anyone dislosing the product of wiretaps etc.

Public pillory for anyone caught violating a citizen's right to privacy;
secret commendations, and silent mass gratitude, for NSAniks who keep
the peace and the international temperature at a tolerable-for-human-life
dull red or lower.

Doug Maisel