by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
This is pretty-simple: The Federal Government, via various agencies, is buying your data which all falls under the “other commercial purposes” statement in the “Terms Of Service” you signed up for with your phone, your social media account and everything else.
This is wildly in violation of the intent of the 4th Amendment yet it is exactly the same sort of dodge that the US Park Service just served up on Great Smoky Mountains National Park patrons starting this year in the form of a requirement to buy a “parking pass” to pull off into any of the parking areas — a dodge around the negotiated deal when the park was formed between the Park Service and both Tennessee and North Carolina which stated that the Park Service could not charge entry fees — that is, “toll the road.”
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Thus the GSMNP is the only National Park where there is no entry fee. But in a particularly-odious slap in the face GSMNP also refuses to honor The National Parks Passes that many Americans buy on an annual (or for Seniors and a few others, lifetime) basis. That is, if you have a National Parks Pass its worthless when it comes to parking to take some pictures or hike in that, and only that, National Park; it is good everywhere else.
This is the nature of Government; they continually look for ways to evade either law or even The Constitution. The Second Amendment is clear in language: Shall not be infringed. It does not say “unless you’re not 21.” It does not say “unless you commit a crime but have served your sentence.” It does not say “unless you use some sort of drug we don’t like.” In fact it is an absolute statement; in statutory construction “shall” or “shall not” mean exactly what they say; the words may or may not indicate that it can be qualified by further conditions.
Thus a requirement to register a “muffler” for a firearm is blatantly unconstitutional as qualifications are explicitly forbidden. So is the entire National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act of 1968 and more. Doesn’t matter; they did it anyway and will happily throw you in prison if you violate any of them.
The Government argues that since they’re “just buying” what someone else can buy there is no protection. The problem with this argument should be obvious; none of the firms involved got your informed consent for the government to acquire, stockpile and then potentially use your purchase history on a credit card, for example. Said data is of necessity collected by a bank to deter fraud but it was never disclosed and fair consent was never given for the government (or the bank, for that matter), to have, hold and hand over that data for unrelated purposes.
Yet Bank of America did exactly that for anyone who happened to make a purchase with one of their cards in the vicinity of Washington DC on January 6th. There was no subpoena; they just gave the data to the government and violated your privacy by doing so without any evidence that you had done any sort of an unlawful thing.
How do we fix this?
