{"id":11463,"date":"2013-04-11T16:16:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T20:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angry.net\/blog2\/?p=11463"},"modified":"2022-08-20T05:19:43","modified_gmt":"2022-08-20T09:19:43","slug":"why-do-you-fear-the-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angry.net\/blog2\/?p=11463","title":{"rendered":"Why do you fear the government?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a question that Progressive Liberals love to ask. \u201cWhat\u2019s there to be afraid of?\u201d The answer most people give is that our rights are being taken away from us. The Progressive Liberal Democrats usually scoff when they hear this.<\/p>\n

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\"constitution-burning.jpeg\"<\/a>Well, perhaps they should try reading something other then the New York Slimes and Huffington ((Huffing: Inhalant Abuse<\/a>)) Post. Our federal government has been abusing and ignoring the god given rights of the American people for over a century. However, with the advent of the Information Age, both the abuse and the awareness of this abuse have increased exponentially.<\/p>\n

For instance, did you know that the Internal Revenue Service has decided they can read your email without a warrant? No? Well they apparently are in violation of a court ruling. Here are some details from The Blaze:<\/p>\n

Documents obtained<\/a> through a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU reveal that the Internal Revenue Service might think it has the ability to obtain communications without a warrant for its investigations of violations of tax law.<\/p>\n

ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler wrote<\/a> that the documents received do not answer directly if the IRS obtains a warrant for emails, text messages and other communications, but \u201cthey suggest otherwise\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before Warshak<\/em>, it was the policy of the IRS to read people\u2019s email without getting a warrant. Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to email at all<\/em>. A 2009 \u201cSearch Warrant Handbook<\/a>\u201d from the IRS Criminal Tax Division\u2019s Office of Chief Counsel baldly asserts that \u201cthe Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.\u201d Again in 2010, a presentation<\/a> by the IRS Office of Chief Counsel asserts that the \u201c4th<\/sup>Amendment Does Not Protect Emails Stored on Server\u201d and there is \u201cNo Privacy Expectation\u201d in those emails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, this is the IRS. They have all sorts of privileges to squeeze the taxpayers. I\u2019m sure they have gone to the courts and been cleared to do this, right? According to The Raw Story<\/a>, no.<\/p>\n

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), commonly thought of as accountants with the power to garnish wages and seize property, is also a law enforcement agency with the power to spy on communications, so it\u2019s not totally surprising that it has typically followed Supreme Court precedent regarding law enforcement\u2019s broad spying powers when it comes to emails more than 180 days old.<\/p>\n

However, in a ruling issued December 2010, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the IRS to always obtain a warrant before rifling through emails, no matter how old, contained on services like Gmail and Yahoo Mail, which otherwise have significantly less privacy protections than, for instance, encrypted communications stored on a home computer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And of course, the IRS lawyers promptly issued memos on getting the required warrants.<\/p>\n

The first indication as to whether the ruling truly made the agency change its ways came in January, 2011, the ACLU\u2019s documents reveal. In an email titled after the case\u2019s name<\/a>, US v. Warshak<\/i><\/a>, an IRS criminal prosecution attorney wrote: \u201cI have not heard anything related to this opinion. We have always taken the position that a warrant is necessary when retrieving e-mails that are less than 180 days old.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uh huh. So, I guess we might have a small issue here, but this must be an outlier and will soon be corrected. Not in New York. As you may know, the State of New York has been going all out to suppress the constitutional rights of gun owners. Now, the confiscation of people\u2019s property, in violation of the Second, 4th<\/sup> and 5th<\/sup> amendments has begun. Again, from The Blaze:<\/p>\n

Despite promises from the president and a host of other politicians who are pushing for more gun control that nobody is coming for your guns<\/em>, the confiscation of guns and gun permits has apparently started in some form in New York State. One attorney representing several people who have been forced to surrender their guns spoke with TheBlaze and alerted us to some disturbing facts:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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