A Small Legal Step In The Right Direction

As I have always believed, the government cannot investigate anything unless there is a specific reason to investigate. Thus they cannot choose to follow you around just to see if you will commit a crime and then arrest you, that is without first having legally justifiable cause to do so. In other words, they must at least first suspect, with reasonable cause, you are involved in a crime in order to investigate you. Under that concept, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled to mass collection of telephone records data by the NSA to be  unconstitutional. One can only hope that small step will go even further and be applied to things like police drones performing general surveillances, or to the police using license plate readers on every vehicle's plates they can capture. The court did leave open the possibility that Congress could enact legislation allowing such  investigations to combat terrorism and that is a scary way out that the court has possibly handed to LE for mass collection of evidence on everyone. Still though: "The court said federal law permits gathering information only when there's something specific to investigate. By contrast, today's ruling says, the government is storing huge amounts of data so that it can be searched later when the need arises." and as I said that is a small legal step in the right direction. Source.

All the best,
GB