Give it up!

That’s what thugs, robbers, muggers, gangbangers, and assorted other ruthless criminals always demand when they want to plunder innocent victims of lives and property. Even if they don’t come out and say it outright they’re still thinking it all the while inside their twisted criminal minds.  

When it comes to all the common methods employed upon the innocent by assorted ruthless criminals, don’t forget your local, state and federal governments. They’re determined not to be outdone. The only difference between a common ordinary criminal and a government operative is that the government thugs claim legitimacy for their criminal acts.

And the federal judiciary of the United States is demonstrating that it is just as complicit in the entire scheme of legitimizing government thuggery as the other two branches. Americans can no longer confidently go the courts to vindicate their lawful constitutional rights against government criminals who constantly demand that we “give it up!”

Just last week a U.S. federal judge upheld the “right” and authority of government border thugs to confiscate and search the contents of computers, flash drives, memory sticks, digital cameras and other electronic equipment belonging to all travelers, American citizen and foreigner alike, including news reporters and photographers, without even so much as a reasonable suspicion of a crime.

U.S. District Judge Edward Korman granted the government’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by civil rights attorneys that claimed the practice was unconstitutional and sought to have it halted.

Of course, such government conduct is clearly and unequivocally unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which provides no exceptions for unreasonable searches and seizures at international border crossings, but the judge got around that pesky impediment by declaring that the plaintiffs hadn't shown they suffered an injury that gave them standing to bring the suit.

The court also cited pervious decisions holding that the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches doesn't apply to the government's efforts to secure international borders from outside threats. So he’s not the only judicial miscreant out there who’s complicit in the government’s ongoing campaign against the constitutional protections under the Bill of Rights.

How about that? Nowadays Americans have no standing to challenge government routine conduct which violates our constitutional rights according to the judiciary, the very branch of government which was created by the founding fathers to enforce those rights.

Where in the Constitution does it provide that unreasonable searches and seizures can be conducted at random by government thugs at border crossings?

The judge didn’t answer that question because he knows full well that the Constitution simply doesn’t allow it.  He simply ignored it in the interest of the governments claims of national security.

"Unfortunately, these searches are part of a broader pattern of aggressive government surveillance that collects information on too many innocent people, under lax standards, and without adequate oversight," explained one of the ACLU attorneys who brought the suit.

The plaintiffs: "must be drinking the Kool-Aid if they think that a reasonable suspicion threshold of this kind will enable them to 'guarantee' confidentiality to their sources, or protect privileged information," opined the judge. "Nor is this the only consideration that prevents them from guaranteeing confidentiality. The United States border is not the only border that must be crossed by those engaging in international travel."

“[The plaintiff] "cannot be so naive to expect that when he crosses into Syrian or Lebanese border that the contents of his computer will be immune from searches and seizures at the whim of those who work for Bashar al-Assad or Hassan Nasrallah," the judge added, referring to the president of Syria and leader of Hezbollah.

Right; if those other nasty governments can violate the rights of innocent travelers, so can the United States, even against its own citizens, reasons the Judge. Anyone else, such as advocates of the Bill of Rights, who reason otherwise, must be drinking Kool-Aid.

No doubt this criminally complicit judge would rule exactly the same way in favor of the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance and outright spying methods against innocent American citizens, not at the border, but inside the country on their own soil.

After all, what is the Fourth Amendment compared the government‘s “right” to ignore it?

Now we learn from our American hero, Edward Snowden that the NSA has embarked upon a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets,” in the process of building a quantum computer capable of cracking the most sophisticated of today’s encryption types currently protecting medical, banking, business and government records around the world from prying eyes.

That’s not the least of it. There are also reports that NSA’s hacking unit uses James Bond-style spy gear to obtain data, including intercepting computer deliveries to customers in order to outfit them with sophisticated spying software. Its so-called Tailored Access Operations unit, TAO, is an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.

The NSA wants everyone in the world, including all Americans to give it up, and if they don’t want to give it up, they’re going to find a way to take it anyhow. They want the capability of knowing all our personal secrets; our emails; bank accounts; everything; they’re leaving no stone unturned.

We might as well just give them a key to our homes and let them violate us as they please.

And the U.S. judiciary is going along with it.

I envision the United States Supreme Court one day soon saying:

Give it up!