Constitutional Scholar?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

One would presume that a sitting president who allegedly was a constitutional law professor would have a passing familiarity with the fourth amendment to the constitution. While there is no doubt that the world was changed forever after 9/11, and our government does have to use more aggressive tactics to deal with the bad guys, there do need to be some limits. Can we really trust that the government will be absolutely pristine in the way that it handles all of this highly sensitive and personal information? What impact will this have on the way people use Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.?

Go back and listen to the now utterly vacuous and some might say hypocritical campaign rhetoric that President Obama  delivered about curbing the civil rights abuses of the Bush administration. Listen to the palaver about transparency. What Obama has knowingly approved is so far removed from what he promised to do it's a wonder he can keep a straight face. He now says he wants to have a debate on this subject, sure now that he's been outed. amazing when you think about it; this is the very stuff that presidents would rail at Soviet and Chinese leaders about and now it's right in our own backyard.

My guess is that there will be very little debate of any substance. We don't want to give our methods away to the bad guys, so everyone in the government will clam up for security reasons. This will just fade from the headline and go on and on. That is, unless we discover that it has been used in inappropriate ways. Very sad, indeed.