The Myth of the Fourth Amendment
For a long time the Fourth Amendment rights of every American citizen have been violated. Since the creation of the CIA and NSA under the Truman Administration our intelligence agencies have been able to eavesdrop on any American citizen they deem necessary. It wasn't until the implementation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA in 1978 that established the FISA Court which made it necessary for the President to be granted legal authority by a federal judge to eavesdrop on American citizens. Its important to note that the FISA Court has never once denied a request to authorize eavesdropping.
After the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush and the top legal advisors of his Administration thought that FISA was still too restrictive on the powers of the United States Government, so Bush went ahead and granted himself the authority to break the law, ignore FISA in its entirety, and get directly to invading the privacy of anyone in the United States. According to a 2005 article in the New York Times, a presidential order signed in 2002 authorized the NSA to monitor the, "...international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants...in an effort to track possible 'dirty numbers' linked to Al Qaeda,".
This is profoundly unconstitutional, since unwarranted eavesdropping on American citizens is prohibited by the fourth amendment of the Bill of Rights that prevents the authorities from invading your privacy without a warrant. The Bush Administration simply dismissed those claims by stating that these measures were necessary for the Commander in Chief to take in order to save American lives. The Times stated that the Bush Administration, "views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States".
A main argument of the Bush Administration was that in times of war, the President must be able to take extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of the American people, this was outlined in depth in the Yoo memorandum which the Bush used to rationalize his unconstitutional actions. After 9/11, that argument was easy for the American public to get behind in the state of trauma that they were in, the country was in crisis, and the Bush Administration jumped at the chance to to intrude on our rights in the name of national security.
This excuse that this unconstitutional surveillance is necessary for national security would go on to give cover to the Obama Administration, since the United States policy of perpetual warfare guaranteed the establishment that their unconstitutional actions would be covered up for national security purposes.
When Barack Obama became President in 2008, his rhetoric made it seem as though he was going put an end to the unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens that was initiated under the Bush Administration, but according to an article in Time in June of 2015, "The Obama administration expanded warrantless surveillance of Americans Internet searches, according to new National Security Agency documents released by Edward Snowden."
According to ProPublica, "In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil...". The Justice Department only allows the NSA to monitor addresses that it can link to a foreign government, but according to the secret memos the NSA "sought permission to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers."
In true Obama Administration fashion, the Senate passed legislation in 2012 that put some limits on the NSA's authorities to eavesdrop, but it only applied to some provisions of the USA Patriot Act, not the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The legislation did not impair the Section 702 warrantless spying program created by congress in 2008, instead, the Obama administration used arguments similar to those outlined in the Yoo memorandum which the Bush administration used to rationalize their unconstitutional surveillance after 9/11.
The Obama administration, just like Bush before him, argued that the "...privacy interests of US persons in international communications are 'significantly diminished, if not completely eliminated' when those communications are sent to or from foreigners abroad.", in other words, it is the view of the Obama administration that American citizens forfeit their fourth amendment protections whenever their private communications cross an international boarder, and with the layout of the world wide web, that is becoming almost impossible for an individual to control.
Neither political party is interested in upholding the core principals of our constitution. They are only interested in using and abusing our democratic processes in order to retain their power, and make a profit while doing it.