Police State

Man is abused by police for exercising his rights at sobriety checkpoint. False positives by drug dogs are commonplace, allowing cops to search vehicles they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to search.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appoints all FISA judges.

"The 11 FISA judges, chosen from throughout the federal bench for seven-year terms, are all appointed by the chief justice. In fact, every FISA judge currently serving was appointed by Roberts, who will continue making such appointments until he retires or dies. FISA judges don’t need confirmation — by Congress or anyone else.
No other part of U.S. law works this way. The chief justice can’t choose the judges who rule on health law, or preside over labor cases, or decide software patents. But when it comes to surveillance, the composition of the bench is entirely in his hands, and, as a result, so is the extent to which the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can spy on citizens."

That's interesting.

FISA is the enabler and empowerer of NSA, not a check on its power.

"In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.
The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.
The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said."

That's not good.

Former US intelligence agents in the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence honor NSA whistleblower Snowden with this year’s award for truth-telling.

The American people yawn at unconstitutional, invasive security checks until they cause them to be late to the game. If that's what it takes to get people riled up and to recognize this is just theater and oppression, I'm OK with that.

In another example of government's war on families, seized a child from his parents because his dad was driving with him too late.

Cops abuse FBI database. No surprise there. In this case though, one cop looked up two other cops, which is a good reminder that surveillance states always destroy themselves from the inside.

Cops kill man's dog, then claim they were protecting the man.

TSA messes up a plane crash.