SUMMARY: Behind the scenes, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been making a series of significant and controversial changes. Lisa Desjardins reports on how Sessions has been one of the key forces executing the President's agenda and reversing the Obama legacy.
As the Trump Administration comes out swinging in favor of one of the United States' most controversial surveillance laws and Congress debates them with top intelligence and Department of Justice officials, everyone in the country should be thinking about why being watched by the government makes us queasy.
I've been working on US surveillance issues as a lawyer, policy analyst, and general geek for the past three years. In my current role, I spend every day investigating and spreading the word about what the government is doing with your private data, especially your Internet and phone conversations.
Although there are plenty of good arguments out there — both principled and pragmatic — about why government overreach in this area matters, the ones I seem to wind up discussing most with people who are curious about these issues tend to center on the idea of “privacy.”
Sometimes, even as I say the word, I can see my listeners' eyes start to glaze over. Privacy — really?
There are people out there with guns and bombs who want to kill and maim others en masse.
How can something like privacy — which is almost never absolute anyway — take precedence over the need to prevent that?
Aren't governments responsible for protecting their populations?
So, maybe arguments that only focus on “privacy,” in the abstract, leave you cold.
Well, the truth is that—at least at a visceral level—they do the same for me.
But after spending many hours pondering the nature of government surveillance, I've been able to pin down exactly what it is about the large-scale and overwhelmingly secretive programs run by the US that does trouble me deeply—and, in my view, should also trouble you.
Especially as Congress gears up for a major battle over whether to reform one of the country's most sweeping warrantless communications surveillance laws, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (the subject of the upcoming Senate hearing), we should all be asking ourselves what it is about these programs that disturbs us.
Here's what keeps me up at night.
First, it bothers me that these warrantless, potentially enormous programs create such a vast power disparity between the US government and the people it is intended to represent and serve.
In this, I have solid backing: James Otis, a Boston lawyer who made a fiery argument in 1761 about the British colonial authorities' use of broad “general warrants” to barge into homes and rifle through private papers, decried that practice as “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.”
Otis pointed out that such broad powers enabled any official who wielded them to carry out “petty tyranny” and “lord it over us”—and in doing so, he helped inspire the American Revolution.
Particularly when I look at the government's Section 702 programs, which include warrantless demands for private communications from major US Internet companies and (allegedly) the bulk scanning of many of the communications that pass over the undersea cables that connect the US to the rest of the world, Otis' objections still seem relevant.
This is not how democracy is supposed to look.
It also bothers me that the US government effectively misleads its own population, not to mention the rest of the world, about what it is doing.
To cite just one example, the authorities like to describe Section 702 surveillance as “targeted” because, officially, the monitoring must “target” foreigners (or foreign entities) outside of the United States.
What the government doesn't announce with quite as much enthusiasm is that as part of this ostensibly targeted monitoring, it believes it is entitled to sweep up potentially huge numbers of private calls, emails, texts, and so on—including those belonging to Americans—“incidentally.”
There are other examples of executive branch use of narrow, secret, or non-obvious interpretations of terms in an apparent effort to conceal or minimize its activities.
If the government truly believes its surveillance practices are constitutional, then its use of these verbal smokescreens is, to say the least, difficult to understand.
It bothers me that my free speech is no longer truly free.
As many of us probably do, I hesitate before using certain words in emails or texts. And by “certain words,” I mean those that allude to my religious beliefs, which—I can say with great confidence—would not please everyone.
I mean those that express my views on culturally sensitive topics. I mean those that some might regard as obscene, or are the product of frustration or anger or simply bad taste.
I mean those that some US government official, somewhere, someday, might not like.
In case law about the First Amendment, there's a term for this hesitation: the “chilling effect.” It's a pretty unambiguous sign that fundamental rights are in jeopardy.
It bothers me that if an FBI agent reads this and doesn't like what I've written, he or she can do a search for any of my communications the government might have “incidentally” grabbed under Section 702. Literally. Right now. Without a warrant.
These are known as “backdoor searches,” and the government doesn't think it needs any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever to do them—it only needs to be hunting for “foreign intelligence information” (a very broadly defined term) or “evidence of a crime.” The potential consequences for activists, demonstrators, minorities, and the politically unpopular should be obvious.
After all, surveillance powers are wielded by humans, with all of their prejudices and temptations and flaws. This is why they're supposed to be constrained by clear, strict laws and overseen by judges on a case-by-case basis—which Section 702 snooping is not.
Ultimately, these are all problems that privacy protections are intended to forestall. Think of privacy as a “gateway” right; when I know my calls and emails are truly private, and that law enforcement can't search them unless it has a specific pre-existing reason to think I've done something wrong, I speak more freely.
When I know I can trust my government to be forthright about when it can and cannot spy on me, I'm more likely to take advantage of my legal rights to assemble with others, protest, or explore or practice a religious faith.
If I'm ultimately charged with a criminal offense, the existence of clear laws and policies on when the government can monitor me (and what it can do with that information) will help ensure that I can discover and challenge any activities that may have violated the law.
In a rule-of-law country, these are necessities, not luxuries.
If you believe in democracy and in individual freedoms, there is a great deal about the federal government's out-of-control surveillance, including under Section 702, that should worry you. Now is the time to think about why it does.
Led by Sen. Ted Cruz, Republicans will be wasting no time in their efforts to roll back civil rights for LGBT Americans.
[The First Amendment Defense Act] would prohibit the federal government from taking "discriminatory action" against any business or person that discriminates against LGBTQ people. The act distinctly aims to protect the right of all entities to refuse service to LGBTQ people based on two sets of beliefs: "(1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage."
The intentionally broadly-written law would, in other words, enshrine the "right" of any private business to deny service to gay Americans outright if they are personally opposed to marriage equality. It would not merely allow businesses to deny their services in same-sex marriage ceremonies themselves: it would allow any business to discriminate against any customer, gay or straight, for any service, whether it be selling them gasoline or a hamburger, if a pseudo-religious reason can be attached to it.
The customer likely doesn't even have to be gay. The business can simply declare that they believe that customer might be an unmarried fornicator or a single parent, or perhaps declare that serving a particular customer might nebulously benefit some gay American later on. The law makes no mention of religious beliefs that are not hostile to LGBT Americans or equality; the religious belief declaring LGBT equality to be sinful is elevated as the only government-protected religious belief on the subject that will be tolerated.
It is an un-American and deeply anti-First-Amendment bill, which is of course why Sen. Ted Cruz and team are quite certain they will be able to gain the support of their Republican colleagues and their new anti-civil rights President.
It is roughly equivalent to efforts sponsored in Republican-led states like North Carolina and Mike Pence's Indiana, all of which have been tied up in courts or resulted in gargantuan corporate and private boycotts of those states.
It's stupid as hell, and a reminder that Ted Freaking Cruz is a rancid little un-American grub of a man who was foisted onto the nation by a Republican base so riddled with paranoia that they are willing to support any malevolent act or actor if they think doing so will cause harm to Americans they don't like.
As usual.
In 1850 the Congress and the President adopted a series of bills that they thought would end the sectional division in the country over the slavery issue. It didn’t, it did delay what now appears to have been an inevitable Civil War for ten years and probably bought the North the time it needed to develop strong enough to win that conflict. Despite what the legislators and President thought, their best efforts were undermined by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1856 known as the Dred Scott Decision. That infamous decision ruled that a class of people could never be considered citizens of the United States nor have any rights under the laws and constitution of the nation because they had black skin. That decision made the Civil War inevitable upon the election of President who opposed the expansion of slavery; a Civil War with over 600,000 dead and more wounded.
After ten years of an effort by the Congress and the President to assure the rights of the newly freed slaves and enforce amendments to the constitution that fully undid the Dred Scott Decision, the country settled for a society where all were free but only some (white) had rights. In 1896 the Supreme Court of the United States issued a second outrageous ruling Plessy v. Ferguson. That decision accepted the right to citizenship of ex-slaves but held that black and white citizens could be separated and treated equally. It led to Jim Crow segregation and unequal schools, libraries, wash rooms, public fountains, parks etc. It took almost 60 years for the Supreme Court to reverse that decision and declare unanimously that separate but equal was inherently unequal and therefore a violation of the Constitution’s equal protection of the laws clause.
It took another dozen years for the country to come to grips with that 1954 decision Brown v. Bd.. of Education. And, in 1964 and 1965 the people of the country and the President from the South, with a preacher from Alabama and a Senator from Illinois succeeded in enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Some of those provisions led to immediate desegregation of public facilities; and, the Voting Rights Act led to representation at the county, state and federal level for the black citizens of many states. Every President since Johnson and every Congress through 2006 has renewed the Voting Rights Act.
Now the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 decision, decides that section 4 of the Voting Rights Act which sets the trigger for the implementation of Section 5 is unconstitutional. It is Section 5 that has made the Voting Rights Act a success. It is Section 5 that required per-approval by the Justice Department if covered jurisdictions want to make changes in their election laws. And, it is the means by which the federal government prevents encroachments on the rights of our citizens in the covered states. If there is a weakness in the Voting Rights Act it is that pre-clearance should apply to all the states.
The Supreme Court is the most undemocratic branch of our government. The Justices are appointed for life by an indirectly elected President (read Electoral College) and a non-representative Senate (read 2 per state). It has a history of bowing to the powerful interests that rule our economy (witness the attempts to gut the New Deal reforms). And now in Shelby v Holder it guts the Voting Rights Act.
We are at a crossroads in America. One road leads to an America with a large underclass of undocumented non-citizens who will provide a cheap labor force for the industrial capitalists; a debt-burdened graduate student population that will live in apartments (read dollars for landlords and real estate interests) as they can’t afford their own homes; and a poor and black population whose voices at the ballot box will be stifled. The other road leads to the America that the 19th and 20th centuries progressed towards; a Nation where all: men and women, young and old, rich and poor, white and black and Latino, gay and straight, enjoyed the promise of the American Dream - the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and to live one's life with dignity.
Twice the Supreme Court has been dangerously wrong on the issue of race and equality. Now it is wrong a third time. Three strikes and you’re out. It is time to begin a crusade for Democracy in America. It is time to abolish the Electoral College; reform the Congress (and particularly the Senate) and establish a Supreme Court with Justices serving ten-year terms. It is time to enhance and enshrine popular democracy in the United States. We can keep the Republic that Benjamin Franklin said was being left to us rather than a Monarchy -- and we don’t want an Oligarchy or a Plutocracy either.
SUMMARY: A key provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring federal oversight of states with a history of racial discrimination has been struck down by the Supreme Court. Jeffrey Brown discusses the ruling with the National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle, and the court's argument that the U.S. is no longer divided as it was in the 1960s.
SUMMARY: The Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 vote to strike down a provision of the Voting Rights Act that polices voting discrimination. Ray Suarez gets debate on the fate of the law from Edward Blum of the Project on Fair Representation and Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
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SUMMARY: In addition to arresting activists, the Iranian government has also targeted the people who would defend them and tell their stories. Reporting in affiliation with the Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED, Spencer Michels looks at cases of Iranian attorneys and journalists charged with acting against national security.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Next to Iran.
Journalists and human rights groups there have charged the government with imprisoning dissidents, part of a campaign to silence criticism of the regime.
The NewsHour, along with the Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED San Francisco, have obtained interviews from an Iranian journalist to help tell that story.
NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels reports.
SUMMARY: Helen Gurley Brown told women they didn't have to compromise: They could have the career, the man, the family, and a great sex life. As the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, she defended this agenda enthusiastically for more than 30 years. Judy Woodruff and writer Gail Sheehy remember the life and legacy of Gurley Brown.
SUMMARY: The Boy Scouts of America announced Tuesday it had reaffirmed its ban on openly gay youth and adults becoming scouts and leaders. Jeffrey Brown and the Los Angeles Times' Molly Hennessy-Fiske discuss why this decision is as much a business concern as it is one of values.
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): 2011 brought the year of the protester. Demonstrations rocked Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Yet, despite this wave of pro-democracy movements, the number of free countries declined for the sixth year in a row. That's according to the Freedom House Research institute.
One reason for that is authoritarian regimes are learning to manipulate political system without using brute force for suppression. A new book by William J. Dobson, "The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy," tackles that subject.
For two years, Dobson traveled the world to examine regimes that managed to rule with a velvet glove, in spite of their iron-fisted policies.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Fatalities on the nation's roads may be declining, but motorcycle deaths are not. Those deaths have increased from about 3,200 in 2002 to 4,500 in 2010. And yet state laws requiring helmets have been weakened.
In the 1970s, 47 states shown here in gray required all motorcycle drives to wear helmets. Today, just 19 of them, all in dark blue, require them. Most of the rest in light blue still require helmets of younger riders. That's the finding of a new report released earlier this month by the investigative group FairWarning.org.
Days later, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued its own report, finding that five times as many cyclists who don't wear helmets die in accidents compared to those who do wear one.
All of this has stirred plenty of anger in the motorcycle community. The American Motorcyclist Association said in a statement that it -- quote -- "opposes helmet mandates because they have unintended consequences. Historically, the enforcement of helmet mandates has siphoned away scarce funds from effective crash prevention programs such as rider education and motorist awareness."
I am a strong believer in Democracy - it’s almost like a religion to me. I’m a sort of Jeffersonian swearing eternal hostility against any form of tyranny over the mind of man. America after its revolution became the Symbol of Democracy to the world -- to Europe and South America in the 19th century and to the peoples of Asia and Africa in the 20th. From Bolivar in Columbia, the radical republicans in Europe in 1848, down the years to the young Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square; the democratic movements throughout the world used America as an example and often our Statue of Liberty (a gift from the first nation to follow our revolution) as a symbol.
But can democracy continue to thrive in its modern birthplace, the United States of America in to the twenty first century? Throughout America today legislators are passing laws to restrict access to the vote - to make it more difficult to register and to require more paper and some use of money to be able to vote. This counter revolution comes after over one hundred and fifty years of franchise expansion. From a small number of well to do property owners to all white male, and then all male and then all female citizens the nation and its constituent states expanded the electoral franchise. With the Civil War the use of military ballots and absentee ballots became more common.
Today with recent Supreme Court decisions money is now uncontrollably flooding the political arena. We always had the ability to spend personal funds now corporations can spend their funds and in most cases now there is little to no accountability nor transparency. With the cost of waging Congressional and Senate campaigns becoming prohibitive to all but self made millionaires we are seeing more and more keeping offices in the family with sons and daughters running for their parents seats gaining the advantage of both their parents fundraising capability as an incumbent and inheriting their name recognition. The word for this type of government is Oligarchy - the rule of the few and the related - the curse of the Roman Empire. And when you add money to that you get Plutocracy - the rule of the rich few.
So in America today a new generation of citizens is entering the body politic --disenchanted with the political system believing that anyone can buy an office be it Mayor of New York City or President of the United Sates. And, today young citizens consider the jury still out as to whether their involvement going door to door and making calls and using social networking can overcome the expenditures of the billionaires.
So as the twenty-first century unfolds what kind of government does it portend for America: a democracy with a government of the people, by the people and for the people or a plutocratic oligarchy where a few rich families rule in the interests of the 1%. If that happens I fear that the peoples of the world who gather in Tahrir Square and seek freedom in Tibet and civil rights in Burma will turn to other models and examples -- perhaps to a Chinese model of economic freedom with some personal liberty and local control over local matters and a strong military keeping order. Or the Putin type man on a white horse approach in Russia where the leader by whatever title personalizes the government.
Democracy can be messy -- too many people today practice the politics of personal destruction and obliterate candidates - too many elected officials place such total loyalty to the D or the R behind their name that they refuse to work with each other to the benefit of the people. As citizens get turned off and fewer and fewer vote they care less if the democracy becomes the oligarchy or the plutocracy. And by not caring they ultimately loose the rights they have come to take for granted - the right to think what they want, to practice the religion they want, to get a good education, to get a good job earning a Living wage, to live in a safe community, to obtain quality health care and to decide who will make the rules that govern their society.
If the 99% allow the 1% to take ownership of their government “they will get” in Harry Truman’s words “the government they deserve.” America will enter the history books not as “the shining city upon a hill” that the Puritans so hoped it would be but as a failed attempt by a diverse society to govern itself in a democratic fashion. Many saw the 2008 Presidential elections as a cross roads that asked the question “would America elect a black President.” Now and especially since the counter-revolution of 2010 we are at a fork in the road - one path leads to continued democracy -- an end to the radical right wing Republican anti democracy moves--; and the other path leads to a society ruled by the rich and their relatives. The entire history of our nation and its great leaders and the many Americans who gave their lives fighting for freedom since 1776 calls out for today’s generations of Americans to keep the faith and keep their democracy.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And finally tonight, on this Presidents Day holiday, a fresh take on the legacy of Abraham Lincoln.
Hari toured the new Ford's Theatre Center for Education and Leadership here in Washington, D.C., with historian Richard Norton Smith.
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): Walking into the new theater center is like taking a step back in time to the cobblestone streets of Washington on April 16, 1855, the day after President Abraham Lincoln's death.
Newspaper headlines announcing the president's death cover the walls of the new exhibit, which opened today in a building across the street from Ford's Theatre, where the president was assassinated.
Starbucks and Google are the latest corporations to support gay marriage in Washington state.
Washington United for Marriage announced Wednesday that the two companies are among dozens of businesses that are supporting SB 6239 and HB 2516 (state bills).
These companies bring the total number of supportive businesses to more than 100. The list of companies includes Microsoft, Nike and Group Health Plan.
"Marriage equality provides a multitude of intangible benefits to Washington businesses. Recognizing the relationships of all - irrespective of sexual orientation - means an open and innovative business climate that ensures fundamental fairness and basic civil rights for all," said Lacey All, Chair of Washington United for Marriage. The addition of these companies continues to show that momentum in Washington State is on the side of equality for all Washingtonians."
At this time, six states plus the District of Columbia recognize marriage for same-sex couples under state law: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont.
Nine states - California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington - provide same-sex couples with access to the state level benefits and responsibilities of marriage, through either civil unions or domestic partnerships. Same-sex couples do not receive federal rights and benefits in any state.
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Next, The battle over online piracy is heating up, as companies are taking their case directly to Web users.
Ray Suarez has the story.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): If you normally turn to Wikipedia to look things up, you will have to go elsewhere tomorrow. The English version of Wikipedia, along with other popular sites, such as Reddit and BoingBoing, will go black for 24 hours to protest anti-piracy legislation.
The companies oppose two federal bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act, known as SOPA, and the Protect I.P. Act, known as PIPA. The legislation could force websites to monitor material from users that may include copyrighted content. It could also give the government the right to block entire websites.
Major content providers, including the film and recording industry, say they need greater protection from copyright theft. The Obama administration said over the weekend it wouldn't support the current versions of the bills.
Tens of thousands of Islamists jammed Tahrir Square on Friday, demanding the swift exit of Egypt’s interim military rulers in the most significant challenge to their authority since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak nine months ago.
The huge turnout was the first time that Egypt’s Islamists had so openly and aggressively challenged military rule, ending an uneasy truce that had prevailed as long as the military appeared willing to allow the Islamists as much of a say in Egypt’s future as they could win at the ballot box.
That truce fell apart, on the eve of parliamentary elections, after the military council spelled out for the first time its intention to preserve a decisive role for itself in Egyptian politics far into the future, elevating itself above civilian control and imposing rules to protect individual and minority rights. And after sitting out many of the protests organized by liberals since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, Islamists took to the streets on Friday in a fierce backlash.
“The people didn’t sacrifice hundreds of lives in the revolution so that the military would jump over their will,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, a teacher at a religious school who traveled from Mansoura, about 75 miles away, to attend. “If they can do that, what is the point of parliamentary elections?”
The rally represented the beginning of a new battle between Egypt’s two most powerful political forces, the military and the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, that leaves Egyptian liberals and leftists anxious and divided on the sidelines.
“Each side is drawing a line in the sand over its future role in the political process,” said Prof. Emad Shahin, an Egyptian scholar at Notre Dame who was in Tahrir Square on Friday. “The military forces would like to secure an exit from the transitional period with some kind of assurances of their future role in the political scene, and the Islamists think that this could put a check on their power even if they win in clean and fair elections.”
A police action to roust a few hundred protesters out of Tahrir Square on Saturday instead drew thousands of people from across Egyptian society into the streets, where they battled riot police officers for hours in the most violent manifestation yet of growing anger at the military-led interim government.
In a battle reminiscent of the clashes that led to the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak nine months ago, a mass of protesters converged on Tahrir Square, fled before an onslaught of riot police officers firing tear gas and rubber bullets, and then surged back to retake and hold the square through the early hours of Sunday.
State media reported that more than 650 people had been injured, including 40 riot police officers, and at least one civilian was killed.
Coming a day after a huge Islamist demonstration and just more than a week before the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections, the outpouring of anger was the strongest rebuke yet with the military’s attempts to grant itself permanent governmental powers. And it was a reuniting of Islamist and liberal protest movements that had drifted apart since the early days of the uprising.
This time, instead of chanting for the fall of Mr. Mubarak, the demonstrators were chanting for the fall of the ruling military council that initially presented itself as the revolution’s savior.
“The generals said to us, ‘We are your partners,’ and we believed them,” said Tarek Saaed, 55, a construction safety supervisor who used a cane to walk among the boisterous crowds in the square. “Then the next day we find out they are partners with Mubarak,” he added, calling the day a turning point for Egypt.
The crowd only grew as state news media reported that the military said it would step back from a blueprint it had laid out this month for a lasting political role under the new constitution. Many of the protesters, and some outside observers, argued that the confrontation marked a significant setback to the military.
“The military council now feels that the political street will not accept that the military is going to hold the power for a long time,” argued Mahmoud Shokry, a former Egyptian ambassador and veteran political insider. “I think the military is going to reconsider the situation once more.”
After pledging to turn over power to civilians by September, the military has postponed the handover until after the ratification of a constitution and election of a president, sometime in 2013 or later. Then this month the military-led government put in writing a set of ground rules for a next constitution that would have given the military authority to intervene in civilian politics while protecting it from civilian oversight — setting off a firestorm.
“An extremely big mistake,” Mr. Shokry said.
Opposition to those guidelines brought the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group, back to the streets in force Friday as part of a rally tens of thousands of Islamists and a smaller contingent of liberals calling for an end to military rule.
In response, the military-led interim government announced Saturday morning that its constitutional guidelines would no longer be binding, only advisory. The government also revised the rules to say that the only role of the armed forces was protecting the country and “preserving its unity,” rather than the broader writ to guard Egypt’s “constitutional legitimacy.” Many, especially Islamists, believed the phrase had granted the authority to intervene at will in the civilian government.
In another bid to placate the protesters, the revisions also explicitly place the military under civilian government. “Like other state institutions,” the new text declares, the military should “abide by the constitutional and legislative regulations.”
“The president of the republic is the supreme commander of the armed forces and the minister of defense is the general commander of the armed forces,” the revised declaration said.
Still though, the military has not agreed to cede power once a Parliament is elected, or while the constitution is being drafted. Nor has it backed away from its right to set other nominating procedures for the constitutional drafting committee or to impose other rules on the final text.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now we turn to the high-profile case before the Supreme Court today, where the justices questioned if the government can track a suspect using a GPS device without a warrant. At the heart of the case is an individual's constitutionally protected privacy in today's high-tech world of real-time surveillance.
Here now to bring us the highlights from today's oral arguments is Marcia Coyle of "The National Law Journal."
Welcome back, Marcia.
MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal: Thanks, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, tell us first the facts of the case.
MARCIA COYLE: OK.
The police and the FBI attached a GPS tracking device to the undercarriage of Antoine Jones' car. Jones was a suspected drug dealer. They didn't have a warrant. They monitored the movement of the car 24 hours per day for 28 days. Some of the information gathered was used to convict him of conspiracy to deal drugs.
A federal appellate court later reversed his conviction, finding that the use of the GPS device without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, it sounds like today, from what I read, the justices were asking a lot of questions.
MARCIA COYLE: It was a very active argument. It was the government that brought the appeal to the Supreme Court, since they lost below.
And Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, representing the government, told the justices that earlier Supreme Court cases have said there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when you travel on public roads. The GPS device, he said, exposed nothing that wasn't already exposed to anyone who cared to look at this car.
And he also said it was no different than if the police had assigned 10 agents to tail Jones' car for 24 hours a day for a month.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And how did the justices response to this line of argument?
MARCIA COYLE: The justices -- a number of the justices seemed very uncomfortable with how far the government's argument went.
Justice Breyer, for example, said, if you win, you would be able to monitor the movements of every citizen in the United States, and that suggests sort of an Orwellian, "1984" scenario. So he pressed -- and so did the other justices -- pressed the government on what protection is there here from something like that happening?
And Mr. Dreeben said, well, there are other constitutional principles that can come into play if there are abuses or if the court is afraid that something is chilled here. There's the First Amendment. There's equal protection.
But he said, we're not talking about monitoring every citizen. This is a case where police were monitoring a suspected drug dealer.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: So, finally, Marcia, what's -- the sense is, what, that the justices could draw a line, privacy, high-tech device, that they could choose to draw that narrowly, broadly? What?
MARCIA COYLE: They could. There is a narrow way to solve this -- or resolve the case. And that is just to look at the attachment of the GPS device, was that a seizure, and not deal with the more complicated issue of search and reasonable expectations of privacy in the world today.
I thought Justice Alito had a -- really hit the nail on the head when he said, before the Internet age, our sense of -- much of our privacy resulted from difficulty in traveling and gathering information. But with computers, you can now amass a huge amount of information. He said, so what now? Is everything fair game? Or where are the limits?
And that's what the justices have to juggle. Where -- or is there a limit? Is there a line to draw?
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now to campaign politics and how outside spending might shape the 2012 election like never before.
When it comes to financing presidential campaigns, an entirely new playbook is being written. The traditional yardstick, the money raised by individual candidates, may count less this time. Instead hundreds of millions of dollars may come from a relatively new political animal, the super PAC. The financing vehicle sprang up in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, which wiped away limits on corporate and labor union campaign spending.
A candidate's ability to raise money on his or her own does still count for a lot. Financial reports released this weekend show Texas Gov. Rick Perry outpacing his Republican rivals, hauling in more than $17 million for the third quarter. With $15 million in the bank, he put away half-a-million dollars more than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who pulled in $14 million during the same period.
No other major GOP contenders raised as much. Ron Paul was next with more than $8 million, but the rest raised substantially less and also had far less cash on hand.
As for the man they all hope to replace, President Obama brought in nearly $43 million last quarter. And by the end of September, the incumbent Democrat had $61 million in the bank, more than all the Republicans combined. Some of that will likely be spent responding to attack ads from the new super PACs, like this one from the conservative group American Crossroads airing in North Carolina and Virginia.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): The anti-Wall Street protests went global over the weekend. And, today, world leaders took note of the spreading movement and its possible implications.
NewsHour correspondent Kwame Holman has our report.
KWAME HOLMAN (Newshour): President Obama drew on public discontent without mentioning the protests directly as he promoted his jobs bill in Asheville, N.C.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When you hear what's going on out in the country, when you take the time to listen, you understand that a lot of folks are hurting out there.
KWAME HOLMAN: The nearly month-old Occupy Wall Street movement had started with 1,500 gathered in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, but the ranks surged on Saturday. An estimated 6,000 people joined a rally in Times Square, insisting the system is weighted in favor of the rich and against everyone else.
