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<\/a>I\u2019m not going to waste a lot of your time recapping what you are already being bombarded with in the news these past few days. The IRS Scandal, everyone is fair game to be spied on<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n Justice Antonin Scalia put it well when he wrote the dissent (which was supported also by Justices Kagen, Sotomayor, and Ginsberg) recently in the Supreme Court decision for allowing DNA swabs to be conducted on anyone who is arrested.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes; then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane (surely the Transportation Security Administration needs to know the \u201cidentity\u201d of the flying public), applies for a driver\u2019s license, or attends a public school. Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection. I therefore dissent, and hope that today\u2019s incursion upon the Fourth Amendment, like an earlier one will some day be repudiated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When I was reading this (the dissent starts on page 33<\/a>), I couldn\u2019t help but see him wearing that St. Thomas More hat<\/a> during the 2013 Presidential Inauguration. Nor could I get the vision of More out of my head when I read Conor Friedersdorf\u2019s piece in the Atlantic<\/em> today.<\/p>\n What we know is that the people in charge will possess the capacity to be tyrants \u2014 to use power oppressively and unjustly \u2014 to a degree that Americans in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000 could\u2019ve scarcely imagined. To an increasing degree, we\u2019re counting on having angels in office and making ourselves vulnerable to devils. Bush and Obama have built infrastructure any devil would lust after. Behold the items on an aspiring tyrant\u2019s checklist that they\u2019ve provided their successors:<\/p>\n * A precedent that allows the president to kill citizens in secret without prior judicial or legislative review<\/p>\n * The power to detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trial<\/p>\n * Ongoing warrantless surveillance on millions of Americans accused of no wrongdoing, converted into a permanent database so that data of innocents spied upon in 2007 can be accessed in 2027<\/p>\n * Using ethnic profiling to choose the targets of secret spying, as the NYPD did with John Brennan\u2019s blessing<\/p>\n * Normalizing situations in which the law itself is secret \u2014 and whatever mischief is hiding in those secret interpretations<\/p>\n * The permissibility of droning to death people whose identities are not even known to those doing the killing<\/p>\n * The ability to collect DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if they haven\u2019t been convicted of anything<\/p>\n * A torture program that could be restarted with an executive order<\/p>\n Even if you think Bush and Obama exercised those extraordinary powers responsibly, what makes you think every president would? How can anyone fail to see the huge potential for abuses?<\/p>\n I am not saying no one would resist a tyrant. Perhaps Congress would assert itself. Perhaps the people would rise up. Then again, perhaps it would be too late by the time the abuses were evident. (America has had horrific abuses of power in the past under weaker executives who were less empowered by technology; and numerous other countries haven\u2019t recognized tyrants until it was too late.) Part of the problem is how much the Bush-Obama paradigm permits the executive to do in secret. Take that paradigm, add another successful 9\/11-style attack, even after many years of very little terrorism, and who knows what would happen?<\/p>\n No one does.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because we\u2019re allowing ourselves to become a nation of men, not laws. Illegal spying? Torture? Violating the War Powers Resolution and the convention that mandates investigating past torture?<\/p>\n No matter. Just intone that your priority is keeping America safe.<\/p>\n<\/a>