Is e-mail private? Or is e-mail public information?
An O.U.T.R.A.G.E. panel of legal experts was hotly contesting this issue, an issue that had been lumbering through the courts for years. In 1986, Congress passed a law to forbid the interception and/or disclosure of e-mail and other online transmissions without a warrant. But, as always, there was a loophole. if the messages were more than 180 days old, Congress said they could be obtained with a subpeona or a court order, which investigators can get a lot easier than a warrant. Twenty years later the Justice Department argued before an Ohio appeals court that even new messages should be able to be obtained without a warrant IF they're intended recipient had already read them! In other words, the Justice Department presumed that the owner of an opened e-mail had no reasonable expectation of privacy. It was one more demonstration of how the Bush administration trampled on the rights and privacy of American citizens without regard for the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
On December 15, 1791, Congress proposed - and the states ratified - the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment specifically stated, "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."
With information floating around through cyberspace, was the Constitution still operable when it came to privacy issues? The founding fathers could not have foreseen the coming of the Internet; but, just because it's "out there" for the world to view, could the FBI, the CIA, or any other government agency simply gather that information without probable cause - and without a warranted reason?
As O.U.T.R.A.G.E. milled through the process of dismantling the federal government, legal and moral issues arose at every turn. The O.U.T.R.A.G.E. mission was to return substantially more power to the states while maintaining a Constitutional structure for the nation. It was imperative that states' rights be honored; after all, the U.S. government had taken more and more away from the states over the past few decades. To burst that bloated, gluttonous belly of power inside the beltway would require considerable acquiescence on the part of Congress. Potential new candidates needed to understand that Congress would no longer be a "power base", but would return to what it was supposed to be: a public servant full of humility and obsequious subserviency.
Before his assassination, George W. Bush had adamantly believed that citizens had no right to privacy when it came to "fighting terrorism". Bush believed it was acceptable for the government to look into citizens' bank accounts, telephone records, or e-mails. As predicted in George Orwell's book, "1984", the "thought police" should be allowed - within the Bush mentality - to "read" your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or invade your private thoughts just because they felt like it. It was an issue that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had contested for years, along with dozens of other civil rights groups. The attitude that you were presumed guilty until proven innocent was in diametric opposition to the freedoms granted to Americans. Whether it was your 'snail mail" or e-mail, the government had no assumed right to look at it. Even a FedEx package delivered to your door was none of the government's concern.
"But what if that pacel contains a bomb?" some would fearfully quiver. Like it or not, that's part of the price we pay for living in a free society. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had placed small bombs in thousands of public buildings, government offices, private homes, and corporate headquarters as it set out to exterminate America's wealthy, influential and powerful. It was the price those wealthy, influential and powerful people paid for living in a free society. Now it was up to O.U.T.R.A.G.E. to bring civility back to the country it had torn apart. How do you balance the right to privacy with the expectation for public safety?
The Bush approach was blatantly wrong. The freedom fighters' approach was insecure and frivilous in a world filled with horror, violence, and terror. Certainly there had to be a compromise. As O.U.T.R.A.G.E. viewed it, the change had to come from within the minds and hearts of the people. Instead of trying to protect us all from hatred and bigotry, hatred and bigotry had to eradicated from the public mindset. People had to stop thinking that they were better than someone else because of the color of their skin, their religious convictions, their political beliefs, their financial net worth, their social status, their sexual persuasions, or their positions of power. As utopian as it sounded, changing mindsets was the key to a more perfect union. Love, compassion, allotment, contrition, tolerance and understanding had to replace greed, selfishness, lust, hatred, bigotry, arroagance and indifference in our society.