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Carpenter-- A Practical Solution, And The Truth About The Fourth

The "reasonable" arguments being made about this case are the product of ignorance, and will at best lead to a flawed and insufficiently broad ruling. But there's another way of addressing this problem...

First, the simple solution to the practical problem presented in Carpenter:

MUCH IN THE NEWS LATELY has been the case heard by the Supreme Court on November 29, Carpenter v. United States, concerning warrantless police access to cell-phone data recorded by a telecom. An example is the November 27 article in The Guardian by Jameel Jaffer and Alexander Abdo, in which the authors express their view that what is at stake in the case is unhindered police access to increasingly elaborate information about a person's movements:

"Many cellphone users have only a vague understanding of the extent to which providers monitor their movements, but these companies now track us much more closely than even the most committed human spies ever could. Cellphones function by connecting to antennas – “cell sites” or “cell towers” – that provide cellular service. Those cell sites, which are owned and operated by the cellular companies, are programmed to record which phones connect to them, and when. They also record the direction from which the connecting phone’s signal is received and, often, the distance of the phone from the cell site.

So-called “cell site location information” is becoming ever more precise, because the cellular network is becoming ever more dense. The analytical tools that can be brought to bear on this information are also becoming more sophisticated, meaning that investigators can draw reliable conclusions from smaller and smaller amounts of data. It’s precisely because the information is so rich, of course, that the government is interested in accessing it."

Absent from the concerns of Jaffer and Abdo is the problem of unhindered police access to information about a person's movements at any level without probable cause for scrutinizing those movements. For Jaffer and Abdo, the problem is one of degree, as though a mushy kind of police state, in which a certain amount of unwarranted surveillance, which doesn't yield too much information, is ok.

But we'll get to that part of the issue in a moment. Meanwhile, after reading this article I was prompted to ask myself, "Why are we allowing these telecoms to record all this data anyway?" Isn't THAT the first-tier problem here?

After all, there is no valid service-providing reason whatever for this data to be recorded. Your cell-phone could take and make calls and do all the things cell-phones do for their owners/users without a spec of information remaining on the telecom's servers afterwards.

Those servers have to have the addresses of phones authorized to use their networks and services, so as to validate that use, and (in some cases) a record of the volume of data downloaded to a given number/address, or of call-time to (frankly, arbitrary and exploitive) out-of-general-service area locations-- meaning, out of the country-- so as to bill the user accordingly. But they have no legitimate need for any other data, including every kind described by Jaffer and Abdo.

SO, LET'S NOT REST on the Supreme Court, whether it gets this ruling right or not. I call upon state and federal legislatures to enact measures recognizing all normal calling area "user data" to be the property of the "user" (the customer), and its collection and retention to be a tort for which the collector/retainer is liable to the user.

It is no more proper that our data be collected and retained by telecoms or other service providers than that someone should peer with binoculars through the un-shaded windows of our houses, or follow us as we move about the town square, keeping notes on all we do for purposes of their own. And it is no more the right of these service-providers to take possession of the information thus gleaned simply because they are physically capable of gleaning it.

We can make the point of the measure in its title, as legislatures are wont to do anyway. We'll call it the ASAPT Act-- the Anti-Stalking, Anti-Peeping-Tom Act.

Let's remember that utilities managed to operate and be profitable just fine on this basis throughout the 20th century. There is nothing that would prevent those of the 21st century from doing so, as well, and this prohibition would, in one easy step, eliminate the perverse incentives which presently encourage government violations of privacy.

Now, addressing the REAL problem reflected in Carpenter:

I MENTIONED IN MY SUBTITLE that "the "reasonable" arguments being made about this case are the product of ignorance, and will at best lead to a flawed and insufficiently broad ruling." Very briefly, "reasonable" arguments are those which imagine the "unreasonable" in the text of the Fourth Amendment to provide for a judicial or police decision about what kind of warrantless poking through your stuff or spying on your movements is ok ("reasonable") and which is not.

Just to articulate this assertion reveals its absurdity-- how potent a limitation on government is one that government courts can variably enforce based on their view of its "reasonableness" in any particular circumstances? That makes it a pretty thin reed upon which to rest the preservation of liberty against the hazard of a despotic state, doesn't it?

(I know that many will retort, "But isn't that how they treat ALL the prohibitions and prescriptions in the Constitution, Pete?" And of course, that's true. But let's stick to the case at hand, the resolution of which will shed very valuable and antiseptic light on the other bad practices.)

The same Guardian article quoted above goes on to express this historically-ignorant "reasonable-unreasonable" notion, which has been the default position of the Supreme Court for decades now:

Privacy scholars are watching Carpenter’s case closely because it may require the supreme court to address the scope and continuing relevance of the “third-party-records doctrine”, a judicially developed rule that has sometimes been understood to mean that a person surrenders her constitutional privacy interest in information that she turns over to a third party. The government contends that Carpenter lacks a constitutionally protected privacy interest in his location data because his cellphone was continually sharing that data with his cellphone provider.

The idea here is that the only things the police CAN'T poke through or surveil without a warrant are things which the average person "reasonably" expects to be free of such attention (or that police poke-throughs or surveillances of things brought into public spaces or circumstances are inherently "reasonable", and that this kind of "reasonableness" means no warrant is required).

This idea-- whichever way it is cast-- is completely wrong. The historic record is perfectly clear that what the Framers meant by "unreasonable" in the Fourth Amendment was not a variable of any kind. Rather, the definition of an "unreasonable" search or seizure as used in the Fourth Amendment is one "without a particularized warrant based on probable cause articulated under oath to an impartial magistrate".

That is, to the Founders and Framers, ALL unwarranted searches and seizures were-- by virtue of the fact that they lacked the protections involved in the securing of a warrant-- unreasonable. See the definitive evidence here.

This historically-supported correct understanding of the Fourth Amendment is, of course, very inconvenient to the state. As has been shown over the centuries, the state is always be seeking new rationales and pretexts for invading the privacy of others, and therefore loves and has nurtured-- in its PR and through its courts-- the false notion of "reasonable/unreasonable" in regard to the amendment.

SADLY, THE SUPREME COURT can be counted on to get its ruling in Carpenter wrong, even if it finds that warrantless acquisition of cell-phone data by the police is unlawful. That'll be good for Carpenter, and better than an outright ruling in favor of the state.

But a victory for Carpenter based on the prospect that a warrant is required in this case because of Carpenter's "reasonable" expectation of privacy will really be a loss for everyone. It will be another lost opportunity to finally get Fourth Amendment jurisprudence back on track after far-too long astray, and an even deeper embedment of error.

Pity everyone hasn't long-since emailed this document to his or her Congresscritters, and every lawyer and journalist they know. It would be such a reasonable thing to do...

***

Btw, since this other bit of Supreme Court business is persisting in the news long past its expected cycle time for some reason, I have reposted my September 18, 2017 article about the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case. Those interested can find it here.

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A Knight's Tale

Uplift and inspiration from a very sharing and activist CtC Warrior.

BRIAN WRIGHT TOOK THE PLUNGE into the actual self-governance and exercise of civic responsibility and authority that is the point of a CtC-education nearly two years ago. Since then, Brian has very thoughtfully devoted time and effort to sharing much more than just the basic events involved in his filings and victories (on which he is 4 for 4-- see Brian's victories posted on this page, this page and this page).

Brian, who publishes a blog serenely titled 'The Coffee Coaster', has also made a point of accompanying his victory blog posts with background and explanations so as to help his readers better understand what he has done, and why. Brian realizes that timidity about standing erect when it has become the norm to go on all fours arises from an ignorance of what the weather is like up there, and that knowledge is the cure for that affliction.

LAST MONTH BRIAN JOINED a special little group of CtC-educated filers who have been presented with a half-assed, hokey and tellingly hoax-based "frivolous return penalty unless you change your return to say things that better serve the government's interests" threat. (These threats, which are both overt crimes of soliciting a false return-- see 26 U.S.C. § 7206(2), for instance-- and effective admissions of the government's inability to overcome educated filings by its own authority, are wonderfully-bright expressions of "ignorance tax scheme" desperation in the face of CtC's revelations.)

In keeping with his generous practice, Brian has just posted a column discussing this chapter of his saga in a very virtuous and helpful way. See it here.

BTW, a comprehensive discussion of the "FRP" hoax can be found as the first five posts listed in The Arms Locker.

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The craziness of the neo-con nutcases in Washington is starting to generate its predictable blowback, but on a much more dangerous scale than in the recent past.

Based on relentless hostile rhetoric and steady efforts at military encirclement the Russian Federation Armed Forces Command has concluded that the United States intends to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia. While this perception continues to be fed, the risk of a prophylactic Russian first strike exists and grows more perilous.

The persistent, recently-escalated, plainly unfounded and deliberately provocative saber-rattling against Iran-- a long-time close ally and buffer-state of Russia's, the destabilization or regime-change within which would be another substantial threat factor-- has magnified the intensity of the peril.

So, more than ever...

What You Need To Know If CtC Doesn't Spread Like Wildfire RIGHT NOW So The Nut-Cases Can Be Stripped Of Their Resources:

NOT THAT "DUCK AND COVER" would do you or your kids any good, of course... The Russian Federation has 7,400 nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. China is coming on strong, too, these days.

Perhaps you imagine the US has some magical technological advantage that will protect us when all the nut-case bellicosity leads to its inevitable outcome? Read this, this, this, this and this. And in any event, don't forget the inescapable issue of nuclear winter and fallout-- the world-killing harm from either of which doesn't require even a single Russian or Chinese warhead to hit a target.

Really, it's this simple:

Click here for the sourcepage of the image above and for more scary details from actual grown-ups which the neo-con nutcases in Washington wish you would never find.

Spread CtC's revelations like wild-fire.

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Speaking of Money Unwisely Given As Fuel To War-Mongers...

...as in the preceding article...

I READ A REALLY DISTURBING "sales pitch" by the governor of Michigan (where I live) related to this subject (military spending). It is disturbing both for the degree of economic ignorance it reveals, and for its reminder that much of the wanton economic blood-letting by which most Americans suffer every year is based on self-serving deceptions by the politically-connected.

In a publication entitled, 'Protect and Grow: A Strategic Plan for Michigan’s Defense and Homeland Security Economy' presented by something called "The Michigan Defense Center" (MDC) at the direction of Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder, the following excited assertions are made (on page 18):

It is estimated that all defense-related spending for FY 2014 supports over 105,000 job throughout the state, added more than $9 billion in Gross State Product, and created nearly $10 billion in Personal Income. Finally, the personal income generated by Michigan’s defense-related activities supports nearly $8 billion in personal consumption expenditures throughout the state.

I was only able to find the overall federal tax bite on Michigan residents in the aggregate for 2015 in time for this article ($77 billion). But the differential between that number and 2014's figure will be small enough to allow me to make my point here:

Of that ~$77 billion sent to Washington by Michiganders in 2014, around $20 billion will have gone to defense spending (which sits at a bit over 25% of the overall federal budget in recent years). Had that money stayed in the hands of those who produced it, it would mean a retention in the state of double the "Gross State Product" and "Personal Income" figures enthusiastically touted in the MDC's PR piece (each of which is just a different puffed-up characterization of the same dollop of money, the lion's share of which-- direct DoD re-injection-- only totaled $3.9 billion) and supported well over double the "personal consumption expenditures".

The same is true of the jobs stats. The MDC gushes about 105,000 jobs paid-for by the return in defense spending of some of the money taken out of the state and given to the Washington-based military-industrial-congressional-complex.

But that $20 billion could have paid for 200,000 jobs here in Michigan-- at $100K each-- if it had stayed at home where it belonged. Maybe that big, well-paid workforce could have been devoted to fixing our roads...

AMERICA NEEDS A NATIONAL DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT-- this is undisputed. But we do not need a behemoth that steadily consumes more than a quarter of our wealth year by year. That's insanity.

We especially do not need a parasitic behemoth whose voracious appetite is blithely rationalized and facilitated by economic gibberish (if not deliberate self-serving blindness) from corrupt political and industry hacks. This is "the swamp" people. Let's stop feeding it.

***

NOTE: The article that brought the MDC paper to my attention offers a good discussion of military spending gimmicks generally. Find it here.

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A Call To Action Or Two

Nothing happens if you do nothing.

THE VIDEO OF MY JULY 16 PRESENTATION on judicial fraud to conceal the true legal character of the income tax is posted here. Everyone should see it and share it like crazy.* It is hugely powerful and WILL successfully educate even the most stubbornly skeptical and disengaged.

Video of the Q&A session that followed that presentation can be seen here; this is also a "must see".

*Here's a sample formulation for sharing:

The American people have been victimized by massive and sustained corruption in the federal judiciary in order to fuel the ambitions of the Deep State. See the incontrovertible evidence at https://youtu.be/105GKdmJ9HU.

This enormous harm can be remedied, but the path to that solution begins with widespread awareness of the problem. Please watch the film yourself, and please pass this wake-up call along as widely and urgently as possible.

If you have a serious-minded group that you think will benefit from an in-person presentation on this long-running assault on the rule of law in America, contact me.

Further...

A call to action

CLEARLY, THE MERE AIRING OF THE JUDICIAL AND EXECUTIVE CRIMES revealed in the presentation discussed above is not enough. What is revealed here is a vicious widespread plot to destroy our Constitutional republic. It can be stopped, and it must be stopped, and all culpable parties-- who have each and every one grossly betrayed and defiled the trust and honor the people of America have bestowed upon them-- should be harshly punished. Therefore...

I call on every law-respecting journalist to raise the hue and cry about these outrages.

I urge every American reading these words to join me in demanding action.

Append this article or this video (or both) to an introductory note and a demand for action, and mail it to Jeff Sessions, Paul Ryan, your federal and state congressional delegations and to every journalist possible. This will ensure that these folks will be made aware of this matter, and cannot say otherwise as an excuse for inaction.

Click on the name below for contact info:

Jeff Sessions

Paul Ryan

Journalists (this is a short list-- you may know or have access to more; send to all of them)

Your representative

Your senators

Your state legislators

Your mom, your dad, your sibs, your best friend, the guys and gals at the office or the plant, etc.-- you have these addresses or must find them on your own.

ALSO!!! Send to law school faculty!!! Find schools, faculty names and contact info however you can and send! Send to every lawyer you can find.

Understand, if YOU haven't shared this film with any given judge, prosecutor or attorney, he or she will not have ever seen any of the information presented. He or she will not only know nothing of the truth about the tax, but will believe the untruths about the tax which the falsifying officials exposed in the film (and in the text treatments of the same material here and here) have been peddling on behalf of the "ignorance tax" scheme.

Don't make the mistake of imagining that "they all know the truth, and are part of a giant conspiracy against it." This is not true.

Most of those folks have never seen even a single one of the authorities you have seen in these presentations. They never knew there was a reason to look for them. Certainly none of them have ever seen this material knowledgeably assembled and presented.

YOU have to show it to them. If you haven't done so, assume that no one has.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

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******

CtC Warrior Richard Bristol has produced a nice little wake-up tool that puts the matter well: Even an 8-year-old can understand the truth about the tax by just doing a little study. See it and share it.

*****

On Criminal Complaints For Filing False IRs

Getting practical on a core element of the "ignorance tax" scheme.

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A Nice Model Of The "Ignorance Tax" Scheme In Action

From 'The Little Shop of Horrors'.

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What Is Paid For By The "Ignorance Tax"

LOTS of very bad things...

The U.S. Income Tax: An Excise On The Profitable Exploitation Of Federal Privilege

The U.S. Ignorance Tax: The Profitable Exploitation of Confusion About The Income Tax

I WAS IN A GROUP THE OTHER DAY in which I overheard, "The income tax just goes to pay the interest on the national debt!" Would that it were so...

The statement is a long-standing misconstruction of something said by Peter Grace of the Reagan-era Grace Commission, which had been tasked with an analysis of the federal budget. Grace attempted to illustrate the significance of the federal debt burden by pointing out that the interest paid on that monstrous debt was so much as to more-or-less match the amount taken in by the income tax-- an amount that is a metaphorical synonym for "huge".

Money, of course, is fungible, so even if the tax take were earmarked for the interest payment, that would simply free up other funds for other uses. Thus, the "earmarking " concept is illusory at best. Income tax revenue gets spent for any and all government purposes, just as is true of every other dime that goes into the general fund.

Further, Grace undervalued the income tax dramatically. This is because Grace didn't understand that FICA (Social security and Medicare) taxes are just income "surtaxes"-- meaning income taxes like any others, despite the misleading application-specific label of "employment taxes". As a result of this misunderstanding Grace failed to factor this additional enormous amount into his casual analogy.

The reality is that the income tax take-- by which we really mean the "ignorance tax" take, since we're talking about the amount captured by government through exploitation of ignorance about what is really subject to the income tax under the law-- is many times the amount paid in interest on the national debt. Last year, for instance, the interest payment was about $432 billion. The ignorance tax total was a whopping $3.9 trillion.

MY POINT HERE IS NOT TO CRITIQUE THE GRACE REPORT, however. I'm only interested in stopping its mistakes from being repeated and persisting as a false "factoid".

The reason I'm concerned is that the throw-off, "It just goes to pay the interest on the national debt..." line, though not meant as, or in support of, anything but a disparagement of the tax, actually serves to minimize or conceal the horrendous evil for which the tax really does pay.

Lets look at a small sampling of the things made possible by the ignorance tax:

• The corruption of our political office-holders;

• The drug war and all the violence and corruption it brings;

• Our wives, daughters and ourselves being virtually strip-searched in airports;

• Agricultural price supports raising the cost of our food;

• A bloated military unable to account for $6.5 trillion given to it over recent years;

• Hundreds of millions who hate us for the harm we have inflicted directly after violently invading their homes (here's an analysis of just a few of these affairs), or by supporting the despotic regime holding them in thrall;

• A Department of Education working to fill American kids' minds with mush and PC propoganda;

• The Panopticon surveillance state which spies on all of us all the time, subverting our privacy and any hope of confidence in the independence of our elected officials;

• The militarization of our local police;

• A direct and indirect federal workforce of 14,000,000 or so, every member of which needs to be messing with some or many citizens' lives in one way or another in order to justify his or her pay;

• The coercion of state governments into certain behaviors even where no Constitutional authority exists for Washington's decrees, by issuing grants with strings;

• The supplanting of genuine prosperity opportunities for young Americans by entrapment in rotten, impoverishing economic prisons.

• And on, and on, and on...

NOW LET'S LOOK at what preservation of the "ignorance tax" scheme has made valuable to the schemers, and therefore an increasing part of our lives:

• The inculcation and maintenance of a pervasive fear of government lawlessness;

• A corrupt judiciary;

• The systematic erosion of the rule of law;

• The mis-education of our children about our founding principles and the legitimate authorities and limits of our public institutions;

• The co-option of our churches into cheerleaders for the statist-quo;

• A de-emphasis on logic, economics and history in our schools and school textbooks;

• The infection of our legal framework with hive thinking, identity politics, and "social justice";

• And on, and on, and on.

EVERYTHING LISTED ABOVE IS what is actually paid-for by the "ignorance tax", either in the conventional sense of being financed with its enormous, corruption-inducing aggregation of wealth into the hands of a political class with feet of clay, or as a price we all pay by the degradation and loss of our principles and our values.

Is all this really how a sensible people want to be spending their resources? I think not, but this IS what we're doing now, because of all those not yet awakened to the truth about the income tax.

Be an alarm clock.

(Click on Saruman to see what he means..."

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*****

The Biggest Snow-Job In World History: The Myth That 1913 America Adopted A Marxist Progressive Tax On "All That Comes In"

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison