Re: A lengthy preliminary analysis of the Leahy bill.

[jamesd@echeque.com]

At 12:26 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Peter D. Junger wrote:
>     (4) the authority and ability of investigative and law enforcement
>     officers to access and decipher, in a timely manner and as provided
>     by law, wire and electronic communications necessary to provide for
>     public safety and national security should also be preserved;


This provision of the bill makes the entire bill a worthless 
pile of repressive shit, despite all the pious good intentions
in the rest of the bill.

A little constitutional history:

The supreme court used to rule that congress could not delegate 
its own power to bureaucrats, as this violated the principle of 
rule of law.

Thus congress could pass a law than in a certain situation you had 
to do such and such, or refrain from doing so and so, but it could 
not pass a law that in a certain situation you had to do whatever 
some bureaucrat told you to do, because that would violate 
separation of powers and the principle of the rule of law, not men.

Roosevelt threatened to stack the court, the court submitted, and the rule
of law in the US was radically diminished.

The proposed bill would seem to give bureaucrats the power to set aside the
first, fourth, and fifth amendments, at whim.

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