Open Letter to the NSA

National Security Agency
9800 Savage Road
Fort George G. Meade MD 20755-6217

Re: Domestic Spying on Americans

Dear Men and Women of the National Security Agency,

As I am sure you are aware, your agency’s existence is decreed by an October 1952 Presidential Memorandum under President Truman¹ and Executive Order 12333, issued by President Regan². Neither of the aforementioned directs your mission towards domestic surveillance of Americans. However your first loyalty, regardless of the President in office, the state of the world, or any other contrived danger, is to the Constitution of the United States; the Supreme law of the Land. Moreover, the liberties enunciated in our Constitution are not negotiated benefits or rights granted by the government of your employ, but rather are an absolute prohibition against government encroachment upon that which is unalienably ours by birth alone.

More precisely and not withstanding the failure of former Director of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, USAF to grasp our absolute inherent right to be free from random warrantless searches³, the agency’s current work, whereby you scoop up all domestic communications is a complete and utter violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Regardless of what you may have been told by politicians, superiors, or peers, the work you are doing, is the work of tyrants and dictators. This work is wholly unbecoming of a supposedly free and independent nation. I urge you to look throughout history at the people and governments that have employed the same types of tactics. You will not find patriots, individuals who carried the beacon of liberty; you will only uncover despots, kings, and totalitarian states, concerned not with preserving freedom, but only the continued functioning of the state apparatus.

It is indeed enlightening that the President that altered your mission, President Bush via presidential order⁴ in 2002, did so under the darkness of secrecy. Additionally, after issuing his then secret order, President Bush lied to us, your fellow citizens, saying two years after the fact that the United States government would only listen to calls made to foreign individuals originating from within the United States of America. He lied ever further when he said:

“… anytime you hear the United States government talk about “wiretap”…it requires, a “wiretap” requires a court order. Nothing has changed by the way.
When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

George W. Bush
43rd President
United States of America
April 20th, 2004

The recent admission of your former coworker, Russell Tice⁵ only confirmed our suspicions that the NSA was indeed listening to all domestic communications. Some in your agency may see Mr. Tice as a traitor, but if he is, he is a traitor only to the despots and their unlawful orders. This in turn makes him a patriot for his defense of the Constitution, again the Supreme law of the land, trumping, Executive Order, Presidential Directive, etcetera.

Furthermore, your employer, the Federal government, derives its authority and power solely from the consent of the governed. I am here to tell you, “We the People,” do not give our consent to any agency within the Federal government randomly without cause snooping and listening in on our private conversations.

More importantly however, the agency’s wide net, whereby all are guilty until proven innocent, does not keep us safe from terrorism, it does not even prevent terrorism, all it does is turn us from a free and independent nation into a police state. How is robbing us of our liberties in anyway beneficial or in support of the American Republic or your agency’s core charter?

President Obama has already indicated that he wishes to retain these unconstitutional powers. In fact, thanks to the remnants of a free press, we are aware of your agency’s Cray super-computer, nicknamed, “Black Widow.”⁶ We know that the agency continues to scan millions of phone calls and emails every hour, all without ever relaying to a court who, when, where, or why it suspects the parties of wrong doing. What part of “probable cause” does the NSA not understand? Where is the oath or affirmation needed in order to conduct these searches?

Where do your loyalties lie? Is it to American ideals, principles, Liberty? Alternatively, do they lie with an individual who has convinced you the tyranny you help perpetrate is a necessary evil?

Perhaps for many of you within the agency, it is easy to become detached from the obvious usurpation of our liberties as the “Black Widow” scans through lines of meta-data deep within your agency’s headquarters. No matter how it has happened or if you knew the full ramifications thereof, you must stop obeying what you know to be wrong. You must resist any unlawful orders given to you, as your supreme duty is to the Constitution, not an order.

In closing, if when you took the job at the NSA you did so out of a love for this country and a desire to help protect America from harm, please reaffirm that ideal within yourself. Please know that the agency you work for is using this desire for its own motivation. The greatest threat to a free nation is a government, which respects not the liberty it professes to defend.

Cordially,

Allison Bricker

Source(s): ¹Memorandum of October 24, 1952, President Truman • ²National Archives – Executive Order 12333–United States intelligence activities • ³Video -Michael Hayden: “probable cause” is not in the 4th Amendment • ⁴New York Times “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts” • ⁵MSNBC – Countdown with Keith Olberman, Interview with former NSA analyst Russell Tice 01/21/2009 • ⁶Pakistan daily “Barack Obama’s ‘Black Widow’ : The Super Spy Computer