You're not in a position to make that determination, and the judicial branch has traditionally taken a different view of this from yours. The question was whether people could sue, not whether they should be able to.
How are you construing an unconstitutional surveillance program as a political question?
I don't see how any of the Court Cases listed on the wikipedia article are relevant. These all seem to relate to truly political things, like which branch has what authority, or how districts are apportioned. The article only cites 5 areas the courts have clear precedent on - wars, treaties, gerrymandering, impeachment, as well as the Guarantee clause. The Guarantee clause relates to Article 4 though, not Amendment 4.
If we are construing this NSA wire-tapping as a war power, then we're in trouble, because we have now effectively agreed the written words of the Patriot Act have no meaning, and the constitution will never be applied uniformly to the executive.
I'm not all that sure it is unconstitutional, for one thing - aren't you begging the question here? And on a more general level, shouldn't you be considering precedent on justiciability, rather than basing your whole argument on your personal opinion of the waht the constitution means?
I might note in asssing that I favor a constitutional amendment that would create an explicit right to privacy; I'm not in favor of a surveillance state. But that doesn't alter my skepticism about how a class action lawsuit would actually fare in the courts.
FISA courts may be unconstitutional, as in they don't satisfy the requirements for Article III courts, and FISA courts are the only valve on this behavior (such as they are). Congress is only told what is going on, and not very much (and to very few members) at that.
Please explain to me how a "constitutional amendment creating an explicit right to privacy" would do fuck all if the only body that assesses constitutionality won't allow us to complain when that right is breached.
You're allowed to complain, but they may not agree that your complaint has any merit. You don't seem like the sort of person who's into changing their mind though, so I don't really know what to tell you. You could try checking out some books on Constitutional law from the library to get a better understanding of how this works.
You did not address my point. "It won't happen because the court does not believe you have any rights that have been violated" is something that can be fixed by a constitutional amendment granting an explicit right to privacy, but seems to me a different claim than "it's just politics," and the court has supported a right to privacy in the past (though it's complicated). Obviously, the court may or may not consider us to have a right to privacy, may not consider the right to extend that far, &c, &c. Those still seem qualitatively different than what you'd lead with. What am I actually missing?
I fucking love changing my mind, but it takes actually convincing me, not simply argument from authority without even any credentials given. "Go read a bunch of books" is bad form (doubly so with no particular recommendations) - I have plenty on my reading list as it stands.
It looks like "lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it" doesn't apply here. The 4th amendment clearly applies to the question of whether the government should be recording your mother's phone calls.
Read Smith v. Maryland and get back to me. The issue of standing is more complex, and lies along a philosophical fault line about the role of the judiciary; I refer you to this law review article for an overview of those issues: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
For call metadata, the pen register comparison might fly. If they are storing content, as is likely, it won't.
The beginning of the article on standing does raise questions I hadn't thought about. How would you decide the penalty for something with the potential for abuse? Just because the NSA is storing the largest ever collection of personal info with potential for blackmail, election skullduggery, stalking, identity theft, etc. doesn't mean that those things would happen. If all their data centers were hit by EMPs tomorrow, there may be no injury.
It would seem that when information which would indicate standing is itself concealed, though, that the threshold should be lower. Eh, I'll keep reading.
I'm thinking of the metadata, yes. I'm not convinced yet about the content allegations, and I suspect (but have not researched) that the point if illegality is when people start listening to them without a warrant rather than when they're merely stored.
That is certainly what the NSA seems to be claiming, and coincidentally it is the most convenient interpretation for them. But it seems highly bogus to me. Has the RIAA ever worried about whether downloaders actually listened to the contents of EnterSandman.rar?
More worrying, the NSA could abuse this by listening to whatever they liked, then getting information by other means, then lying about listening. And we certainly already know that the NSA is capable of lying and willing to do so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_question