Written by: Taylor Stone

Flash back to the Founding Fathers as they authored the Fourth Amendment, carefully constructing the foundation of the United States of America, and you will find the most important document ever crafted in American history –the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution was meant to guarantee rights, to create a limited system of government and, most importantly, to protect us, the American people, from that very system.

The Fourth Amendment clearly states that no warrant shall be issued without probable cause; a warrant goes towards a single person with a specific cause –not millions of American citizens.

So what makes the National Security Agency’s relentless wiretapping of the American people without just cause constitutional? The answer is simple –nothing.

According to its website, the mission of the NSA is to protect U.S. national security systems and produce foreign signals intelligence information by “adhering to the highest standards of behavior.” I believe it is safe to say that the NSA has deviated from those values.

One of the main principles intended by the Founding Fathers was the importance of separating police power from the power of the judiciary. Police power, or any other type of power except for the judiciary, was never meant to create warrants.

The NSA simply does not have the authority to create warrants and to unlawfully monitor the American people to this degree, and they must be held accountable.

The judicial branch of the government has proven to be excessively lax with the NSA and needs to uphold its constitutional responsibility and question the constitutionality of NSA surveillance.

The reality that the NSA regularly forces telecom providers to release their customers’ phone records does not coincide with the vision of the Founding Fathers as they composed the constitutional amendment protecting U.S. citizens against unlawful searches. The NSA has become a vacuum for disturbing amounts of metadata leaving the American people helpless in their pursuit for privacy.