Is An Illegal Search Constitutional?

October 18, 2014
Benjamin Austin
Original @ Free Patriot

REPORT: Obama’s Secret Service Tried to Enter Home Without Warrant… Local Police Kept Their Oath and Refused

The Constitution only works if it is followed and honored by those sworn to defend it — and luckily, it looks like those people do still exist.

A new report has harsh words for Barack Obama’s Secret Service detail, and claims that they tried to violate the Constitution and pressured local law enforcement to falsify documents. However, police officers in Tennessee reportedly refused to comply with the illegal requests, and stood up against the unconstitutional actions.

News Channel 5 reports that Secret Service agents told Nashville police to falsify a warrant, in order to illegally go after who citizen who posted alleged “threatening” comments critical of Obama on Facebook.

Reportedly, Secret Service agents visited the home of a citizen in Nashville, and knocked on his door to interrogate him about social media posts. However, the individual refused to allow the agents to enter without a warrant — which is of course his legal right.

That’s when the Secret Service called for backup from the local police. They claimed that the man was armed in his own home — again, not illegal — and demanded that the local police “wave a piece of paper” as a fake warrant, to dupe their way inside the house.

The Nashville police refused. They told the Secret Service that the man was legally allowed to have a gun in his own home, and that they had no reason for a warrant.

When the Chief of Police heard about the illegal request to violate citizens Constitutional rights, he got angry — and then he took action. Chief Steve Anderson contacted the Secret Service Director to complain about the illegal request… but in response, he was told to “mind his own affairs.” The Secret Service refused to investigate the problem.

The angry Anderson then met with Secret Service officials, and asked: “Do you think it is appropriate to wave a piece of paper in the air and tell him you have a warrant when you do not have a warrant?” Their arrogant response? “I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer.”

To his credit, Chief Anderson kept pushing. He sent a harshly critical letter to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight, complaining about the attitude and illegal actions of Obama’s Secret Service. That letter is available online here — and it’s getting a lot of attention.

What do you think — is it time for Congress to take action against the overreach and illegal actions of Obama’s administration, or would that action do nothing to fix the problem?

Incompatible Software Malfunctioning IT

As the workplace becomes increasingly mobile, the federal government is opting for devices other than BlackBerrys. The Obama Administration announced a Digital Government Strategy for federal employees to access workplace networks from mobile devices without compromising privacy and security concerns. In accordance with this strategy, the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and National Institute of Standards and Technology developed a baseline of standard security requirements for mobile computing and a framework design to reference in designing security and privacy protections. This would allow federal employees to use a range of popular brand devices without compromising government networks and leaking information, and even allow some offices to implement a bring-your-own-device policy instead of on government-issued devices.

Technology insiders applauded the government’s decision to develop the mobile technology to permit federal employees to work remotely. A survey of federal managers and federal workers found that each employee would add an additional seven hours each week in productivity, amounting to $14,000 in productivity gains. Of those federal workers who already have mobile device access, they spend a weekly average of nine additional hours on top of their full-time work schedules checking in to their workplace networks. Almost half of these workers report working more efficiently outside the office.

The Department of Agriculture forked over $20 million to several companies for MDM integration which is now one year behind schedule and malfunctioning. Perhaps if the USDA hired one of the companies approved by the GSA for mobile management solutions, then the USDA would not be having these rollout problems. Or maybe if the USDA required a demonstration of the bidding companies’ capabilities for MDM integration in the USDA’s network, then USDA employees would now be using their own iPhones and Android to access their workplace servers. Instead, the USDA paid three contractors $20 million.

Testing before handing over taxpayers’ money would have shown that one contractor’s software is not compatible with part of the USDA’s network security infrastructure. Eight months after the MDM system was supposed to have completed a 30-day, 3,000 phone test phase, this test phase has been pushed back, and the USDA is still just testing one component of the contractor’s incompatible software to determine whether the software will be used or abandoned. According to the USDA’s Request for Proposal, the agency already supported more than 3,000 mobile devices before the $20 million project and hoped to expand the number of mobile devices to more than 100,000 over the next few years. As of late July, only 1,370 devices were on the USDA’s MDM system.

Surely, given the failure of the MDM integration at the USDA, other federal agencies would restrain themselves from awarding millions in taxpayer dollars to these contractors without first testing their product? Think again. One of these three contractors was awarded $212.1 million in government contracts just in 2013. The contractor with the incompatible software has several multi-million dollar government contracts with the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, and the Air Force. Instead of pouring millions of dollars to fix “glitches,” taxpayers would prefer their money go towards testing new technologies first to prevent such rollout problems.

Information found for this “Your Tax Dollars @ Work” post was done by using a Google search. Information compiled from multiple public websites & media outlets.