Whether you, I, our friends, neighbors, acquaintances, or complete strangers are ever subjected to surveillance -- wiretapping of telephone lines and the intercept of cellular calls, email, and old-fashioned postal services -- by agencies of the U.S. Government, we may never know. Nor, they instruct us, do we have the right to know. The reason? It is a state secret. So, too, is any question about whether the Government -- our Government, allegedly -- acquired a warrant to engage in its surveillance activities; whether it showed probable cause before an impartial judge prior to eavesdropping on us; and whether its invasion of the spaces that our person inhabits might be unreasonable, in the Fourth Amendment sense of these terms. Nor need the Government confirm or deny these facts -- like just about everything else in contemporary America, if the Government says that it's a "state secret," it is a state secret. And it never has been otherwise. Until such time as the Government says something different. Divulging more might be damaging to Homeland Security. To the programs that protect us from the terrorists. The Commander-in-Chief's "most solemn obligation." And all of that.
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