Comment What does it matter? (Score 1) 191
So-called "parallel construction" isn't illegal or unconstitutional, and even IF -- and that's a very big if -- the initial tip came from "NSA", keep in mind that there has been a decades-old exemption for things like international terrorism and international narcotics trafficking when discovered during the course of legitimate foreign signals intelligence collection.
So, while you may not like it, nothing that is illegal or unconstitutional occurred here, and it is not the result of post-9/11 laws, or "new ways of interpreting the law", or anything else.
The simple fact is that legitimate foreign intelligence targets, to include terrorists and US adversaries who are mostly non-US Persons physically outside the US, share and use the same systems, networks, services, devices, software, tools, operating systems, encryption standards, and so on, as Americans and much of the rest of the world.
This is a simple, undeniable truth, and the only thing differentiating such traffic in the digital world is the status of the person(s) in communication -- i.e., whether they are or are not a US Person. That's it.
And guess what? The communications of US Persons WILL be encountered, and always have been, and we have a legal construct for how to deal with that, and that legal construct factually includes exemptions, again, for things like international terrorism and international narcotics trafficking.
And all of this is even IF it was "NSA" that tipped off anyone; it still could just be FBI somewhat clumsily protecting its own sources and methods...it doesn't have to be "spooks". In a free society governed by the rule of law, it is the LAW, not the capability, that is paramount.
And speaking of the law, the only person doing anything illegal here -- under our system and body of law, whether anyone agrees with it or not -- was Ulbricht.