New American: Obama Attacks Sen. Rand Paul for Protecting Fourth Amendment [but not trying to change the third-party doctrine]

New American: Obama Attacks Sen. Rand Paul for Protecting Fourth Amendment by Alex Newman.
This is from a source I don’t post from because its stuff is almost always so constitutionally off the wall. This one is particularly worth comment, however, because it depends upon (1) a misconception of the third-party doctrine and (2) the idea that the revelations of the Panama Papers violate privacy, whereas Snowden’s revelations are in the national interest.

Changing the third party doctrine is where the author’s angst and anger should be directed, not at the President:

Obama is angry about opposition to his anti-privacy crusade. Last week, he even slammed Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.; shown) by name, calling on the liberty-minded lawmaker to drop his “quirky” opposition to the administration’s controversial new “tax treaties” — agreements with foreign governments to further shred the Fourth Amendment-protected privacy rights of the American people. However, Paul hit back hard, telling Obama, publicly, that Americans’ unalienable privacy rights are not “quirky.” Privacy proponents celebrated Paul’s “courageous” stand.

. . .

Late last year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved what is known as the “Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance.” The radical measure would purport to mandate that the U.S. government collect and share with foreign governments and regimes — including brutal communist and Islamist dictatorships — a broad array of private financial information on accounts in the United States. It would also mandate that foreign governments and regimes collect information on Americans to share with Uncle Sam. All of it would be done without a warrant or any semblance of adherence to constitutional privacy guarantees. Also approved by the Senate Committee were privacy-crushing “tax treaties” with more than half a dozen foreign governments.

Controversial how? In Sen. Paul’s and the author’s minds only? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dominated by Republican Senators with Sen. Paul on the Committee, apparently thinks not.

This blog actually believes that the Fourth Amendment applies in another country where Americans are hiding money. It doesn’t. We already have MLATs, mutual legal assistance treaties, that allow the U.S. Government to gather information in other countries to help us enforce U.S. law here, like for tax evaders (except in for the Caribbean which gets to remain a tax haven under MLATs) or fugitives, and they work both directions. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has already approved of the treaty, but you don’t see the author attacking the other members of the Committee voting for it.

If the full Senate approves of the new treaty, will the author attack them too, or is this just an Obama specific hate? Read it and draw your own conclusion. There is no discussion of the principles behind the third-party doctrine, which many libertarians dislike. Good constitutional arguments can be made on both sides (see Treatise 5.01-5.03), but few people are even attempting to do so. Courts apply the third party doctrine everyday. If you don’t like it, change it.