Are they? If so, we may have finally reached the point where the Bill of Rights (as fantastic as it is) no longer can adequately address modern abuses and communication patterns. Remember that the American agencies aren't the only intelligence agencies in the world.
Sticking with the CIA, though, let's say we apply the bill of rights in its most stringent interpretation; then the CIA can't hack into anything that any American might use to communicate to, without an American warrant. That would be totally unrealistic, and the result would be no tech toys for the CIA. They would be at a significant disadvantage compared to other intelligence and manipulation agencies around the world.
Or perhaps another spin on it... does the Bill of Rights apply in the case where an ISIS combatant is firing on a US Marine, where the combatant happens to be an American? The Marine won't know that, and will treat them as a combatant. The Bill of Rights doesn't seem to apply in this case. Given that to be the case, then should the Bill of Rights apply where the CIA is hacking into equipment that a non-American is using and might use to communicate with an American?
> Remember that the American agencies aren't the only intelligence agencies in the world.
But they (US+UK) are, agencies that have been allowed natural access to the infrastructure and resources required to implement surveillance on such a global scale. So much so that other intelligence agencies are making deals to get access via them. So, say, the Dutch AIVD, they don't have the majority of Internet data flowing through their territory (with nearly all large tech companies being US, clouds, browsers, software etc) so they can't directly abuse this access, because their scope is limited, unfortunately they can still trade for it because we have two nice big ports with transatlantic Internet cable connections (unless we already traded US access to those for something else, I don't know). So sure, they're being bad, but they're also limited, and they're not the root of the problem.
The US and the UK are in a very unique position for global Internet surveillance.
Sticking with the CIA, though, let's say we apply the bill of rights in its most stringent interpretation; then the CIA can't hack into anything that any American might use to communicate to, without an American warrant. That would be totally unrealistic, and the result would be no tech toys for the CIA. They would be at a significant disadvantage compared to other intelligence and manipulation agencies around the world.
Or perhaps another spin on it... does the Bill of Rights apply in the case where an ISIS combatant is firing on a US Marine, where the combatant happens to be an American? The Marine won't know that, and will treat them as a combatant. The Bill of Rights doesn't seem to apply in this case. Given that to be the case, then should the Bill of Rights apply where the CIA is hacking into equipment that a non-American is using and might use to communicate with an American?