Dan Carlin on Snowden and Surveillance (audio only)

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They're basically vacuuming up .
Everything ok president obama in a fantastically wonderful phrase said that you know this is a reasonable compromise between freedom and security all the stuff the government is a reasonable compromise folks understand how I mean if you pay attention to what the government is doing with this whistleblower said what other whistleblowers have said that as far as we know right we don't know i mean this latest whistleblower said that they can turn on remotely I believe he said wasn't did you say then you could turn on remotely your cell phones and your webcams and all that stuff and listen if they want to I don't understand how you can call all credit card data from everybody.
All website traffic all phone calls all texts all emails all traveled at all credit reports all library books checked out etcetera etcetera etcetera how's that a reasonable compromise isn't that virtually everything that's like giving up everything and saying well we're both happy with the deal you gave me everything and I gave you security right.
Did you we totally secure now that you've taken everything arm back to the story let's talk about this Edward Snowden guy because what he's done appears to be both heroic I was proud of the USA Today today editorial staff admitting that this guy is almost certainly a hero because the definition of a hero is someone who is willing to sacrifice everything for a more in a higher cause and that's what this guy did 29 years old on his way to a dream life.
Most of us would think right already making two hundred thousand dollars a year sharing a house in Hawaii with his girlfriend this guy could cruised he's given it all up and let's make let's make no mistake that he has given it all up he will be very lucky to not serve decades in prison for this and the government is going to come down on him like you can't believe.
Murderers will get away easier than this guy will.
Ok.
I'm sorry folks that's heroic you may think that's a traitor but that's hero with you you want people in government who have morals and ethics you know there's a line from President Bush and it's actually in this clip that we're going to use at the end of today's program where he says listen the the safeguards I'm paraphrasing but the safeguard you really have with all these programs is people that you know have a good sense of the law working for us right.
If something was wrong you know they know about it i mean these people are ethical.
Well this person is ethical he's not doing this for a game as he said in The Guardian piece if he wanted to sell this information to foreign entities he could get bloody rich doing it.
He didn't get anything releasing it to us.
Now I'm sorely tempted to simply mean you want to just read this whole guardian article i'm not going to do that but i'm going to read more than I normally do I want you to go read that the folks this is history this is media history for each one of them in order and you are reading mean you want to know what it feels like to be involved in Woodward and Bernstein Watergate as it unfolds while this may not be Watergate.
But its top 10 of the stories in our lifetimes depending on how old you are.
Since then ok i will read some of it because i want to show what a genius this guy is it's almost as though he will use a bush word here strategic arised how he was going to do this whole thing to avoid the same sort of pitfalls that people have done something similar before him have fallen into right.
He watched Drake he watched many he watched bradley manning and he watched how the government responded and the arguments that opponents to all this used against them and you.
For example I mean on the Bradley Manning thing everybody was slamming him for endangering operatives in the field right so snow deliberately doesn't release information that would endanger people in the field and he's crafted the whole way he's done this to minimize the ability of the government to demonize him and he knows that's gonna happen anyway but soon we can assume it's going to be in some new novel way because he's managed to.
Build kind of firewall protecting him from the approaches the government is used on other whistleblowers he's also done it in such a genius like way that if the government comes down on him and they have to because if they don't.
He's not going to be the last you're gonna have a bunch of other people who probably have been itching to do something similar and have been feeling this isn't right maybe I should come out it's not right if he doesn't get hit with a ton of breaks they're going to turn right they're gonna flip they're gonna come over to our side and yes ladies and gentlemen it isn't entirely you know it's a it's not the government and US now it's the government or us they're going to come over to our side and the government can't have that the problem is they're going to look like they're coming down on the hero like a guy who sacrifice his entire life for an a cause that both right and left wing Americans Revere our.
Constitutional protections and freedoms and if you're the government prosecuting a guy who gave up his entire khushi wonderful life to protect our constitutional freedoms what does that portrayed the government as he might as well be king george the third although King George the Third's some countries the one who broke the story so it's it's it's interesting irony is going on ladies and gentlemen right now but let me read you a little bit of this and I apologize but like i said you gotta go read it yourself it's it's it's groundbreaking journalism the piece is entitled Edward Snowden the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations by glenn greenwald you and McCaskill and Laura Poitras in hong kong from the guardians online edition sunday jun 9 2013 from the piece quote the individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden a 29 year old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors.
The Guardian after several days of interviews is revealing his identity.
At his request from the moment he decided to disclose numerous top secret documents to the public.
He was determined the story says not to opt for the protection of and.
In the quote i have no intention of hiding Who I am because i know i have done nothing wrong and quote later on the pc says he understands that he will be made to suffer for his actions but quote i will be satisfied if the Federation of secret law on equal part in an irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant and quote by the way in this piece Snowden points out and then the government must absolutely shutter when they read this that all of these safeguards and protections that they've told us we don't need to worry about any of this stuff because it's all in there isn't in there and he knows because as a mid-level low mid-level guy he points out that he could have access to any of your data at any time ok forget all this we gotta get a good FISA Court you but no he could do it.
Ok this is why the government's gotta drop the hammer on him because he's exposing exactly how reckless and the present john dean john dean who is the lawyer for the Nixon.
Administration when the whole Watergate thing went down I had an interesting tweet today and i retweeted he said that those who think the National Security Agency is somehow immune from the normal government bureaucratically nonsense and ineptitude and in competence should know that it's no different than the IRS okay all that stuff you read about the IRS and you realize how incompetent and how much bureaucracy there is and how they have a helpline at the IRS that if you call the helpline and they help you with your taxes they have a rule that says that they know they're not beholden to what they told you because they can be wrong I mean folks the NSA might as well be the same group of people I mean when you think these are all highly trained you know super computer guy i mean this guy didn't even have a high school education folks in complete high school.
That's not to slam him it's just too maybe puncture some of these myths on who were dealing with here.
It's a giant government agency like all the others.
It has the benefits and the drawbacks of all the others it might as well be the IRS as far as their ability to be right all the time.
To be honest to be above political you know dynamics and all that other stuff right John Dean.
Oh no it used to be.
The top one of the top attorneys in the US government in an administration that was fond of using all of these levers and tools and weapons against their political opponents.
He says later in the piece quote my sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is being done against them end quote he points out that he's willing to sacrifice his cushy life he says because he can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive I'm quoting here surveillance machine they're secretly building and quote he says that this is not an altruistic move.
It's a self-interested one because he doesn't want to live in the kind of world that we are almost at and that we will be going very soon passed the point of no return.
Which brings us to another interesting question about whether you could walk this thing back if you wanted to from where we are now which gets us to the FISA Court in a bunch of things are going to talk about later in the program I was trying to think about what I could bring to the story that isn't already being brought by these people doing wonderful investigative work and I thought will bring some context and we will point out how many of the things that are being used to make us feel better about these programs are in fact fig leaf that do nothing of the sort and always were.
He said in the story he expects to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act which is a ridiculous 1917.
I mean folks when I was growing up in nineteen seventies we thought the nineteen seventeen Espionage Act was akin to the laws that allow.
Japanese-americans to be locked up in camps for the duration of the Second World War as far as things that ought to be struck from the books as a black mark in US history.
We've resurrected it and we use it to go after americans now it's it's.
You wouldn't believe it in the nineteen seventies if somebody had said that the article goes in his background he was a soldier train for Special Forces the story says this about when he first decided maybe he needs to go public with this name was back during the latter part of the Bush administration he was i'm working in geneva switzerland stories is this quote he said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets but at the time he chose not to do so for two reasons first he said quote most of the secrets the CIA has he was working at the time are about people not machines and systems so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.
Secondly the election of barack obama the story says in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms rendering disclosures unnecessary he left the CIA in 2009 the story says in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility stationed on a military base in Japan it was then he said that he quote watched as Obama advance the very policies that I thought would be reined in and as a result he said I got hardened and quote the primary lesson the story says from this experience was that.
Quoting Snowden here quote you can't wait around for someone else to act.
I had been looking for leaders but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act end quote.
Folks I'm sorry you may disagree with what this guy did but what makes a hero.
Our motives this guy had the highest of motives in mind to protect the ideals that we were all raised with you may argue about violating security clearances are all these are the things but folks how else are we going to know about this stuff isn't there more of a value sometimes in knowing what your government is doing.
Then the value of what the programs that the government is doing stuff with our supposed to do.
I mean he says quote the NSA paraphrase the NSA the NSA are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them and quote he said that what they're doing poses quote an existential threat to democracy and quote.
Here's another quote from the Guardian quote as strong as those beliefs are there still remains the question why did he do it.
Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle quoting Snowden now quote there are more important things than money if I were motivated by money I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich for him the story says it is a matter of principle.
Quote the government has granted itself power that is not entitled to there is no public oversight.
The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to he said and quote again.
The story continues i encourage you to go read the entire piece all of them.
Quote Snowden said that he admires both Daniel Ellsberg and bradley manning but argues that there's one important distinction between himself and the Army private whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news quote i carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest he said there are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over because harming people isn't my goal.
Transparency is end quote folks again arm as we said on this program before.
If you're a stickler but you never violate your security clearance then we don't have a Benny we don't have a Drake we don't have this guy in other words all this stuff we now know about what's going on in our name secretly all around the world.
We don't know any of it so you have to weigh this you know iron law that you never violate security clearance by how important the information we've gotten because people did violate their security clearance is you expect to have people who actually believe in upholding their oath of office.
We've folks look look look at this way Ron Wyden the senator who's been trying to tell us about this for a long time takes an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States when he is sworn in.
He also not so much an oath but he's also sworn to secrecy is a member of the Intelligence Committee which of those two earths or restriction should take precedent.
Ok is the one to the.
Constitution of the United States into the people higher or lower than the one to protect the secrets as a member of you know the Intelligence Committee if those two things contradict each other which side should he fall on this guy was not supposed to release these secrets and at the same time he thought that the secrets contained information which will lead to the destruction of our democracy.
What is the higher calling there and let's do it another way to look at it from this this perspective.
Think about all the people that are making the decision on the opposite side of the coin they think this might lead to the destruction of democracy but I can't say anything because I'm i have a security clearance is that the right way to say it if they really think it's going to destroy the ideals of america i can't do it i have security clearance . the right decision to make.
Where would we all be if everybody made the decision you know that way.
You know you have to look at history folks if we have no whistleblowers richard nixon finishes out his term in office there's never a church in Pike committee hearings I mean the stuff that we know about reality today because people were willing to violate their security clearance and turn over stuff that the government didn't want them to turn over is huge when you argue against people doing that you're arguing against overturning huge chunks of reality that would otherwise be hidden from view is that really worth the potential damage that was supposedly done two national security as I said before I'm a hundred percent behind the leaker this information.
I've been consistently supportive of those who act as whistleblowers for exposing what the surveillance state for lack of a better word is doing in secret without consulting the public who are of course the ones who are supposed to be making these decisions this is all stuff that i consider to be on our right to know.
As part of being informed voters the people that run the country have to know enough about reality to make halfway decent and informed decisions at the ballot box otherwise this whole thing is a farce.
How can we blame voters for how they vote if they don't know crucial stuff like this well then ultimately it's the voters were responsible for the way things are.
Only if they know about the way things are the ladies and gentlemen if I pretend we live in Oz and that's all I tell the voters and then they vote like we live in oz can you really blame them for the way they vote these people are pulling back the curtain and showing you that the wizard ain't the wizard he's an old befuddled little man who's pretending that he's on top of this and that he is adhering to the Constitution and that you don't have to worry there's tons of oversight and everybody's briefed and we're not spying on Americans folks this is the sort of stuff that Senator Ron Wyden Udall and people like them were trying to tell us about.
And here's the part that blows me away because you'll hear some of these people on the Senate Intelligence Committee like Dianne Feinstein and sexy Chambliss and all these people they will Harry Reid there's nothing wrong we've been doing this for seven years nobody's complained.
You're all getting your panties into an uproar over this whole thing it's no big deal well people have been complaining the problem is is that the people that know about this are not allowed to tell you about it.
So how can they complain this idea that we brief Congress and you'll hear President Bush in the bite from the clip that we chose for the end of the program the flashback clip you'll hear him say the same thing we brief Congress on this no they don't we told you this a few shows ago and thankfully a bunch of stories are broken on that since pointing out that briefing Congress is a meaningless term because they don't brief Congress they breathe the Intelligence Committee whose then not allowed to tell anyone about what they were briefed about you know they can't even tell other congressmen and the briefing is the most bare-bones kind of thing.
Alright so Ron Wyden and I'm going to quote his entire statement that he made trying to warn Americans that at some point what the government was doing behind our backs is going to come out and we are going to be stunned and appalled well guess what ladies and gentlemen we're here.
Quote when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act.
They're going to be stunned and they're going to be angry and they're going to ask senators did you know what this law actually permits why didn't you know before you voted on it the fact is widen said years ago anyone can read the plain text of the Patriot that and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch because that.
Interpretation is classified it's almost as if there were two Patriot Act's and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters.
Our constituents of course are totally in the dark members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.
End quote when widen says that many members of Congress have no idea how the laws being secretly interpreted.
How does that job with the government saying we brief Congress no they don't they briefed widen and Udall and Feinstein and Chambliss and the people on the Intelligence Committee.
We're not allowed to tell anyone else folks there's eight people on the Intelligence Committee when those same people say well nobody's complained about any of this access to campus that this.
Well BS widen has Udall has minutes twenty percent of your intelligence committee right there Feingold did but they can't tell you because they're sworn to secrecy.
They tried though my favorite attempt at trying happened on march 12 2013 when Ron Wyden and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had a chance to position.
Someone else in a place where they would tell us what widen was forbidden to tell us there was a Senate Intelligence hearing where widen got to question.
The head of our intelligence james clapper widen asked him questions that why didn't already knew the answers to right he knew that if clapper answers these questions truthfully he will be telling the public what widened can't tell the public right remember why he knows this stuff already he's on the Intelligence he's trying to warn us about it so here is the actual you know conversation that went on in the Senate chambers on TV I mean everybody saw it.
Wyden says quote to clapper asking for these questions quote does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans clapper says no sir a stunned widen right who's planned this to release this information to the public through clapper says it does not and clapper says not wittingly there are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect but not wittingly end quote now clapper had to issue a clarification on jun 6 the day the first of the Guardian stories broke.
You know why because he was lying and lying to Congress gets people into trouble.
Okay look at your history folks of us scandals and the people in government who are involved in them.
Ok part of what makes me so incredulous at people who tell us that the government's just trying to keep us safe and we need to trust them on all this is that the government isn't like some lily-white never convicted before citizen they are a repeat criminal offender.
Dave if if somebody shows up in court and you're on a jury and that person has an entirely clean credit criminal record you treat them one way if they come in and they have a rape conviction and assault with a deadly weapon conviction and you know numerous drug charges and trafficking and I mean all these things you treat them differently.
The government's track record is horrible on this ladies and gentlemen and the people with the horrible track record are actually major players in designing the system we have now so it's not like you can say down that was 50 years ago you know those people i mean it's a different American now start with . extra anyone remember the Admiral right Poindexter was one of the main people involved in the iran-contra scandal in the middle nineteen eighties . Dexter was convicted of lying to congress of violating this w he should be in jail now he was forgiven because he violated his own Fifth Amendment rights to self incrimination something we don't let terrorists get away with now but we let Poindexter off on that technicality he was convicted of lying to Congress about what the government was doing in secret selling arms for hostages right and averting the money to a program Congress had already decided to defund and to me anyway.
Go back and read on the iran-contra the point is is that a bro . Dexter was convicted lying to Congress all these things so what happens to a guy like that does he ride off into the sunset and we never hear from him again because he's disgraced and you can't trust in government anymore.
No he goes it worked for a private firm comes back to the government with a program called the Total Information Awareness program which the bush administration decides they want to use until the sheer scope of this project scares the hell out of everybody.
So the bush administration has to publicly table the idea and say we're not going to do that and then they go ahead and do it anyway.
Rename it and basically that's what we have now.
Designed and pushed by the guy who should be in jail for all these offences before in the middle eighties folks these aren't we were not talking about an institutional problem which we are but I mean just just an institutional problem we're talking about the same damn people doing this ok I mean the people who have helped put this into place you look at the changes you look at the Rumsfeld's you look at all these guys working for the bush administration folks these were all low-level people in the Nixon administration who didn't think anything was wrong with what happened in Watergate as Nixon so famously said when the IRS being used as a weapon was brought up and he said you mean we can't use the IRS for politics anymore so that was a stupid thing to say.
These are the same folks ok and yet there are people a lot of people who trust the government to do this you know in a legal and ethical manner that would not violate our rights except they've done it already.
Many times go look at you history almost wore look at your history folks these are repeat offenders.
These are people that require oversight and look the founding fathers of this country who didn't know Admiral Poindexter but they knew people like him human beings they built a system that understood what human nature is like that's why there's layer upon layer of oversight built into it what we've been doing ladies and gentlemen for almost 40 years now.
We'll really I mean you could almost say since 1947 but I mean we've been stripping out these protections these oversights and replacing them with things that we say do the same jobs as the things we took away but they by the way . extra was a convicted.
Just because I didn't play in the laws arm on several felony counts of conspiracy lying to Congress obstruction of justice and altering destroying documents pertinent to the investigation.
Ok felon should be the point is is on what grounds.
Should we give these people a trust pass.
They have abused that trust over and over and over again and folks even if you would trade some freedom for security what makes you think you can trust our government to do this correctly their history documents and demonstrates that they should be trusted with this power.
Ok no these intelligence committee members like Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss these guys are coming out and saying that there's no scandal we're doing this for seven years mountain out of a molehill there's nothing to see here folks move on.
Let's examine for a minute why they would say that.
Ok I understand something if there is a scandal here they're part of the cause they're our investigations they're the ones who need to be investigated like widen said in that warning people are going to say did you know about this and most of the Senate and most of the Congress can legitimately say no I wasn't on the Intelligence Committee I didn't realize all this was going on dianne feinstein can't say that she was on the Intelligence Committee Chambliss can't say that he was on the Intelligence Committee see those people are facing investigation.
If they're in on this scandal so it's in their interest to say there is no scandal what are you even talking about.
Nobody was even against this be my favorite line Saxby Chambliss Republican from Georgia said he didn't know any citizens who registered any complaint about the surveillance folks how could a citizen armed register a complaint about this they were for the most part unaware of it and the few cases that have come to the courts you know based on the assumption that somebody is being targeted have been dismissed on the grounds of standing.
Ok now let's talk about this for me because it's it's a catch-22 that helps make this whole situation that this.
Whistleblower came out to try to help us overturn possible there's something called judicial review in this country programs like this whole post 9-11 security state are supposed to at a certain time make it in front of the court so that the judicial branch of the coven government can say whether this comports with the Constitution our government.
The Obama administration the Bush administration of all said listen all three branches of government signed off on this no they haven't because the judicial branch is prevented from doing judicial review about this you know why because nobody has any standing the courts have ruled that in order to have standing.
Which means you can prove that you were somehow affected by the very thing you're bringing to the attention of the judicial system right if you want to say I've been spied upon and i'm complaining and I want a court ruling on this you have to be able to prove you were spied upon.
But the information that would allow you to prove to the court that you have standing because you were spied upon is classified.
So you can't have it it's a catch-22 that even the courts have recognized lower court some in circuit court and appellate courts have actually said please take this you know I can't rule for you because you don't have standing and that's what the law says but you're obviously caught in a catch-22 please take this to a higher court.
Ok the supreme court ruled on one aspect of this recently in a five-to-four ruling and pretended the five justices who ruled you know against pretended like there is no catch 22 and if there is a catch 22 it's an ok catch 22.
Here's a story from mom cnet news by declan McCullough februari 26 2013 are entitled Supreme Court throws out NSA surveillance case quote in a narrow five-to-four decision another five-to-four decision folks shows you how how obvious some of these decisions are right there completely political and completely contentious in a five-to-four decision the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit challenging a secret of National Security Agency surveillance program a majority of the justices ruled the story says that the lawsuit brought by human rights advocates and journalists who believe their electronic communication sent abroad would be intercepted was quote too speculative and quote to proceed based on fears of quote hypothetical future harm the plaintiffs the story says which included and the International in the nation magazine had argued that the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act giving the government virtually unregulated authority to perform bulk surveillance on the international communication of US citizens violates privacy rights protected by the Fourth Amendment Justice Samuel Alito who wrote for the majority endorsed by the courts other conservatives disagreed quote it is speculative whether the government will imminently target communications to which respondents are parties he wrote we decline to abandon our usual reluctance to endorse standing theories that rest on speculation about the decisions of independent actors and quote the story then quotes the person who wrote for the foreperson minority in this case quote a descent written by Justice Eve Stephen Breyer said that the case should have continued because the harm was not speculative quote it is as likely to take place as are most future events that common sense inference an ordinary knowledge of human nature tells us will happen end quote Breyer wrote saying that he was expressing no opinion about whether the Fourth Amendment was violated but would let the case continued to explore that . quote this Court has often found the occurrence of similar future events sufficiently certain to support standing and quote an understanding of the technology the story says and the NSA's motives to expand its surveillance as much as possible all point to a very strong likelihood that the government will intercept at least some of the plaintiffs communications he concluded.
So there you go folks the people who would challenge this and use a key component to American jurisprudence judicial review are prevented from doing so by this catch-22 of not being able to prove they were harmed by anything because they don't have the secret documents that they would need to prove that right so by keeping this program secret and what's going on the executive branch is able to keep a judicial review challenge of this entire structure from happening.
All right now why don't we go here's here's the key component if you wanted to do all of this in a constitutionally legal way why don't you and the real legal way would be to say something like the Fourth Amendment is too dangerous to keep any more that the fourth amendment was written and a time before you could fly airplanes into buildings that that something like that didn't you understand how digital communications we're going to go we simply need to understand we don't live in that kind of world anymore so we're going to put forward an attempt to repeal an amendment to the US constitution why don't they just do that because if they did that nobody could argue the point right we would have everybody would have done it legally we repealed the fourth is too dangerous to have assuming you could repeal the bill of rights right but I mean it's all in there.
Um the the the ability to basically change the.
Constitution amended and all those kind of things arm we don't get rid of the Fourth Amendment or any of the amendments because we don't have to we just get rid of them in reality while leaving the shell in place so we can continue to pretend that our traditional institutions remain intact.
Ok folks in other words we trim we put in new fig leaves we take out key protection from earlier legal decisions and we have a shell corporation.
Instead of a constitution we have the structure of our ideals still on paper with the guts tripped out and the FISA Court is a perfect example of how that's done.
The FISA Court folks is the United States foreign intelligence surveillance court it is the very element at the key of all these discussions that you hear President Bush talk about President Obama talked about the FISA Court is always reviewing all the stuff and they're the secret court ok they were established in 1978 because of revelations that came out hearings in the mid-nineteen seventies about what the government was doing ok out of control the intelligence agencies didn't want those hearings and they didn't want the oversight a compromise behind back doors was reached and the people in the intelligence community who didn't want oversight put up with the FISA Court which should tell you something right there folks the FISA Court is a secret court.
Ok the only people who get to present arguments to the FISA Court are the government there is no other person there representing any potential other side.
It's supposed to on paper / c requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agencies inside the US by federal law enforcement agencies.
Okay but that's not how we confine its use today because there have been several amendments to this.
Ok I mean one with the protect America Act in 2007 I believe in perfect example of how you can take something that seemed logical in 1978 a few minutes strip on a few original clauses there and again we have a shell of a pfizer act which itself was part of creating a fig leaf or reform and it still can be claimed listen we're going through proper judicial channel so this is all armed reviewed by a judge.
Folks the FISA Court rejected out of almost two thousand requests that we know about in 2012.
None in its entire history the FISA Court has rejected government requests far less than one percent of the time ladies and gentlemen.
Now we're not allowed to know what the FISA Court is doing but any oversight committee that is rejecting far less than one percent of the cases brought to it is a rubber stamp agency it's not an oversight agency ok you can divine that by its track record and what little is allowed to leak through the public ok.
That's not oversight that's the appearance of oversight and the protect America Act of 2007 does away with even the appearance of oversight in some cases I have a quote here arm from Shane canada dollars an american lawyer and writer and he was a part of the Center for Constitutional Rights and he was interviewed on things democracy now the other day and he talked about why the FISA Court.
He didn't say it was a joke but I will here's the quote when they asked him about the FISA Court and how much it does the oversight and how much we can trust it to to play the role that both of the last two presidents essentially try to calm our fears by saying it's playing with this quote by canada is saying is are talking about the requirement that every 90 days.
The FISA Court renew the government's are legal authority to suck up all this data right so supposedly every 90 days the court is supposed to review this and issue another continuation which they've been you know done every 90 days since nine eleven and here's what kinda Dell says about that quote.
Well we don't know if the bush administration was you know getting these same orders and if this is just a continuation a renewal order.
It's supposed to last for only three months but they may have been getting one every three months since 2006 or even earlier you know when Congress reapproved this Authority in 2011 you know one of the things Congress thought was well at least they'll have to present these things to a judge and get some judicial review and Congress will get some reporting of the total number of orders but he continues when one order covers every single phone record for a massive phone company like verizon the reporting that gets to Congress is going to be very hollow and then similarly you know when the judges on the FISA Court are handpicked by the Chief Justice and the government can go to a judge as they did here in north Florida who was appointed by Ronald Reagan who 73 years old and is known as a draconian kind of hanging judge in his sentencing and get some order that's this broad I think both the judicial review and the congressional oversight checks are very weak and quote folks.
That's your oversight protection that the government keeps claiming keeps you safe and here is the fun part in the very few number of cases where the FISA Court has told the government that they disagree with what the government's doing the government has a has an appellate fisa court that the dick and then appeal to so it's not even the last word this oversight if they tell the government know they can bypass and take it to another one folks it's not oversight if the appearance of oversight let's play a little logical game to demonstrate that ok little logical game to show how ludicrous this oversight by the FISA Court every 90 days is this idea that the FISA Court is playing a in a watchdog roll presupposes that actual thought and consideration and the weighing of circumstances is involved right not just rubber-stamping folks can anyone imagine the court not renewing this and having this whole operation grinds to a halt what do you think the government would do if that happened besides obviously appealing you know the FISA Court appellate level if you can't imagine them deciding that this whole thing has gone too far and it's violating everything and we're going to stop it now well then it's just.
Rubber-stamping isn't you've got to you've got to be able to conceive of them saying at some point sorry you can't do this this is wrong you've gone too far for it to have any sort of legitimate oversight ability what a regular court in a non pfizer situation would do right if the supreme court ruled against something it stops we're going to vacate this saw this practice has to stop it's illegal now -.
Can you imagine the FISA Court saying all this secret government surveillance we got sorry it's gone too far it has to stop what you think the government would do if you can't imagine the FISA Court doing that folks then it doesn't really have oversight ability it's just there to give the government a way to say oh yeah we've got the judicial branch on the FISA Court ruling on it every 90 days its secret you can't see it but every 90 days they have to sign off on it as though they might not now obviously I read a lot of articles on before doing this program today more than i normally read and i'm reading pieces of articles more than I normally do I like to talk about these things more than reading because I think people's eyes glaze over sometimes but I think it's important to to read things that help explain that you I hope my credibility has been enhanced somewhat by the fact that these revelations tend to confirm what we said in the past but I don't expect you to take me as gospel I want you to hear a bunch of different viewpoints out there to help flesh out this situation arm.
Lord knows in the future shows i'm sure you'll be hearing from me more than these people but I want this I want to provide some three-dimensionality to this for lack of a better word the article that struck me it's funny because it doesn't give you any new revelation I just love the way he phrased it was from a wall street journal writer that I read named al Lewis I'm going to read you some of his piece that appeared in The Wall Street Journal jun 8 2013 entitled dirty bomb blows liberty and I like the way he portrayed it because it kind of shows something we've also told you before that this is how terrorism is supposed to work we don't seem to understand that all these things we're doing to combat terrorism is kind of what the terrorists want you see the death and destruction that they cause is not the goal all of our security apparatus is designed with the idea in mind that it is the death and destruction is a means to an end imagine that the country folks is like a dog.
The terrorist attacks are like fleas fighting the dog but what the terrorists are really after is not to bite the dog it's to have the dog in an attempt to get the fleas on him to himself to pieces.
Here's from al Lewis in the wall street journal quote.
Here's how terrorism really works slaughter people on national television and watch a nation that prides itself on freedom as its shackles itself the feds at airports start patting privates and taking pictures with cameras that can see through clothes.
Security cameras go up everywhere the spooks in Washington set up massive internet surveillance operations and obtain secret court orders to obtain everyone's phone records.
Once it starts it can't be stopped he writes in 2007 he says candidate barack obama railed against the quote false choice between liberties we cherish and the security we provide i will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining the Constitution and our freedom and quote last week.
Lewis says the guardian newspaper reported that the National Security Agency collected phone records of millions of Verizon customers and the Obama administration defended the move.
The Guardian in Washington Post Lewis says also reported that the NSA has a top-secret operation dubbed prism which taps directly into the service of nine leading internet companies does President Obama knows something that Senator Obama did not or did the corrosion of our civil liberties take on a life of its own independent of any elected leader.
It's as if a terrorist set off a dirty bomb that is slowly spreading tyranny.
Instead of radiation and quote he writes that's a fantastic mental images net a dirty bomb slowly spreading tyranny instead of radiation and somewhere the ghost of Osama bin Laden laughs right.
Now Lewis then goes on lights more about this and and talk to an expert who tries to explain away this idea that the government also uses and many proponents of these programs also use the idea that if you have nothing to hide.
What are you afraid of quote some people aren't alarmed noting they've got nothing to hide I'm sorry i should say that this is quoting mr. glazier he's the expert on this gum Lewis is quoting the piece quote some people are alarmed knowing they've got nothing to hide but they're wrong to think it's normal for the government to monitor law-abiding citizens there's a reason why our toilets are not in our living rooms mr. glazier said you're not doing anything wrong when you go to the bathroom but it's still something you want kept private end quote Lewis continues other people simply feel helpless in the face of authoritarian privacy invasions.
Whether it's from big government or big corporations quote people are in shock.
Almost about the different ways information about them is being used mr. glazier said the natural reaction is to just shut down.
It's too much to understand and it can't be stopped end quote Lewis finishes up quote maybe the outrage over last week's revelations will be enough to start the battle the war on terror has demolished checks and balances in government technology has outpaced Americans ability to protect civil rights.
It's time for Patriots to reconsider the patriot act before the terrorists win end quote well said if you're the dog.
At what point do you realize you're doing more damage to yourself trying to get the fleas then the fleas are doing to you and folks this part i'm about to get into now is something that's going to be made pretty darn clear i think when you hear the little clip we chose from one of our two thousand six shows but it's this idea that we forget that this isn't about partisanship thought about what party has the White House and it's not about personalities like I trust this guy but I don't trust that guy this is about power.
The powers of the office these powers don't go away when the party you trust or the personality.
You don't fear leave the power stay behind for all the future people who get that job this is richard nixon's dream here folks just waiting for a really bad roll of the dice for the wrong person to get their hands on all this data and all this infrastructure and all these laws and all this post 9-11 power when you destroy the constitutional fire walls that protect us in the name of Public Safety you ultimately open the door folks to a larger disaster something far worse than even numerous terrorist attacks we've lost perspective here how many terrorist attacks folks would you say are ok how many lives would you say it's worth losing to keep the real ideals behind your constitutional rights protected.
How many people would you be willing to lose with it how many soldiers have we lost for that you going to tell a couple hundred thousand guys who lost their lives in the Second World War who thought they were mostly fighting for freedom in the American Way of life and all this that we are willing to jettison all this stuff for the potential.
I don't you know focus on how many time you put that number mean we don't do the draconian things that it would take to stop drunk driving right if you if you were required to take some sort of a sobriety test every time you entered the freeway on a freeway on-ramp we would say forty thousand lives a year or something like that why don't we do that because that's in overreach right that's an that's that's too much of a violation on you know simply life and living to warrant it even though it would save a ton of lives we're not making that kind of calculation here how many lives is your freedom you know your constitutional rights as we have always grown to understand them as we still celebrate them how many lives is that worth.
And everybody says the same thing we'll do it if it's your child are you know what would you say how far would you be willing to go for your child folks if it's my child will go right to Hitler.
Ok you really want to have a government based on arm you coming up to a parent saying arm you know you get this kind of government of your child dies you really want to live under that because that just takes you right to hit land you go to Godwin's law right away it can't be that way folks you have to think about this in a more logical manner you hold a gun to my child's head I'm gonna do anything I want to take your freedom or throw you in jail i'm going to give you know right you really want that to be the standard.
It's funny too and again this is something that the clip at the end of the show we'll we'll do a very good job.
I think and that's why we chose it rather than choosing one where I said all the stuff in 2060 coach and was like but what do you need to hear that but clip at the end will show though this aspect we're starting to see emerge where Republicans who fear Barack Obama are scared about him having all these surveillance powers and Democrats who fear George Bush are not all of them obviously but many of them saying what Barack Obama's just trying to keep us safe and there's also another contingent and I fully understand this but we've got to think bigger than this of people especially African Americans out there who have a lot invested in the first african-american president not being seen badly i mean if you finally get somebody in office looks a little like you and who represents a triumph over discrimination and slavery and bigotry and all these things wouldn't you back that guy as much as you can no matter what so I often see a lot of tweets and comments and everything where people send this is blatant racism and George Bush didn't get held the standard and folks okay some of that's true but don't let that blind you to the bigger reality when it comes to our civil liberties and protections.
This guy's no better than George Bush and George Bush was no better than this guy.
Now a little quote here from William Pitt.
And someone tweeted this the other day but it's one of my favorite quotes because it gets to the heart of this matter when people say we need to do this stuff.
The government that we need to do this right that's always what they say.
Throughout the entire history of the planet that's what they say when Hitler was given the enabling act in Germany that's what he said right.
And this was said a couple hundred years ago by william pitt when he said quote necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom it is the argument of tyrants it is the creative slaves and quote sounds a little dramatic does it sound a little tin foil hat right there but that's the truth the people who do these things always say they have to we don't want to take we don't want to monitor you have to and we can have a debate because if we did the terrorists would know what we're doing.
We have to do this we can have a debate you can't be in charge of you can't know about it but just understand there's lots of oversight and all three branches of government are involved shut up.
I have my own theory about this folks and it also helps explain you know Dan if you're not gonna do this.
What's your answer to how do we keep track of terrorists how do we need to secure the nation and all these things.
It's always been my opinion folks that this falls into the category of you know quote if all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail and quote kind of kind of an issue the idea that the easiest thing to do when you're facing a problem like how do we defeat international terrorism how we protect the homeland hate that term when I just call it the fatherland arm.
The easiest thing to do is to throw the Constitution the wastebasket pretend like you didn't and then just you know ignore all the laws because that's easy.
It's a lot harder to sit there and go okay how do we get creative and how do we craft real rules that allow us to maintain the ideals of America realizing that we even the people in 2001 after the 911 attacks were crafting these rules will not be around forever and very weird scary dangerous people down the road may get these powers how do we protect everybody i compared to this I thought of a very bad analogy so don't criticize me for it I know it's bad but I was thinking about rules and I was thinking about this is that was a game right and you have rules for every game so say football right you have rules for playing football but what if what if the game was life or death you got behind in the score and things were looking really desperate and so you know you come to your team you say okay i know that there are rules but we gotta win.
We have no choice so I want you to go get your ford explorer drive it up here we're going to throw the football in the cab of the ford explorer and you just drive toward that goal post and you just run over anyone that gets in your way.
Well what is that you can't do that that's not even close to the rules that's a joke it's just you totally violating everything.
Yeah but that's the easiest way to score points and if you stop thinking about the rules we will score points if you take your car and run over the opposition and it's a heck of a lot easier to do that than to play within the rules which would require you to do something like well let's come up with some new innovative plays let's figure out new formations lets you know even though everybody's thought of these things before we need to sit down and do the difficult work of trying to find novel ways to stay within the real rules not the fig leaf rules to stick to the spirit of the law and not try to hedge on the letter of the law and creating fig leaves that helped make it look like we stayed within the boundaries of the rules when we really haven't.
It's a lot harder to do it that way folks.
If all you're armed with a hammer every problem looks like a nail right when we throw out the rule book.
All of a sudden all of the strategies that were using violate the rules.
Ok so I mean it's a lot harder to be creative it's like saying gee if there wasn't a fourth amendment could we get a lot more criminals we could go door-to-door and search everybody's house couldn't catch a lot more bad guys.
You're darn right you could we don't do that for a reason because your Nazi Germany when you do.
Ok so in that same idea we gotta do whatever we need to do to take out terrorist.
Well no we got to take out terrorists as well as we can without destroying the Constitution while we do it is the better way to think there was a an article written in the New Yorker magazine by seymour hersh investigative reporter seymour hersh where he was addressing some of these questions that came up in 2006 and he talked to a former senior intelligence official who kind of explained this same thing i just talked about you know about the tools and the hammers in the throwing away the rules of the game better than I do here's a quote from the piece from the 2006 New Yorker article we will link to it in the show notes.
Quote on May eleventh President Bush responded to the USA today's story there's been a USA Today story said quote if al-qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States we want to know what they're saying and quote the article continues that is valid and a well-conceived properly supervised intercept program the story says would be an important asset now quoting the senior intelligence official quote nobody disputes the value of the tool the former senior intelligence official told me it's the unresolved tension between the operators saying here's what we can build and the legal people saying just because you can build it doesn't mean you can use it.
End quote her says its attention that the president and his advisors have not even begun to come to terms with you understand that folks here's what we can build versus just because you can build it doesn't mean you can use it.
I'm coming from the side of the issue that says just because you can build that doesn't mean you can use it and the intelligence operative operators are the ones who are coming from the here's what we can build and it'll help keep a safe.
There's attention there and we still haven't come to grips with it and this whistleblower releasing these facts is an example of us beginning to come to grips with it maybe he said that your information is nowhere near as safe as the government pretends he could have gotten it no one last thing before I kind of get to the bottom line here what a long show this is going to be better but i think it's deserved many people maybe you try to minimize our concerns about government surveillance by citing how much information private companies.
You already have on us the private personal stuff that Facebook and all these kinds of things have on us right amazon then they say that the government is simply compiling a lot of this information that's relatively freely available online right now how can you complain about this damn the digital world that just know more about you have a private companies you can't get mad at the government for going and getting you know information out there private companies have I would like to point out that this is a separate problem and one that I have long felt and said was out of control as well should have been handled more aggressively from the start it's far too easy for private entities to use steel monitor your information to you know why they don't have a problem with it you know why they get away with it.
That's connected to our corrupt campaign contribution system and the electoral process that relies on donations.
These kind of companies want to be able to spy on you with advertising and cookies and all these different things they want to be able to do this without forcing you to <month> May </month> first if we were going to do this the right way you would have to approve all this before they could do a thing they're giving money to politicians and the people who want you to have to you know sign an option agreement first you know that really spells out not one of those five page agreements that's full of fine print that you can understand it was written by a lawyer but something that says can we track you to make your experience better.
Click yes click know the people that would want that to be the law aren't given any money to legislators are certainly nothing that compares with what the people that don't want to have to do that and want to track you without having to do that are giving so that's that's a separate issue but people who say that that's ok so why isn't I don't concede that that's okay alright so just just a little bit of that before i get 500 email saying ground.
Why are you okay with facebook knowing this about you but not the government I'm not okay with facebook knowing.
About me so ok so the bottom line how many lives saved or lost.
Is it worth to not have this surveillance occurring ok i say to you we shouldn't be doing this stuff we should go dial it back to real idealistic constitutional levels how many people should be we be willing to lose as the cost of freedom right the proverbial cost to freedom we send soldiers to fight for freedom all the time they lose their lives how many of us should be willing to lose our lives because we aren't willing to go farther down the road to ripping up the Constitution to be safe you know what's that line from dwight eisenhower been how far can you go to defend yourself from without without destroying what you're trying to defend from within the more we go down this road of trying to protect ourselves.
The more we destroy the very ideals that make us worth protecting.
In the first place unless you're one of those people that thinks ideals meals it's all about protecting your life.
Well then you're the kind of person that could go live in a totalitarian States the heroin sucks but at least I'm alive and then you get to this point and this this is where I feel very strongly about folks should we the people have the right to decide that we don't want this kind of america or do we don't have that option.
And if we don't have that option who's in charge of things and people always say well then we have that option we vote we voted for these people there are represented as they did this in our name.
That should be good enough but you voted for these people without knowing folks what's really going on.
You know if you voted for someone today knowing that all this is going on.
Might you not vote for someone who promised to turn that around as I said we have no guarantees that any of those promises will be kept because well we all kinda did.
If you voted for barack obama which I didn't vote for either of those guys but if you voted for barack obama you did vote for someone who promised to turn this all around how that work out for you.
So how can you really say you had the right to change policy you voted for a guy to change policy and he just didn't like a lewis and that article said you know why did senator Obama feel one way about this and President Obama feel another also folks we buy the line that these people are informed about what's going on we assume that the Senate the Congress knows when in reality out of the entire Senate eight of them know.
And out of those 82 are totally against all this but they don't get to tell us because they're not allowed to talk and they're still only getting the the briefest of briefings we pretend like they're getting every single scrap of information and they're not folks.
Here's the real story here and this is what needs to be acknowledged the reason that our Constitution in this country and our protections under it are too dangerous or are perceived to be too dangerous to live with as designed.
Written intended whatever you want to say is because it's a framework intended for peacetime and we are a nation perpetually at war since the Second World War folks we've been in a wartime situation you know either cold or hot but in the Cold War we treated.
Intelligences that we were in a wartime situation we've been in a wartime situation almost constantly and our founders talked extensively about how liberty and freedom cannot survive perpetual war it's almost a joke but two weeks ago President Obama even used a quote from james madison the other day before all this whistleblower news broke in the guardian newspaper.
He used the line from james madison saying you know no nation could preserve its freedom in a case of perpetual war.
That's what we're in a constitution that's supposed to be sort of suspended in wartime it's a peacetime Constitution and it's been suspended since the Second World War basically certainly since 1947.
It's a little bit ironic isn't it the two weeks ago or whatever the president gave a speech to those Ohio State graduating students that we talked about on the show saying that we should ignore the voices that warned of a fear of government tyranny doesn't that sound a little ironic now well here's the sad part to remember about all this folks forget everything else I've said because here's the sad part and this is where you need two steel yourselves if you're really convinced and i'm getting tweets from people now saying we're going on a march damn would you retweet this we're going to march in salt lake city we're gonna march in New York great I think that's all wonderful i'm all for it but here's the thing.
None of this is probably going to matter much folks.
When the next terror attack occurs the legislators and the government are going to say see this wouldn't have happened if you weren't so bitchy about being spied on.
And you will cave folks or most Americans will this is when we need to be tough.
This is the proverbial cost of freedom when we start paying a price in lives and loved ones for it.
This is usually the point as I said where someone was able damn what if it's your child if it's my child we're all going into the concentration camps right now to keep my child safe you want to run a whole country on that basis I don't think you we just have to know terror attacks are part of life and what we've forgotten since nine eleven is that they were a part of life even before nine eleven and we existed under the Constitution.
At some point we have to decide what we want in this country because the freedom versus security trade-off we have now is all security and no freedom and that's not America not as I was brought up to believe it anyway.
Audible is the internet's leading provider of spoken audio entertainment and we told you before that spoken audio entertainment seems to be the wave of the future because I shouldn't be too long now before more people read their books with their ears than their eyes and honorable was ahead of that curve well a long time ago because we've been telling you about them now for years they have more than a hundred thousand titles in their ever-growing library to choose from every genre you can think of.
They do audiobooks of course magazines and periodicals of course but you might not expect to find all television and radio shows stand-up comedy bits.
All kinds of things you know go on there sometimes to find things to recommend you and I'm constantly amazed that this new genre whatever it might be has been introduced into audio book form you can have to go there check out the site and maybe even ask the person who offers to chat with you ask them what they have.
I'll show you around and if you go to audible.com forward slash dan carlin you can get your free audio book download.
I might recommend one to you that is particularly germane considering the program you just heard it's one who's revelations have been confirmed by the recent whistleblower that came out and i divulged to the Guardian and glenn greenwald what was going on behind the scenes stuff that NSA expert author james bamford has been writing about for years he is the one who introduced most people to the NSA with his groundbreaking book three decades ago or whatever it is now the puzzle palace it's a famous book Bamford's recent uh well not really even that recent anymore book on the NSA and what was going on in the post-911 world with surveillance and all that kind of stuff the very same sorts of stories we've just been talking about came out several years ago called the shadow factory.
We recommended that show quite a long time ago but if you haven't caught up on what Bamford said you know in the past perhaps it's worth catching up on it now now that we know.
Most if not all of what he said in that book was the truth james bamford the shadow factory update your cell phone exactly what's going on with some of this NSA surveillance stuffing exactly how big an operation we're talking about here by one of the leading writers on the National Security Agency and go to www podcast.com forward slash dan carlin for your free audio book today if you think the show you just heard is worth a dollar dan and ben would love to have it for less than the price of a cup of coffee you can help keep the common sense coming Ibaka show it's all we ask go to dan carlin . com.
For information on how to donate to the show all right here's the promised clip that we talked about in the program.
It's not an I told you so so much because if you listen to this program you already know that we talk about the same things forever and if you just started listening to this program where you have a whole backlog of shows you can listen to what we talked about this stuff I found this clip more interesting because it's from a long time ago it goes way back and i think i said 2006 on the show it really goes back to December we release this December twentieth two thousand and five.
It's a show number 27 and we called it warrantless eavesdropping and intellectual diversity and this clip I like because it highlights sort of the the . we brought up about how there's a partisanship and personality question involved in this thing that shouldn't be where if the person who's running this secret you know backroom surveillance program is somebody from a party you trust her as a person you trust your fine and you think they're protecting America but as soon as this administration changes over it's not someone you trust or now it is someone you trust a lot of Americans flip their views on this not seeming to understand that this isn't a personality or partisanship power it's a power power and when you change the executive branch and give it this power it goes to whoever gets that job and the people that are going to get this job in the future could be very scary indeed.
Depending on your point of view you may think that the person who has it now is scary or you may think the person that used to have it is scary I think this clip will point out how interesting it is that people who trusted the last president with this power don't trust the current one and the people that don't trust the current one did trust the last one so interesting.
I think a juxtaposition of ideas based on something that we should consider more something that should unite people on the right and the left and who care about constitutional freedoms rather than divide us based on who gets to wield a particular power at this time.
So without further ado our clip including two bites from then-president george w bush from show number 27.
From December twentieth two thousand and five warrantless diversity and once again thank you for your support that has kept us around since 2005 to do these kind of shows we owe you folks thank you.
Now where the heck did that have anything to do with wiretaps without warrants so on the president is making essentially the same sort of case that Ronald Reagan made and lyndon johnson made and that Nixon made and that at times Clinton made and that is that the president has the power to just do these things what was it Nixon said if the President does it.
It's legal what he meant was it's legal by default so this is a good subject to have a debate about and and the reason that it also matters is you know we were having the press conference today and the president made several points that that hit me one is that arm we shouldn't be even talking about this subject they were aiding the enemy too much that when we have these open debates.
It alerts al Qaeda and people like them to our tactics and they thereby adapt it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war the the fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy.
You gotta understand and hope the American people understand there's still an enemy that would like to strike the United States of America and they're very dangerous and you know discussion about how we try to find them.
Will enable them to adjust he also had several other subjects about the nature of the enemy and the nature of the threat.
He kept saying they killed 3,000 Americans I have to once again reiterate ladies and gentlemen that so much of this is based on fear it's embarrassing me you know we come from a pretty proud heritage of the president is fond of you know recalling the imagery of that heritage we show the Old West we show the brave sort of scenes from our past but we don't emulate the character of those people because let's be honest our direct parents and grandparents and some of us face down threats that make this look like a mosquito the Soviet Union had 25,000 more ballistic missiles aimed at every major American city down to the size of like pump.
We did disaster drills and hit enter and hid under our desk once a month at our school you know for that inevitable day duck and cover remember that the threat before that was the Nazis who had perhaps the most powerful military in the world at the time and they were allied to to other countries now we didn't have to get rid of anywhere near the kinds of freedoms were talking about now in order to fight those Wars but this mosquito of an enemy who I realize has the potential to do a lot of harm but any enemy has the potential to do a lot of harm yet we're willing to make the sort of claims that presidents in other Wars wouldn't have made now the president then brought up the issue that we are war he brought up his wartime authority a few times.
Basically saying look we're in a war I have to do these things to protect the American people well I want to discuss that for a minute because the president is asserting powers that essentially have no in because this war has no end.
The thing about a world war two or Korea or Vietnam when you're asserting wartime authority and by the way they didn't hurt that much in Vietnam.
Which is why you saw those movies and pictures and news coverage everything else but when you were certain wartime authority.
There's an assumption that will and you will have a peace treaty signing or you will have an armistice or something but as we said before there's not gonna be a VE Day a victory over violent extremism day.
So when do the work of authority powers and if the president is saying he could do what he's doing because it's war time when can you stop doing it at what time is that power ever want to be reverted back to whoever has it now.
If anybody should have it now 50 years from now somebody's gonna give that back know it try telling me that's not a new permanent presidential power if you manage to get away with a certain it's a power at all which brings us to that subject because if it is a presidential it's not just this president's power and this is why those of you who will i guess acquiesce to one of the other tactics the president used in the speech and the press conference this morning which essentially was a trust me I'd never take your civil liberties.
I never lead you down the wrong path I would always protect you line if that's if that works with you and that is.
Understandable i think a lot of people out there to trust the president.
What are you gonna do when it isn't this guy because these powers that he's talking about if he can manage to grab them for the executive branch and I don't hold him.
You know it fall for that I mean that's what presidents from both parties do they continually try to expand the power of their branch and they've been very successful at it since Roosevelt if you manage to do this it will not just be his power it will outlive him and the next president and the president after that and etc will also have this power you.
Conservatives who trust President Bush with his power feel as good about Hillary Clinton wielding it and if you don't then you see the problem that those of us who don't have a party have with all of these rules is that just because you have someone today you trust with them doesn't mean they're not going to be abused in the future part of the problem we have in this whole deal also is that the president is making claims that none of this stuff is being misused or abused in any way.
And the problem with that is that when you.
On one hand say we need to keep all the stuff secret because we're helping the enemy and on the other hand say but don't worry everything is being done on the up and up.
You take away any chance we have of having any oversight and if you're going to say that you get to do this for the entire length of the war and the war is gonna last 50 or 60 years.
You're telling me we can't have any oversight for 50 or 60 years and you're telling me to trust you but you've only got three years left in office.
Do you see the problem I have with this ladies and gentlemen it's not an anti George Bush problem.
It's a what are you talking about problem this country can operate as a Free Republic with you making the decisions if you're not allowed to know what's going on and you would think people that do so much promoting of democracy in the Middle East would understand that that would be an inherent problem a cancer on our Republic when george bush for example says trust me.
We're only using this power against al-qaeda and related terrorist groups all I'll say is how do we know how do we know you're not using it against you know domestic eco-terrorists or if you're not doing that today how do I know you won't do it tomorrow or how do I know that Hillary Clinton for years won't do it against anti-abortion activists you see where I'm going with his folks this is a structural problem in the presidency is trying to take even more power from the other branches of government which are what kind of emasculated now now there is a solution i think that would help us a lot but it totally goes against the grain of I think what the president is trying to tend to sort of lead us down.
If you recall in the middle ladies are the president this country was Ronald Reagan the President or leader of the Soviet Union at the time that's what Russia was was Mikhail Gorbachev and in the middle ladies they made a summit and ronald reagan had a great line that came out of it the reykjavík summit he was talking about treaties with the Russians and he says trust but verify.
And that's how I feel sort of about this whole of government secrecy war on terror Patriot Act thing trust but verify but if you have.
Secrecy you can't verify you just have to trust and I don't know call me crazy but you know you know the government of the United States which is something that outlives all the president's they just come and go but this thing that is the government remains has a track record that leads me to believe that 50 or 60 years of no oversight might not be a good thing.
That having been said i have an answer like I said the people around the President himself will not like it because his whole press conference this morning was about.
Well just the opposite of it but out of that reykjavik meeting with Ronald Reagan Mikhail Gorbachev went back to the Soviet Union which was starting to come apart at the seams and came up with a concept they call glass most which means openness and he had the bright idea that if the people could see what the government was doing in the government became more transparent open up its secrecy that shining the light on things would have a redemptive effect now in the Soviet Union's case the minute they shine the light on things things got so good they drop the whole communism think say so he sort of miscalculated but he was right he was right shining the light on him had a positive effect it just was so positive that he was on the power now shining the light on things i think we have a positive effect for us I want a glass ghosts here and i think what i mean by that is let's strip away all the secrecy I know we think we've got to be monitoring everybody everywhere all the time but I wonder what happened.
For the most part we stopped I mean sure you can still monitor al Qaeda and whatnot but this this fear that we have in this country.
Well most unamerican of tendencies really when you study art history is crippling our ability to think about this in any sort of common-sense way we're becoming a paranoid country and a paranoid country and sees no end to threats everything becomes a threat and let's be honest as i said this al-qaeda threat by 20th century standards is like a mosquito and sure something bad could happen maybe something bad will happen but in the long run there might be other ways to solve this problem without doing the kind of damage that this level of secrecy and this expanded powers for the presidency will do to the Republic over time and I think that's the question really that came out of this press conference with President Bush today is are we going to go down this path of saying that in order to protect us from this threat and the future threats that we may uncover with this extra surveillance and whatnot we're willing to cede the not just the powers that you're asking for.
But the ability to monitor how those powers are used I don't think the Republic can survive that I think you go back to what James Madison said when he said that long wars are the death of Republic's standing armies create debt debt creates taxes eventually becomes a way for the strong to assert their dominance over the week the founding fathers begged us not to go searching for foreign dragons to slay.
I'm pretty confident that the Republic could withstand a nuclear bomb smuggled in by some terrorists in one of our city's exploding pretty confident we could withstand it.
But I'm pretty pessimistic about our chances as a republic of surviving prolong secrecy and expanded government powers over a long period of time against a with no discernible end Thank You mr. president.
I wonder if you can tell us day sir what if any limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a president during war at war time and if the global war on terror is going to last for decades as has been forecast does that mean that we're going to see there for a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society the first of all I i disagree with your assertion of unchecked power hope this one second please.
I there is the check of people being up sworn to uphold the law for starters there's oversight we're talking to Congress all the time and on this program to suggest is unchecked power is not listen to what I'm telling you I'm telling you we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen it's a this is an awesome responsibility to make decisions on behalf of the American people and understand that beer and will continue to work with the Congress as well as people with their own administration to constantly monitor program such as the one I described to you to make sure they were protecting the Civil Liberties of the United States to say unchecked power basically is a describing some kind of dictatorial position to the present which I strongly reject.
I just described limits on this particular program Peter and that's what's important for the American people to understand i am doing what you expect me to and at the same time.
Safeguarding the Civil Liberties of the country.


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