All Episodes
Previous Next
April 17, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
33:23
Red Alert! Congress Goes 'Full Stasi' With New Spying Power!

Buried deep in the FISA Section 702 re-authorization bill is absolutely shocking language exponentially broadening the US government's ability to spy on Americans without a warrant. Turning your plumber into a federal spy agent against you? It's in there! Your gardener? Yep. Truly shocking! Also today: The US Government has submitted its "assurances" to the UK regarding the Assange extradition plan. It's not good.

|

Time Text
Government Forced Access to Communications 00:13:24
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
All right.
As long as you have good news?
I'm afraid not.
Oh, you mean you're going to tell the truth again?
It's a shame that truth is not available, and that's the good news.
But we're going to point out what the good news could be.
But the good news is that we're going to talk about something that has been revealed in the last 20, 48 hours about how bad FISA is.
And the good news should be that wake up everybody, and we all resist the encroachment of government on our personal liberties and our privacy.
Simple as that.
But we have to start somewhere.
So we're going to continue our starting on our program to try to point out some of these problems that we're facing.
And Zero Hedge helped us again to get us started.
Actually, there's a discovery, which doesn't surprise us because little things got buried in the FISA bill.
It doesn't look like a big deal.
Oh, that's just one or two words.
It doesn't matter.
Because everybody knows about it.
They tried to force an amendment to make sure they had warrants to spy on people, and they couldn't even get that passed.
And of course, the speaker sort of wandered off the reservation and helped that along.
But the headline tells us a little bit about where we're going.
And that is, this is from Zero Hedge, supercharged spying provision buried in terrifying FISA 702 reauthorization.
I guess it shouldn't shock us there's something in there.
It was already so bad.
And it was, you know, just there were more fighting against it.
I think the votes weren't quite as solid, you know, in favor of FISA.
But here, what they do is, you know, the more people wake up that you can expect the enemy, the more evil they get in trying to sneak more stuff through.
That's their point.
That it's been revealed by some astute researchers that this provision, this whole law, is much worse than it could have been and has, of course, exposed the American people.
And it has nothing to do with this discovery, it has nothing to do with providing more national defense.
Matter of fact, it has everything to do with undermining liberty and defense because it's such an atrocious attack on personal liberties.
And remember what Johnson said.
He said, well, when I was on judiciary, there were thousands and thousands of abuses by the FBI.
But now that I'm Speaker, I got a classified briefing and I'm all for it.
So it shows that he's either criminally naive about this whole thing, in which case he shouldn't be the Speaker, shouldn't even be in Congress, or he's in on it.
He's one of them.
He's against America.
And it's terrible.
Let's put that first clip up.
Because buried in the bill, HIPSI, the House, the Select Intelligence Committee, put some things in it, put an amendment to this bill that made it incredibly worse.
It said, here's the hedge opener.
On Monday, House finalized procedural business on a bill to reauthorize the nation's warrantless surveillance powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Ron Wyden called one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.
I will do everything in my power to stop it from passing the Senate, said Senator Wyden.
Now, we've worked with Wyden in the past.
He's been very good on civil liberties, and he's got a keen eye for these things.
This was an example of our approach.
It wasn't so much that you have coalitions and bring two parties together by sacrificing your liberties.
You find people like a Ron Wyden that knew and understood civil liberties, and he would speak out.
He was an activist, is an activist, so this is good.
Of course, we would like them to, and realistically, they probably have a more open mind than the hawks in the Republican Party about war to having an alternative philosophy.
So, no, this is good, it's out there, but you wonder, I always want to know the incentive.
What is the strategy?
Why do they do this?
What must happen?
Other than the fact that there are goals that are accidental, and also that this is where the real combination of authority comes in, because the Republicans seem naive, the Democrats seem not to care about it, and the thing marches on, and yet there's a big struggle, you know, between the two parties.
They live and die, you know, November's election as if this is going to take care of things.
But is it going to take care of the things that we're concerned about?
And that is, you know, the goal of the government being protecting liberty and allowing people to live their own lives.
No, that's a good point.
Both parties are so, both parties in Congress are so obsessed with scoring partisan political points that they don't even bother to read the legislation.
But I thought it would be a good idea, Dr. Paul, to listen to Senator Wyden, in his own words, explain.
Now, we'll play the first minute, one minute and 33 seconds, which is longer than we usually play.
But I think it's worthwhile to hear him explain when he looked into the bill, into these secret provisions put in, why he was so horrified.
Let's listen to a minute and 33 of Senator Wyden.
Which I just read to the Senate means that if you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy.
That means anybody with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, a phone, or a computer.
So think for a moment about the millions of Americans who work in buildings and offices in which communications are stored or passed through.
After all, every office building in America has data cables running through it.
The people are not just the engineers who install, maintain, and repair our communications infrastructure.
There are countless others who could be forced to help the government spy, including those who clean offices and guard buildings.
If this provision is enacted, the government can deputize any of these people against their will and force them, in effect, to become what amounts to an agent for Big Brother.
For example, by forcing an employee to insert a USB thumb drive into a server at an office they clean or guard at night.
This can all happen without any oversight whatsoever.
The FISA court won't know about it.
The Congress won't know about it.
Americans who are handed these directives will be forbidden from talking about it.
So that's just incredible.
person who cleans the building at night can be forced to insert a thumb drive and download all the data of an employee and that he or she cannot tell anyone about it and the government will force them to spy on Americans.
I can't believe it.
When I was listening to this and reading what's going on, I keep thinking back to our first experience with this type of issue and my comment to myself was it all started with the Patriot Act.
This had terrorized the nation and now there's even questions exactly how all the buildings fell down on 9-11.
But anyway, the motivation was there and we've talked about that so many times.
And this is a continuation of that.
And it is much more strategic and bigger than Republicans and Democrats.
And this is why it's great to see Ron Wyden do this because the deep state, the people who really control things are the ones that seem to be in these places.
They have infiltrated a lot more than anybody realizes, sometimes more than I ever thought possible.
I'm always suspicious, but this kind of stuff is how do they manage to do this?
And the sad part is there's a lot of sincere people, both probably on the progressive left and the Republican side, that really don't want to participate in that.
But are they going to wake up and say, boy, did I mess up?
You know, we had a close vote on an important part of the FISA, and it passed anyway.
Are we going to wake up and do it?
We don't have enough Walter Jones there and say, my gosh, I was completely wrong on this.
But are they going to wake up and do this?
So I guess part of our responsibility is hopefully waking people up because that's the only thing that will happen.
And I keep thinking of the example.
We saw it in a minor way, but significant way, with COVID.
People woke up.
And yet the danger there is still existing.
So this is something that I think people have to see the big picture as well.
And it's a lot more different, as important as the election is coming up and all the argument and how they have been participating.
In a way, I see Trump fits into this because there's a war against truth.
We've talked about that.
So it just happens that I think Trump is on a receiving side of the war against truth.
Yeah.
Well, you remember what they did during the Patriot Act time.
They said, we're at war, Ron.
This is no time to be whining about civil liberties.
And that's how they rammed it through.
We're at war.
They love to say that because that shows that you somehow don't care about the country.
And in fact, you may even be working for the other side.
But let's look into some of the details of this.
And I don't want to get too deep into the trees, but I think it's worth looking at.
Now, this is courtesy of the woman who, I don't have her name in front of me right now, she runs the Brennan Center, and she's absolutely terrific.
But here's some of her analysis of it.
And she said, under current law, under current law, the government can compel electronic communications service providers that have direct access to communications to assist the NSA in conducting the 702 surveillance.
That means companies like Verizon and Google must turn over communication to the targets of that surveillance.
But through a seemingly innocuous change to the definition of electronic communications surveillance provider, an amendment offered by the House Intel Committee leaders and passed by the House vastly expands the universe of entities that can be compelled to assist the NSA.
Compelled to assist.
Now this is what they did.
They expanded it.
It used to be just your Verizon, just your Google, just the guys who have that.
It expands it.
And she goes on, if the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides any service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance as long as they have access to the equipment on which communications are transmitted abroad.
So it sweeps an enormous range of U.S. businesses that will provide Wi-Fi to their customers.
So it also includes commercial landlords that rent out the office space where tens of millions of Americans go to work each day.
And I'm sorry to go further, but if we can just do one more, I think it's so important, and I've highlighted this.
The amendment even extends to service providers to come into our homes.
House cleaners, plumbers, people performing repairs, IT services, people who have access to laptops.
None of these people or businesses would be allowed to tell anyone about the assistance that they were compelled to provide.
And she says that's not even the worst part.
Unlike Google and Verizon, most of these businesses and individuals lacked the ability to isolate and turn over a target's communications.
So they would be required to give the NSA access to the equipment itself or use techniques or devices to copy and turn over entire communications streams into repositories of stored communications.
This is wholly domestic communications.
But don't worry, Dr. Paul, the NSA having access to this would be on the honor system to pull out and retain only the communications of approved foreign targets.
Oh, thank goodness for that.
Because we can trust them, too.
We can trust them, yeah, absolutely.
You know, in the 20th century, there were a lot of governments that have moved.
It was a terrible century for world wars and the concept of the police state.
Wartime Tactics and Trust 00:02:56
And it got pretty vicious.
And fortunately, we're not there yet, but unfortunately, we're moving in that direction.
I see this, if this stands, this is a tremendous victory for the police state.
And so often in past times, people would say, how did the people go along with this?
Why did they do it?
There were a lot of good people in Japan and Germany and Italy and all these places, and yet they still went along with it.
But here's an example of it.
They don't keep their guard up, and they're taught to be obedient to anything that sounds like patriotism, and they go along with it.
But I think this is a tremendous victory, if it stands, for the police state and a real defeat for the concept of the republic, the concept of liberty, and the people on the side of let the truth bear it out and let us stand by the truth because that is what is necessary.
And this is denial of it.
And so it is a challenge.
Most people that we bump into say that they can even be more pessimistic.
Don't even pretend there's a Constitution.
And later on, we'll be talking about the First Amendment again.
And this is a First Amendment issue, too.
They tell you you do this and you can't even talk about it.
So it's pretty bad.
But we have to know who the enemy is and what we have to do.
And if it is a police state on our doorsteps, we're already stepping in.
I'll tell you what, we better wake up and respond to it.
And of course, the HIPSI members who slip this in are responsible.
But ultimately, who's responsible is Speaker Johnson, because he had to have known.
If he didn't know, then he needs to find out why he wasn't told.
But remember what I said a minute ago when they said, Ron, this is a wartime.
Don't be whining about civil liberties.
We'll put on this next clip because Thomas Massey points it out.
So David Sachs initially tweeted, and this is, we're not going to play the tape, but Mike Johnson proclaims that he is a wartime speaker, David Sachs writes.
But what war is America in?
America doesn't need to be any war unless fools in Washington make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, to which Representative Thomas Massey quotes Speaker Johnson saying, I regard myself as a wartime speaker.
Massey says, get a grip.
We're not at war.
You can't use that excuse to justify passage of warrantless spying, a bloated omnibus, or $100 billion in foreign aid.
And I think Massey says it all right there.
Get over it.
Get over yourself.
You know, a lot of people sympathize with what I was trying to say a couple minutes ago about the onset of the police state, and we're here and we need to do something about it.
But how does this encroachment occur right in front of our eyes?
And, you know, this is an example which is a little bit different than we've talked about.
Getting Around Rules Committee 00:03:25
We talked just recently about how they sneak things in in the conference.
They'll sneak a word or two in the conference.
That's why this is not done yet, because they might say, oh, okay, we'll remove that.
But then the conference will come out and they'll go back to doing it or change one word.
And also, you can't be, you know, think a whole lot about the committee working up a bill because it could sound good and it's all a political stunt.
It's working the bill up.
Then they send it to the Rules Committee.
And that, of course, is why we think it's important to have a friend on the Rules Committee.
But this is what they're doing here is in spite of the tools that they have with the conference and the Rules Committee, political pressure, and lobbyists also, this is pure sneaking.
Sneak it in, get by.
The people aren't alert to what's going on.
And that's about the main thing is getting the members of Congress to read the bill.
But then again, our speaker, the speaker right now, has already rejected that notion about having the bill up there so they could read it.
And he's rusted to the floor.
I think he said this week, oh, next week when we're going to do something, we're going to give the members full time to read it.
When they rename a post office, you'll get 72 hours to rename it to read that one.
But that's so important distinction to make.
And we lived it for so long, you a lot longer than me, which is you can't just read it once and say, oh, okay, this looks okay.
Because they've sneak something in over and over again.
You have to be so on top of it, you know.
You know, they talk about staffers in Washington, and they talk about term limits, and they say, well, limit the members of Congress, which at one time I was a little more interested than I am now because it's what they believe in that really counts.
So if they want to do it, they have a way to getting around it.
And that's why staff, I think, is so important.
You know, early, you know, near the time of 9-11, I found somebody to help me out on all foreign policies.
Believe me, it was helpful because, yes, I can read.
I read a lot and study.
But that person I hired, what was his name?
Oh, Daniel, you're the guy.
And even you have testified that, you know, I wasn't always there.
You came around, and especially you hadn't sat for hours reading legislation.
So to do that, it's so important.
So the members of Congress are good.
But the other thing that was ironic, but you found it fascinating, sometimes when our office got respect from people who were sympathetic, but they would, they didn't go, the members, I think I'm going to call Daniel.
They would call our staff, which we were sort of, you know, honored to help them out.
But it's hard sometimes.
But That is what, if a member of Congress really wants to be good, I imagine Ron Wyd is very good because he's been around.
He probably reads them and knows a lot about them, but I'll bet he has good staff.
Good staff.
And it was definitely not just me.
It was Norman, Adam, and Jeff and the rest.
And it almost became, I would say, game because it wasn't fun.
But we would look at something.
We knew there was something that smelled like day-old fish in there.
Assange's Tragic Story 00:13:23
And so we would dig through it.
And someone would call out, I found it.
I found it.
I found it.
It was like that.
You have to be that way.
You have to be diligent about these things.
But I would just also say we don't do this very often for a number of reasons because we're very limited in how much we can endorse it or oppose legislation.
But as Senator Wyden himself said, people should get in touch with their senators and tell them, we do not want this passed.
And that's the only way it'll stop.
If enough people here, if enough senators' office saying, you're my senator, you know, if you're in Texas, call Ted Cruz, call John Cornyn.
You may think it's not going to make any difference.
You never know.
It's better than just sitting there and complaining and groaning about it, I think.
Very good.
We're going to go on to another subject.
In some ways, it's related.
We're going to talk a little bit about the First Amendment and personal liberties and telling the truth.
This has to do with a tragic story on Assange.
And it's just a shame that somebody like Trump, I don't know if any members, I don't even know what RFK's position is on Assange.
He said he would pardon him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So he's probably the only one that's saying out loud.
But if Donald Trump called me, and that's not likely, and I'm sure if Rand had the time to talk to him again, that he'd say, why don't you just take that position?
I mean, if we don't have enough support out there, besides saying it, a lot of people say, well, I didn't know much about him.
But if Trump is, you know, he has some influence.
He's going to come out and say, I'm on the side of Assange, and we're not going to pursue this and trying to put him in prison for life or set up a state where now they have to reassure us.
Oh, yeah, we're going to do it and we're going to take him back.
But we won't give him the death penalty.
Oh, big deal.
He's already been suffering years of death in those prisons that he's been for.
Now, you make a great point.
What's Trump afraid of?
Is he afraid of the Pompeo's going to get mad at him?
Or John Bolton?
He says he hates these guys.
But yeah, I mean, that would be a great position to stake out.
Hey, when I'm elected, the first thing I'm going to do is pardon Assange, pardon all the J6 people, and let's move ahead.
Now, Daniel, if you were on my staff and I was your boss, I'd say, Daniel, call Trump.
I want to get him on our plane.
Bring him on Ron Ball Liberty here, Bob.
Okay, but we won't hold your feet to the fire on that one.
We'll see.
You never know.
We'll put up this clip because, so we reported this a while ago in February, I think it was when they had the hearing.
And the result of the hearing was that the UK High Court said, okay, well, we're not going to extradite Assange until we get some specific assurances from the U.S. government about how the case will be handled in the United States.
So this is an article from the dissenter written by Kevin Gonzalga, and it says, U.S. government rejects Australia's call to end Assange case, submits assurances for extradition.
And this, I would say, on the surface is bad news because Australia had stood up and said, why don't you do a plea deal?
Why don't you let him plea out and come home to Australia?
And the U.S. said, no, we're going to submit those assurances to the U.K. because we want him.
We want to put him in prison forever.
And the thing is, the assurances that they provided are very troubling.
put on this next clip because this is from Freedom of the Press.
It's an NGO monitoring press freedom.
An assurance that Assange can raise the First Amendment is completely meaningless.
Anyone can raise anything in court.
And I underline this.
The U.S., this is from the assurance, the U.S. reserves the right to argue that the First Amendment doesn't protect Assange and admits a U.S. judge could read that conclusion.
So essentially, to put it in a nutshell, these assurances are A, he's not going to receive the death penalty for what he's been charged with.
Now, that doesn't prevent him, once they get him, to put on additional charges.
So that's bogus.
And the second one is, well, if he wants, he can raise the issue of the First Amendment, and our judges have the right to decide whether it applies to an American.
And you know very well what, or to a non-American.
And so you know about that.
You know, I keep wondering about motivation.
Why do they do these kind of things?
This still bewilders me, even though I think I understand a little bit.
Why are they doing this to him?
Why are they terrified of Assange?
What if, again, that, you know, back when this whole thing broke, they couldn't have fined them or excommunicated them, go back home to Australia, anything less than this.
But all these years of torture, what really motivies them?
Why are they terrified?
I think they're terrified of the truth.
Look at what they do to people.
You know, even our government, you know, why do we at times feel compelled to assassinate people?
Yeah, they're probably bad people, but there are a couple bad people in the United States.
What would we say if they decided to assassinate a few Americans, which they probably do, but assassination is the work of the elite.
That's how they do that.
But I think it's still the battle between power and the effort to promote the truth.
Nothing else explains all this.
But they have a dedication belief, I think, in a system of government.
They don't want to alter their understanding of how the world works.
But I've come to the conclusion, which I've said before, is they come to the conclusion, it's not that they just want an opportunity to define truth.
They've talked themselves into saying, it's impossible.
Truth doesn't exist.
Truth is what the party says.
Or whoever has the money and the power.
And that's why that goes on.
So if somebody like an Assange comes up, they saw him an enemy of the truth, and they were willing to do this insane attack.
But many just, oh, we talk about Assange, and he's symbolic of what we're talking about.
Just think of how many other people, you know, who are less noted people get the same type of a punishment.
And I think that's what gets worse.
I think the police state, you know, accelerates.
I was mentioning, in fact, that I think this is a step toward the police state, even though people know they're losing their liberties.
The police state is a step where they're, you know, thugs, and you end up with what we saw in the 20th century.
And that was a lot of killing.
But I'll tell you what, since the World War II, we say, well, we've stayed out.
We never declared a war.
But if you looked at the people who have died at our hands and motivated others to do harm to us, I would say that our policy doesn't have a very good record.
Yeah, and I should clarify, I met Kevin Gostola.
My eyes unfortunately are bad and I mispronounced his name.
I checked it in the meantime.
I hate mispronouncing people's names, but Kevin Gostola from the dissenter.
I wanted to just read a short paragraph from what he wrote because I think this is an operative thing and I think in the short amount of time we have left it's worth considering.
So he says, a hearing on these assurances will be held on May 20th.
If the High Court in the UK is satisfied by the assurances, including the reasoning for why the First Amendment does not extend to Assange, then Assange will be denied an appeal against extradition.
All options for fighting extradition in the UK will be exhausted, meaning he'll be sent to the U.S.
So think about this.
What is the argument that the First Amendment doesn't apply to non-citizens?
That's crazy, isn't it?
You know, the founders specifically didn't say U.S. citizens.
The Constitution protects people who are here.
They thought of it as a freer society where people could come and go and be visitors, that they didn't have a demand and a right about, say, develop a welfare state, let anybody come and let them vote without being a citizen.
So they specifically, they were very specific about that.
But for civil liberties, they had a right to be tried a way an American citizen would.
But now it doesn't matter.
You know, the American citizens are being denied their day in court, too.
And I think this is a mix, you know, this is a mix with the thing, how they attack Trump, too.
Because if they can do that to everybody else, and it's a, you know, there is an outrage about some of the things going on with and against Trump.
But I tell you that, there's a lot of people who understand that because they have been at the local level.
You know, if all these local small courts and judges and all, you know, participate in this, they can do that at a local level, too.
So it's a big step in the wrong directions, which we wouldn't step in that way.
Of course, my concern has been going on probably for over 100 years, moving away from the Republic toward a police state.
And the police state now is getting pretty nasty.
And that is why we beg and plead that people become more observant.
And as we go along, maybe we'll see some more people coming our way because I happen to believe there are more people already.
I mean, the problem to me is this philosophical misinterpretation of the Bill of Rights.
It doesn't grant privileges to people.
It forbids government from doing things.
It's a prohibition on government, not a granting of freedoms, a granting of temporary freedoms to Americans.
Thou shalt not.
Yeah, exactly.
You can't pass a bill.
You can't do this.
But excuse me, but that's what introduces the notion of responsibility for oneself.
Who's going to take care of that?
Why don't you do it yourself?
Yeah, yes.
Go ahead.
Exactly.
Well, we've exhausted ourselves today on this.
There are two very important topics.
Again, I would just close by reminding you, if you care about the future of this republic, contact your senator.
We need to kill this bill, whatever we can.
I know we've got Senator Wyden on our side.
I know we've got Senator Paul on our side.
I'm sure there are plenty of other good senators.
The Senate is unique.
It doesn't take a ton of people to get something to stop.
And so this is something we can do something about.
When I finish putting the show up, I'm going to contact my two senators for what it's worth and let them know.
And it's up to you guys to do the rest.
Thanks for tuning in.
Very good.
And you make a good point.
It's in the Senate court right now.
And they can do some good by resisting this.
And like you say, there are tools the Senate has where you can delay things.
And they say, oh, you're obstructing.
Yeah, you're obstructing the people who want a police state.
So they should be complimented for that.
And that's just not an accident of the people who finally read the fine print of the Constitution.
That was the purpose of the Constitution, to put roadblocks against those people who want to take over and control.
Because believe me, even back when our country was starting, the history had already shown how abusive governments could be.
And it's probably, in a way, even though the Constitution has been undermined, how well the founders did in their attempt was made, but they also recognized all the danger.
I always marvel at that.
They say, but you know what?
If the people come to the point where they don't care or don't react, and they are not a moral people, you know, the Constitution doesn't save you.
But it's good to have a guideline, and that's what we hope we can promote.
And we still are encouraged by the number of people.
We've just had our recent conference here in Lake Jackson.
A large crowd came, enthusiastic.
The goal was to promote the cause of liberty and peace, and also to have a little bit of fun and enjoyment.
And we're going to continue to do that.
But we are also encouraging all our viewers and all our supporters to have a responsibility.
I've always argued the case that if you come on, and I think I heard one or two people at the conference as we say, you know, it's like a light bulb going on when all of a sudden it comes together and makes sense.
Well, when the light bulb comes on and the issue and the principles of liberty come on, I think the individual, this is my personal opinion, you have more obligation to spread the message.
That's how important it is.
And I think that is happening.
But when the numbers are skewed generally against the people who are expressing these views, nobody thinks there's many people out there.
But believe me, the numbers are important, but the numbers aren't the key to it.
But I'll tell you what, and I love the idea that when an idea whose time has come, it cannot be stopped by stupidity or the armies.
And that is what we work on.
We want to spread the message of liberty and everybody to join in and helping us.
Export Selection