June 4, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:56
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Yea, verily, on June 2nd, 2015, Obama signed into law the USA Freedom Act, which is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping. | |
| Dragnet Collection and Online Monitoring Act. | |
| What a delightful name. | |
| The USA Freedom Act. | |
| So, what is this new law all about? | |
| Well, In an attempt to curb the NSA's rampant spying activities, particularly when it comes to bulk collection of phone call metadata such as date, time, call number, device, etc., legislators introduced several reforms, for want of a better word. | |
| Instead of allowing the NSA to collect and store metadata on its own servers, telephone companies will now be required or forced to do so instead. | |
| You see, it's called a freedom migration. | |
| Instead of your data being gathered on government servers, it's gathered on phone company servers. | |
| One server, tyranny. | |
| Another server, liberty. | |
| I think you're following me here, right? | |
| Now, the NSA can still access the data that's on the phone company servers with the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, the FISA or FISA court. | |
| Now, this Is the same court that over a period of 33 years and 33,900 surveillance requests made by the agency denied or declined 11 out of 33,900. | |
| So there is a massive freedom dike between you and the prying fingers of the state. | |
| Can you smell the freedom? | |
| Ah, well. | |
| So don't worry, because to promote transparency in the decisions of the FISA court, the US government will appoint special overseers that will make sure civil liberties aren't violated in the secret dealings of the court. | |
| You see, government appointed overseers to a secret court that approves virtually everything the government asks for. | |
| I don't think that's what the founding fathers meant when they were talking about checks and balances, but that might just be me. | |
| These overseers can technically be blocked, you see, from accessing certain documents on the grounds that they lack security clearance. | |
| And the decision to disclose information to the public is still in the hands of the intelligence community. | |
| We'd like you to approve this request for data, but we're not going to give you any supporting documents, you see, because you're not cleared from a security standpoint. | |
| And I believe one more rubber stamp in a row of corrupt bureaucrats is not quite the same of drinking deep from the glorious deep well of human liberty. | |
| Now, to further limit the NSA's reach, the bill requires the agency to submit specific selection terms to its surveillance requests, which exclude broad categories like entire geographical regions or networks. | |
| So this may technically prevent the NSA from conducting mass surveillance. | |
| The final decision about what constitutes a valid selection term is up to the court because nothing spells freedom like subjective court-interpreted pseudo-limitations on the infinite tentacle reach of the digital data-hungry government. | |
| Now, The USA Freedom Act does pretend to curb the NSA's phone spying activities. | |
| However, it does nothing to address the agency's surveillance of the entire internet under programs like PRISM, the existence of which, of course, was made public by Edward Snowden several years ago, who must be sitting in Russia wondering exactly why he's freezing his testicles off for this kind of pseudo-constraint of the government. | |
| So, my American friends, my American audience, you can now rejoice! | |
| Let the fireworks commence because this bill has been signed into law. | |
| Your freedoms have been restored and future abuses have been made impossible. | |
| If you doubt this, for heaven's sakes... | |
| I mean, just look at the name of the bill. | |
| The USA Freedom Act. | |
| See, right there in the middle. | |
| It's like a sandwich of acronyms. | |
| It's got the word freedom right there in the middle. | |
| And, uh... | |
| If you feel if some... | |
| Remnant of a free citizenry, if some part of you is sending up electrical shocks to your brain of cognitive dissonance, like the fireworks that we uselessly use to celebrate the 4th of July every year, if you feel like voicing a few complaints about the bill... | |
| Don't you remember the Patriot Act and how those who opposed the Patriot Act must have been unpatriotic? | |
| It's wonderful. | |
| Like I can just open a restaurant with a menu called Tasty Meal 1, Wonderful Meal 2, and I can serve you any kind of crap and say, no, no, no, it says right there on the menu that it's tasty. | |
| I mean, it's got the word freedom in it. | |
| You don't want to be anti-freedom, do you? | |
| Now, on a side note, President Obama will sign the USA Prosperity Act. | |
| In the near future, which will give a job to every unemployed American, wipe out the national debt and restore US economic prosperity after a distinct cratering sound that came out of 2015's Q1 economic collapse. | |
| Well, of course, the Prosperity Act doesn't actually have to do any of that, because in the 21st century of Orwellian nightmare, words have infinitely more weight than actions. | |
| What is said matters only compared to what is done, which matters not at all. | |
| Now, if you think, my friends, that freedom can come in the form of a government law, a hidden court law, Loosely defined, open to interpretation, quote, laws. | |
| Well, you're sadly mistaken about the nature of politics. | |
| Each and every single law the state puts forward is an opinion with a gun. | |
| You comply or else. |
Export Selection