Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #50: WaPo Fact Checker, GOP Candidates, Biden Polling, Big Tech, & More!

Episode Date: August 13, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & Friends dive into the WaPo's fact checking, GOP senate candidates, Green party, Biden polling, Starbucks workers, CNN raid analysis, & Big Tech's war on privacy!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLiThe Lever: https://www.levernews.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It is time now for our weekly partnership segment with The Lever. And we have some great reporting to bring you this week from Andrew Perez. Great to see you, Andrew. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course. So I'll set up a little bit of the backstory here, and then I want you to dig into what you found. big story that broke about shortly after the Dobbs decision, a 10-year-old child who had been raped in Ohio who had to travel across state lines into Indiana in order to receive the care that she

needed and abortion in that state, which I think at this point, Indiana has now passed laws that probably make that not possible, but we'll put that aside. There was immediately some questioning of this claim, especially in right-wing circles. But this became sort of a mainstream questioning when Glenn Kessler, who is the fact checker at The Washington Post, wrote a whole column calling into doubt whether this account was actually correct. You have found some details. Now, the account did ultimately turn out to be correct. The man who raped her, or at least allegedly raped her, has been arrested. And it has been confirmed at this point. So they had to backtrack and essentially retract his column, add corrections to it.

But you actually found that from the beginning, he was not being straightforward about the information that he had. Can you lay that out for us, Andrew? And we have your tear sheet. Let's go ahead and put that up on the screen, too. The headline here is, Emails Raise Questions About Washington Post Fact Checker. The Post Corrected Glenn Kessler's Column Questioning Reporting About a Child Rape Victim Shortly After the Lever Obtained Emails Showing Inaccuracies. Dig into what you found here, Andrew. Sure. So, you know, this week we fact-checked the fact-checker. And so Glenn Kessler's original

or column originally claimed that none of the county officials he had contacted had ever heard of this child's case in their area. When, you know, when the news broke that it may have been arrested for committing the crime, Glenn updated his column to say that unlike similar Ohio County agencies they had contacted, Franklin County officials did not offer a response. So we actually went to Franklin County officials and asked for their correspondence with Kessler. And, you know, what we found was that his statements about this just weren't, were not accurate. They actually had responded to him pretty quickly before his column was published. And they told him they wouldn't be able to contact on, sorry, they wouldn't be able to discuss specific cases because of confidentiality restrictions under Ohio law. And so, you know, the impression

that he gave in the piece was wrong. We reached out to the Post, both to him and a spokesperson. They corrected the piece. But, you know, I do think there is an open question of, you know, why this column was ever published, you know, when it fed into this conservative media firestorm, you know, about a case that, you know, it turns out was fully accurate. But, you know, when it fed into this conservative media firestorm, you know, about a case that, you know, it turns out was fully accurate, but, you know, he was never going to be able to raise any significant questions through this reporting process. It seemed like all he did was contact a few child services agencies and the governor's spokesperson and ask like, hey, have you heard of this? That's not, you know, that doesn't really pass any kind of muster compared to like the actual reporting that went into the Indianapolis Star story. Yeah, well, and it's two very different things saying we can't comment on any cases we have versus, no, we've never heard of this.

I mean, that's just a totally different representation of the facts ultimately. Yeah, 100 percent. And in fact, we reached out to another county and they told them they had not heard of this case, but they also said they wouldn't be able to discuss it anyway. So there is like a distinction between how the agencies responded, but we know the Franklin agency actually had told him they wouldn't be able to discuss specific cases. That's the agency that actually made the criminal referral to the police that led to the specific cases. That's the agency that actually made the criminal referral to, um, to, to the police, uh, that led to the arrest here. Um, has there been any sort of

additional accountability or disciplining of Kessler from the post since he got this story wrong in a really significant way? Yeah, not that we can tell, you know, they updated the post. Um, they. They issued a correction on it. But, you know, he's still fact-checking. He's, you know, fact-checking the news still today. And, you know, there's been no kind of, like, apology here at all. You know, there were other kind of significant issues in his piece, too. Like, he had originally written that it's really rare for, you know, people under

the age of 15 to get abortions in Ohio, you know, and he said it happens like 50 times a year, which, you know, literally means like once a week. It's not rare. It's not rare at all. And, you know, if you were to broaden that out, like over the, you know, throughout the nation, you have to imagine that the numbers are substantially higher. So, you know, throughout the nation, you have to imagine that the numbers are substantially higher. So, you know, I think there's an open question as to how this piece was conceived, why it happened, why it was written the way they did. And, you know, what they thought they were going to be able to prove through, you know, through the process that he undertook. Yeah, I guess that's the other question is, it's not like he really got any sort of reporting that actually undercut the story. So, you know, there's a question of sort of the editing process, too, of who allowed this to go forward when there really was nothing here substantial that you could hang your hat on to undercut the initial reporting. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like his central complaint was that the story was based on the word of one doctor, the doctor who had performed the abortion.

And he was sort of saying it like that she claims to have done this. And then, you know, we saw that in emails that she claims to have performed the procedure. And then, you know, he mentioned in an exchange with Neiman Lab that the only source here was an activist in one side of the debate. So it clearly betrays some type of bias towards, I guess, abortion providers. And I do think that the standards,

the editorial standards here would have probably flown at any paper. Right. You're talking about a story that was based on a doctor's word, like who was on the record by name, who really subjected themselves to a, you know, a pretty giant, you know, media controversy just by by doing that, by going on the record, sharing this story. Yeah, that is really true. I mean, it would be quite something for them under their own name to have just invented this out of whole cloth, which is what Kessler was effectively suggesting here. The last part of this that I think is interesting, Andrew, is were there any other outlets that after Kessler's piece was basically, you know, kind of fell apart and wasn't correct, that dug into the details to see whether he was representing correctly the information that he was received since it ended up being directly rebutted by, you know, the fact that this rapist was arrested? Yeah, not as far as I know.

I'm not sure that anyone went through the steps of filing public records requests to these agencies. But you know what? It took me like five minutes and it came back really quickly, honestly. It came back in a matter of a week. So, you know, and we've gone to some of the other county agencies now. We haven't seen any record of any other correspondence with those agencies. You know, we broadened our request to go from, you know, from the beginning of July to August 9th. And so, you know, as far as I know, we're the only people that have been digging into this at all. Well, I think that says a lot as well, and it's why we're so proud to partner with

you guys and why, for those of you who are able to support the lever, you absolutely should do so because you are focusing on stories that the corporate media is not paying attention to. Andrew, it's always great to see you. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. Very interesting moment when Senator Rick Scott was pressed on the quality of Republicans' Senate candidates. Now, keep in mind, this is the guy who is actually

the chair of the NRSC. That is the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They are the ones charged with trying to get Republicans into the Senate and win back their majority. Let's listen to what he had to say about those candidates. In a local radio interview in July, you talked a lot about your business as an executive and you said we should start electing people that we would hire. In Georgia, Herschel Walker, Republican Senate candidate, has lied about the number of children he has, about his business dealings. His ex-wife said he held a gun to her head and said, I'm going to blow your effing brains out. In Arizona, the candidate Blake Masters called the Unabomber an underrated thinker.

He said that Al Qaeda doesn't actually pose substantial threat to Americans. I mean, I've got a list of candidates here who've had some and said some pretty troubling things. Would you hire these people to work for you? Well, you'd go through each person, but I'm not the one doing it. It's the voters of those states are doing it. The voters of those states are going to make a choice.

You're trying to help Senate Republicans and lead them to victory. These are your candidates. So, you know, Margaret, as you remember, the voters in Arizona choose who they're going to vote. And what they're going to choose is they're going to choose between Blake Master and Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly has voted to keep the border open. He's never voted for border security. He's voted for the tax increases. He's voted for cutting Medicare. You know, he's voted with Chuck Schumer and with Joe Biden basically 100% of the time. Warren has got the same problem. This election is going to be about Joe Biden. And so this election is going to be about all the bad things that have happened.

The fact that we're going into recession, the fact that, you know, inflation is at 9 percent, the fact that gas prices are up $2, all these things. That's what people are looking at. These are your Senate Republican candidates. These are your candidates. And the voters of each of these states, the voters of these states are going to decide if they're going to hire. Now, I get to vote. I get to vote in Florida. And that's how I think about it. But the voters in those states will choose in those states who they want. And it's a choice between two people. But look, all the Democrat nominees are basically Biden clones.

Yeah. I mean, by the way, they won't campaign with Biden. But if you are, I mean, you would acknowledge that if somebody went in for an interview for a private corporation, these things would come up as red flags to HR. So when asked repeatedly, he will not defend his own candidates. And again, this is the guy who's the chair of the NRSC. That's pretty extraordinary. That was weird. I'm just going to say I think Blake Masters is a far better candidate. I don't agree with everything Blake, but I don't think he's comparable in any way to Herschel Walker, who is a genuine moron.

And beyond that, personal life, candidate quality, doesn't actually appear to be able to speak a coherent sentence at the national level. Also, basically just nominated because Trump was like, I love this guy and he's famous and thinks that it validates that theory even though he has no apparent political ideology whatsoever. Yeah. And he's so all over the place. It's also terrible interviews. That's actually an interesting question of which one. Because Masters has an ideology and it's terrible

so like which one is actually which one is actually worse he's a hell of a lot smarter than hersel walker oh he's definitely smarter i'm just saying like better candidate in terms of what who would be more damaging who would be who would you rather have in the senate it's not totally clear to me because masters actually has an ideology that i think is real i mean he has a very sort of radical libertarian peter teal ideology when it's privatized there's security it's all over the access to contraception thing all of that being said it is amazing to watch rick scott refusing to um outward like actively defend any of them and actively promote any of them or say that he would hire any of them. Instead, he immediately pivots to like, well, this is going to be about Biden.

And these Democratic candidates are all Biden close. That wasn't that wasn't the question. And he very much they are very much hoping that the election is about Biden, is about inflation and are, you know, likely to be correct about that. But as I've been saying, the more that you zoom into these individual races and individual candidates, the more you're like, you'll have some real problems on your hands here because it just came out this week. The Trump-backed Michigan attorney general candidate was allegedly involved in a voting system breach in Michigan.

So these are the types of people. And you've had situations plenty of times in the past. We always talk about Todd Egan, Richard Murdoch, Sharon Engel, Christine O'Donnell, of these candidates that are fringe and outside the mainstream. It's very unusual to have, I mean, race after race after race, you really have a national movement of these candidates who are outside of the mainstream, both on sort of like stop this deal January 6th stuff, but also on abortion, also on gay marriage, and a range of other issues, access to contraception, a range of other issues. So it's a very unusual situation, one that I can't quite say that we've really seen before. I've never understood how Rick Scott got elected to anything.

I'm going to be honest with you. He's always just been one of the most, first of all, his ideology is as close to like a true con as possible. Also, even in terms of his business career, there's a lot of questions how exactly he made that $90 million, which is his net worth. I don't get how he was elected governor or senator. I've never truly understood it. And then I don't know why he was put in place of the national effort to elect Republicans whenever his plan to like cut social security and to privatize

Medicare or whatever, then became the central talking point of the Biden administration, which was then repudiated by Mitch McConnell because of how stupid the entire thing was. I mean, in effect, what he just said is he said the quiet part out loud, but I mean, who's dumb enough to actually say that you You're not even supposed to do that. So, anyway, I've never understood that. It's not a surprise that he's flailing. And it also does show you these people have no power. You know, the idea that national Republicans have any power, it's all Trump.

Trump gets to select these people. You have nothing to do with it. You're just basically a money-doling, a cash machine to whoever Trump picks. So anyway, it's interesting from that point of view too. Yep, and he has definitely single-handedly, Trump handicapped their chances by propping up Oz, Herschel Walker. You know, I don't know that Masters is any better or worse

than the other people he was against, but he really separated from the pack after the Trump endorsement. J.D. Vance is not doing well in Ohio. Now I think he'll ultimately win in that state, but he hasn't been fundraising. He hasn't been apparently on the ground doing the work. And some of the polls have Ryan up by a couple percentage points.

Again, I think Vance will ultimately win, but it is, at least he had the good sense, Trump ultimately not to wait in directly for Eric Greitens because that would have really... Well, he waited in for Eric, so he was okay with it. Yes, indeed. Wanted to update you guys on a story that we covered here previously, which was the Democratic Party conspiring and using some dirty and also potentially illegal tricks to get a Green Party

candidate kicked off the ballot in the Senate race in North Carolina. So that Green Party candidate is Matthew Ho. He is a veteran. He had collected all the signatures and done everything he needed to do to get on the ballot there. And then the Democratic Party came in and they did a couple of things. So the first thing they did is they took all the signatures on his petitions and they called through because they have the voter files, so they have a lot of this data and contact information in their records, called through to try to persuade all of these signatories to take their name off the ballot. Now, that's sort of gross and anti-democratic, but it's not illegal.

But they were also caught pretending to be with the Green Party to put added pressure on those people to pull their names off of the petitions. That didn't work out. They didn't get that many people to agree with them. So it looked like Matthew Ho was going to be on the ballot as a Green Party candidate. He had way more than enough signatures on the petitions. Then the State Board of Elections, which is a split between Republicans and Democrats, and Democrats have the state board of elections, which is a split between Republicans and Democrats, and Democrats have the majority in North Carolina, meets, and the Democrats vote in a partisan block to still block him from the ballot because they say there might be fraud. They didn't prove that there was fraud in the signature gathering, which is incumbent upon

them to do. You have to show this one is not legitimate, that one is not legitimate. Specifically, they said, we think generally there are enough questions here that we're just going to kick you off the ballot. Okay, so that's where things stood previously. Matthew Ho and the Green Party went to court to try to regain ballot access, and lo and behold, a federal judge agreed with the Green Party, says breaking this is from Matthew Hofer, Senate. A federal judge just ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections to place the Green Party and our campaign on the ballot. We won against the Democratic Party establishment scheme to sabotage our campaign for working people. Now let's win this race and make history. Apparently, the Dems are still filing another lawsuit to try to block the Green Party from the ballot in one particular, in Wake County, which I think is a sizable county, if I'm correct. Yes.

In the state. So the legal battles are not over. But the fact that a federal judge agreed with the Green Party here and reinstated them on the ballot just shows you how outrageous and how ultimately illegal the techniques were that were being used here to try to block people from having another choice on the ballot. Just beat him on the ballot. Go ahead. I just don't get it. Like, all of this. Do democracy. Do that. Just beat him. I mean, Green Party people are on the ballots all the time, but they rarely win, okay? There's zero evidence actually to show even that the Green Party had any real effect in 2016. You know, a lot of the cope, you know, if you remember, everybody blamed like Ralph Nader for swinging the election for, it's like, no, people didn't like Al Gore,

so they voted for Ralph Nader. And then, you know, whatever the vote total was in Florida, I'm just saying, like, to the extent that you blame people for voting for them, I mean, actually, George H.W. Bush was once asked about Ross Perot, I want to say in the 2000s, and he just said, I don't like him and I think he cost me the election. Because ultimately, Clinton only won the election with like 42% or whatever of the popular vote, because I think Perot got like 15 to 20. No, George H.W. Bush, people just didn't like you, so they didn't vote for you. You can't blame Ross Perot for that. Maybe you shouldn't have, you know, drafted NAFTA. That might have had something to do with it.

So, anyway, these things drive me crazy. And any attempt by any major party to try and snuff people out at the ballot level and more is almost always, you know, trying to rig the election in their favor. I think that's what they're doing here. Yeah, I mean, it's gross. They clearly are afraid that the race is already, I think it's lean Republican, but they've got somewhat of a shot in North Carolina to pick up that Senate seat. And they feel like, oh, well, if this Green Party candidate is on the ballot, they're going to take voters from us disproportionately.

And so that's going to be a hindrance to us. First of all, there isn't actually, I mean, it's never, it's not clear that these are people who would have voted Democrat. Otherwise they may not have voted. They may have voted for the Republican. Like that's one thing. But the other thing is more to the point, people should be able to have choices. You have to go out and you have to make the case. You have to prove to them why they should vote Democrat instead of voting for the Green Party candidate, rather than using sabotage and illegal tricks to try to kick people off the ballot. So a small victory for small-t democracy here. So we had a slew of interesting poll numbers come down this week.

And to be honest with you, we had them all in the show ready to go. And then there was a little FBI raid situation that we felt we needed to cover. So this got pushed out, but it still was important. So a couple of pieces here. First of all, Nate Silver's 538 model, for the first time, has Dems significantly favored to keep control of the Senate, 60-40 shot. And, you know, he has different models. So in his most elaborate model, it's 60-40. In the quote-unquote classic model, which doesn't take into effect the, I think, like analyst views. It's even more at 71.29. In the light model, which just looks at polls, it's 77.23. But, you know, this is a significant

shift over the course of the summer post-DOMS. However, there are so many other numbers and indicators that go in the other direction that it really is a very difficult landscape to parse. So let's put this up on the screen. You have 60 plus percent of Americans disapproving of Biden's handling of inflation, which is he's underwater 29 to 69. Immigration, 34 to 64. Economic recovery, 37 to 62. Crime, 38 to 61.

Gas prices, 34 to 65. Taxes, 37 to 61. And gun violence, 35 to 64. But let's just focus in, I mean, inflation is obviously the most important one there. And for him to be underwater by such a significant margin, and we know how poor his approval ratings have been, normally you would look at those numbers and you'd say, it's a lock. Republicans are going to have a historic, massive wave. And yet, because you have these complicating factors of, number one, the Dobbs decision, Roe versus Wade being overturned, and number two, the fact that Republicans have gone out of their way to nominate not the greatest

in the world candidates, you have a much more, Democrats have a much better shot than they would otherwise. The last thing I'll say is that, you know, some of these people who just express displeasure, that's the word, with Biden are critiquing from the left. So they're not like considering voting for Republicans. They're unhappy with Biden, but that's part of why so many of the Democratic candidates are able to outperform where the president is. Yeah, no, this is the thing. There's a lot of confounding variables. So on the one hand, Biden is tremendously unpopular. On the other hand, Biden is no longer becoming the defining issue of American politics,

which he previously was before abortion and especially before the Trump FBI raid. So even though he's trailing massively on inflation, immigration, economic recovery, crime, gas, taxes, and guns, none of those currently, or at least inflation might be still number one, but if abortion has energized enough Democrats to come out and vote, it at the very least throws something in there. And then if you take Trump and you superimpose him on all of that, it just scrambles everything. So the special election results tell us more than anything, same with Kansas. It's how actual people are voting. And all of that does indicate that we're just living in a different world.

So it's a weird time, honestly, because usually this is the one-to-one relationship. But, you know, whenever you have such hot-button issues that kind of go above even the most kitchen table ones, it can change a lot in the down-ballot race. Well, because there's a difference between what people say is the most important to them and what really motivates them. Yeah, to go out to vote. It's hard to get at that in a poll. But what you see in the actual election results is that abortion has been highly motivating for the Democratic base, which frankly was very apathetic before. The Republican energy level has always been there. And that makes sense. They are upset that Biden's president. They're upset Democrats have control of the House and the Senate. They're motivated to come out and change that reality. Democratic base was kind of like,

this Biden thing isn't all that I thought it was going to be. I'm not that happy. I feel that stress in terms of my household budget and prices going up, I'm worried about the economy. Abortion really gave them a galvanizing issue to get their voters to see that there is something very clear and tangible at stake in these elections. And then I agree with you if Trump, especially if he goes ahead and announces for his re-election campaign, that is another issue that Republicans really don't want on there. They don't want Trump on the ballot in the midterms. They just wanted this to be focused on Biden. That strategy has already been somewhat confounded. And, you know, they also have done it to themselves. Like we talked early on about how they decided they were not going to put out an

agenda. They were just going to basically sit back and be like, we're not them. That also leaves them a little more vulnerable because what ultimately are you voting for? You know, I mean, they can say inflation sucks, et cetera, et cetera, but like they don't have a plan to deal with it. They want to push the Fed to do more and cut more spending and put, you know, and make things more painful. So the fact that they didn't really come up with an affirmative agenda also, I think, makes them a little more vulnerable right now. No, I think you're absolutely right. And yeah, I think it's going to be a problem, especially with these confounding variables. But it's interesting nonetheless.

It is interesting. All right, guys, more for y'all later. All right, so I have been tracking this crazy story that unfolded at a Starbucks down in South Carolina. It's actually very close to where I started college at Clemson University. So I was watching this with great interest. A number of workers approached their manager

and collectively asked that manager for a pay raise and other improvements in working conditioners. Conditions. Conditioners, oh my God. The manager freaked out, filed a police report, claimed that they were assaulted and accused these workers who are now unionized at this location of kidnapping them. And More Perfect Union actually obtained the police report, which goes into the details of what this manager said that these workers did. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

They say exclusive. We've obtained the police report filed by Starbucks manager in South Carolina that falsely accused union workers of kidnapping and assault. Workers demanded that Starbucks give them the pay raise that went to non-union workers. Instead, Starbucks suspended them. So this again is what the manager claimed, that they were threatened and it was an assault and it was kidnapping and all of this. Well, More Perfect Union also obtained the audio of the whole incident. And none of that happened. The audio shows the workers calmly asking for a pay raise that Starbucks has, by the way, illegally withheld because you can't punish workers just for being unionized.

The manager then leaves the meeting not kidnapped after six minutes with no incident. So that's what really happened there. And these workers have been suspended because of this whole situation when they were just exercising their collective rights to ask for something that they are actually owed. Yeah, the police report and the audio especially, as you pointed out. I mean, it shows clearly six minutes they asked for a raise and then the guy left and then he called 9-1-1 and said he'd been kidnapped like what how's that even possible this is serious like this is kidnapping and assault those are like i mean if it's actual kidnapping you know i mean those are that's a serious felony

that's a crime yes and he's not only is suspended have has serious, I mean, besmirchment of character. Honestly, they should sue him. That's really what should happen here as a result for defamation of character and for a false police report, you know, at the very least, given that they have so much evidence. So I don't know what this idiot was thinking. But, yeah, backfired massively. It's really something. And you have to say, like, first of all, workers were very smart to report this. Yeah, oh, yeah.

Always report in stuff like this. Yeah. Just saying. Definitely. So that they had the audio recording so that then when the manager was like, I was assaulted and kidnapped, they could be like, oh, really? Because here's the recording. And then, you know, kudos to More Perfect Union for following the story. And there have been a number, you know, there's been a resurgence of labor reporting that I think has made a huge difference in terms of really understanding these issues and shedding light on this.

Because even though, you know, I can't imagine that the assault charges are going to go anywhere now, these workers were still suspended. So this also gives them some grounds to be able to try to get reinstated there and take this ultimately to Starbucks and show that this was wrongful. Not that Starbucks higher-ups will care, but they would care about legal ramifications and you have an NLRB that actually backs workers now. Totally agree. All right, guys, more for y'all later.

We've been tracking the details of this FBI case and everything, and one of the things that actually struck me is, you might forget, you might remember, actually, I won't blame you for forgotten, Andrew McCabe, the disgraced former deputy director of the FBI who himself nearly was prosecuted for lying, key to the Russiagate Comey investigation, all of that. Well, even he on CNN, because he is now a CNN analyst, is saying there is such an extraordinary move for this raid to go forward that it must be about something else. Otherwise, it would just be crazy.

Let's take a listen to what he says. I completely agree. This is such a bold, such a disruptive, such an aggressive mood. The idea that they would do this simply because they weren't getting the sort of compliance they were looking for out of securing the room with the documents and things like that seems really unimaginable to me. It seems like they must have. I hope they had more than just that. Yeah. I mean, he's really sort of buying into this notion that this must be some grand plot. Right. That this is step one.

Which you would think, given the move. They were basically pretextual as a way to go in and search for the things that you really want. But the reporting suggests that's just not the case. I mean, it looks like they really did have this myopic focus on the documents, that it's not actually connected to January 6th. There's an off chance they found something else that's relevant. That's certainly possible. But it really looks from the reporting like they weren't getting compliance.

They felt they were being lied to. They felt that he was still concealing documents. You know, any normal citizen with that set of facts, of course, the FBI would be at your door like that. They thought they were being extra careful by like, oh, we'll do it when he's out of town and then it won't be a media circus. I don't know how they could have thought that that was the case. I mean, credulous that they really, that was their logic, that this will be no big deal. But I actually think they were in that much of a bubble. No, I think you're right. That they actually believed, like, we could do this,

focus on this one thing, and it's not going to be a big thing. Oh, absolutely. It's just so funny because it's like, even CNN, even Andrew McCabe is like, man, this better be big. It's just so aggressive. There has to be more. And it's like, no, it actually, people are actually even more incompetent than you who are currently at the FBI. So like even CNN saying there has to be more. And if there isn't, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting for the fallout of this. So look, we're going to continue to look at their reporting,

continue to look at the details, but all signs point to an FBI that just simply underestimated what the ramifications of this would be. Kind of hilarious. Amazing. All right. We'll see you guys later. Hey there, welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points, where we dive into different topics at the intersection of business, politics, and society. And today, I want to talk about how big tech is quietly running roughshod over privacy laws in the United States. Now, what first sparked my interest in doing this segment has been Amazon's recent blockbuster acquisitions, not only in just the past few weeks alone, but over the

last few years. Because I think a lot of us think of Amazon as this e-commerce giant capable of instilling fear into any retailer with something as simple as a press release. And they most certainly are that, but they are now capable of so much more. Amazon bought Whole Foods for a price that should qualify for free shipping, $13.7 billion. Amazon buying MGM Studios for $8.5 billion and acquiring iconic film franchises like James Bond and Rocky. Amazon in a new deal, buying its way into the pharmacy business. It is buying PillPack, an online pharmacy that offers pre-sorted doses of medication. Who's there? It's Amazon buying up all the smart doorbells. Amazon will buy smart device maker Ring for over $1 billion, according to Reuters. Amazon just announced that

it is buying the primary care provider One Medical. The deal is worth $3.9 billion. So Amazon is acquiring Roomba maker iRobot. It's an all cash deal valued at $1.7 billion. The company announced all of this this1.7 billion. The company announced all of this this morning. Whoa, imagine a company so powerful, so omnipresent in your life that they not only know everything about your consumption habits, what you buy through Amazon, but also what your typical diet consists of through your purchases at Whole Foods, what types of shows and entertainment you enjoy through MGM and Prime Video, but maybe more intrusive, they can also surveil the intimate goings-on within your home, the perimeter, the movements inside your home with Ring devices, map the floor plan of your home,

figure out what furniture you have, don't have through their recent iRobot Roomba acquisition, and of course, listen in on your most private and intimate conversations at home with Alexa-enabled smart devices. And let's not forget about their potential access to your health records through One Medical. This is the Amazon of 2022, a company capable of knowing you better than you know yourself. And that is a little scary. We have had an incredible year. The team has invented a lot on behalf of customers, and I cannot wait to show you what we have. So far, Limp and his team have made Alexa compatible with more than 100,000 products. Echo frames allow you to get done

more around you and be more present in the everyday. Now, they're gonna know more about you than anyone knows. They're trying to move as intimately as possible, as quietly as possible into everyday life. Echoloop is a smart ring packed with ways to stay on top of your day. Amazon wants to have the entire environment essentially miked. Alexa, start my running playlist. They want your walk in the park. They want your run down the city street. Nationwide's teamed up with Amazon to bring you the all new Echo Auto. They want what

you do in your car. They want what you do in your home. Amazon smart oven. Alexa, bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. All these intimacies, all this insight is being integrated, analyzed and integrated. Alexa, alarm off. That is an extraordinary kind of power that has never before existed. Now I have to say some folks find privacy not to be that big a deal, but many others are much more alarmed. It all kind of depends on your own personal comfort level with trading privacy for convenience and everyone's position on this sliding scale is different. But taking a look at this Pew Research survey conducted in 2019,

81% of Americans feel that the potential risks of companies collecting data about them outweigh the benefits, and 79% are either very or somewhat concerned about how companies use the data collected. But regardless of your own personal views on privacy, the reality is that Amazon has evolved from disrupting book sales to now, as Glenn Greenwald wrote back in 2019, quote, a critical partner for the U.S. government in building an ever more invasive, militarized, and sprawling surveillance state. To keep Amazon running, Bezos had developed an unprecedented digital infrastructure. He realized he could rent parts of it out, not just to businesses, but also to the government.

Nobody hangs out in Washington, D.C., just to go to the free museums. You buy a home in Washington, you buy a newspaper in Washington, because it is the most influential city in the world, and you want to lay your hands on that power. In 2013, he got a major boost when it was revealed that Amazon Web Services had designed a computing cloud for the CIA. Amazon Web Services was awarded a 10-year contract for $600 million.

Amazon is helping the CIA build a secure cloud computer network. The CIA contract was probably one of the best things that happened to Amazon's cloud business. It lifted all doubts about the security of the cloud and whether you could trust Amazon with your most precious data. The message to the world is if the CIA trusts Amazon with its data,

then maybe other companies and government institutions can as well. Introducing Amazon Recognition Video. Recognition allows you to pass an image to us. You can say, do these two faces match, which is incredibly useful for applications in the security space.

You can imagine unlocking... After Amazon rolled out a facial recognition tool, it marketed it to law enforcement. Recognize and track persons of interest from a collection of tens of millions of faces. Police we've spoken to say it's a valuable tool to identify suspects quickly. Appears to be a match, but I'm going to make sure I look at them all. And while Amazon has offered guidelines for how it should be used, there are few laws governing the use of this technology.

And that's kind of the problem. Unlike Europe, which has this uniform comprehensive privacy law, the U.S. is kind of like the Wild West when it comes to protecting an individual's private data. The U.S. doesn't have a singular law that covers the privacy of all types of data. Instead, it has this mix of laws that go by acronyms like HIPAA, FERPA, COPPA, etc. And because such patchwork of privacy laws are extremely narrow focus and oftentimes outdated as well, it creates a situation where you might think your private data is protected, but it's really not. This is reporting from the New York Times, quote, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability

Act, HIPAA, has little to do with privacy and covers only communication between you and covered entities, which include doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, insurers, and other similar businesses. People tend to think HIPAA covers all health data, but it doesn't. Your Fitbit data isn't protected, for example, nor does the law restrict who can ask for your COVID-19 vaccination status? Right now, the strongest privacy laws passed in the U.S. is in California, with regulations somewhat mimicking the protections given to citizens in Europe. California's Consumer Privacy Act gives Golden State residents a slew of new rights related to user data. New regulations aim to provide more control over the personal information that companies regularly collect and sell. The act gives Californians the right to ask tech companies what kind of data they're collecting on them. They can request for that

data to be deleted, and they can also tell companies don't sell that data to other people and make money off of it. Right. So California is home to some major tech companies, of course. How are they reacting to this new law and will they comply with it? Pretty much all tech companies are scrambling and grappling with exactly how they're going to be enabling themselves to comply with this law. Other states may follow suit. We've seen other states follow California's lead in regulation before, and there are nine other states currently considering privacy regulations like this. Yep, that's right. Other states are indeed wanting to follow suit.

So big tech firms are working actively, albeit quietly, to prevent the passing of similar laws in other states, or at the very least, weakening the new laws. This is reporting from the Register. Quote, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft often support privacy in public statements, but behind the scenes, they've been working through some common organizations to weaken or kill privacy legislation in the United States. That's according to a report this week from news non-profit The Markup, which said the corporations hire lobbyists from the same few groups and law firms to defang or drown state privacy bills. The report examined 31 states where state legislatures were considering privacy

legislation and identified 445 lobbyists and lobbying firms working on behalf of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, along with industry groups like TechNet and the State Privacy and Security Coalition. Setting a few examples, a Connecticut data privacy bill died last year after lobbyists weighed in against it, though the state did pass SB6, an act concerning personal data privacy and online monitoring, in April. The Washington Privacy Act collapsed for the third time last year, so did the Oklahoma Computer Data Privacy Act and similar privacy legislation in Florida. In some cases, the company's lobbying state lawmakers actually

draft the bills that will later be passed to regulate them. That's what happened with the first version of the 2021 Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, which is penned by Amazon lobbyists. Yeah, unfortunately, this is not a novel situation in the US where companies are hiring lobbyists to write legislation on their behalf. So just to recap, more stringent privacy laws would of course affect the business model of Amazon and other big tech firms. And once they've realized that public opinion has now turned strongly against them in favor of more privacy protection for individual citizens, they all have now undertaken huge efforts to quietly craft legislation that claim to protect consumer privacy. But in reality, the laws are actually quite watered down and flimsy.

But in practice, what will almost certainly be the case is that companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, even Apple, who are notoriously more careful with their customers' data, will continue to publicly preach consumer privacy while behind the scenes, their business practices will necessarily force them to push the boundaries of what the law and what the public will accept in terms of data gathering and surveillance. And the point I want to stress is that privacy is something that once given up, you typically don't get it back. Here's what Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has said about privacy in response to allowing government agencies access to private data. If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it too.

Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people's accounts. Now, while I have my own qualms with Apple, not entirely sold on the genuineness of their privacy practices, I do think that his thoughts here are on point in that we ought to think about this issue not just as a trade-off between convenience and privacy, but rather against potential tyranny. Democracy is something that's very fragile, and attacks at democracy can manifest not just within the government, but in many different ways. Private power in the form of abusive multinational tech conglomerates, companies whose leaders have assumed vast amounts of power without ever receiving a single vote, coupled with a political system

that is becoming increasingly incapable of checking such power, is a deeply concerning development for our democracy. And such change isn't gonna come from the inside. Privacy, if we deem it important enough to protect, I think will have to come from us. I think we all have agency in protecting our own privacy, and we should own as much of it as possible. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you found this segment to be helpful.

If so, you can support my work by checking out my other videos and subscribing to my channel, 5149 with James Lee, where I dive into other topics related to business, politics, and society. The link will be in the description below. As always, remember to subscribe to Breaking Points, and thank you for your time today. This is an iHeart Podcast.