Judging Freedom - Pervasive Government Surveillance, What Can We Do?

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Tell your representative - Don't Vote for Section 702 #NSA #surveillanceSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Friday, May 6, 2022. It's about five minutes after 12 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Yesterday, my weekly column, which comes out very, very late Wednesday night for publication Thursday morning, and in a variety of venues, the hard copy venue is the Washington Times. The very popular digital venues are lewrockwell.com, townhall.com, and of course, the washingtontimes.com, and 25 or 30 other venues. My column was called The Bill of Temporary Privileges, and I was arguing that the Bill of Rights has been so effectively curtailed by the government that it's not a Bill of rights. It's a bill of privileges that the government decides to permit or not to permit, depending upon its predilections. A right is an indefeasible, undefeatable claim against the whole world. Your right to live,

your right to think as you wish. Say what you think. Publish what you say. Worship or not worship. Defend yourself. Of course, the government has limited your right to defend yourself. Your right to enjoy life, liberty, and property without a government permission slip. And your right to be left alone. All of these rights have been assaulted by the government. The column described how the Patriot Act has assaulted the right to privacy and allowed the FBI to listen in on your phone conversations,

to capture every keystroke, to capture every email, even the ones you think you've deleted. What do we do about it? Well, the section of the Patriot Act, commonly known as Section 702, is up for reenactment at the end of next year. So we're talking about November of 2023. You can approach your member of Congress who's running for re-election this time around and say, did you vote for Section 702? They might not know what you're talking about. Tell them what it is. It's the section that allows the FBI access to raw intelligence data and permits warrantless spying, even though the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, was written to outlaw warrantless searches and spying. If they say yes, then ask them, why does the government have dirt on you?

Because the government, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and their other three-letter collaborators that spy on all of us, they do have dirt on members of Congress. That's why I refer to the federal government as rotten to the core. The intelligence community has dirt on Congress. They force Congress to give it more money and allow it to cut corners in the Constitution and to spy on all of us. They stay in power. They get to spend money. They get to buy toys. They get to spy on us.

And they don't keep us safe. All they do is destroy our liberty. So you have to challenge members of Congress. Will you promise that you will not vote to reenact Section 702? Will you promise that you will not allow the FBI to spy on us? Or does the FBI and do their spying collaborators have dirt on you, in which case you probably shouldn't be in Congress, because if you're there and they are threatening you and you are voting in accordance with their threat, you're not representing me. You're there to protect yourself from whatever dirt the government has on you. I don't think we have

rights in America anymore. I think we have privileges and the government, the legislative branch, and sad to say sometimes judges have gone along with this, have found ways to curtail those privileges and to require permission slips to exercise them. The right to keep and bear arms is a classic example. You can't just buy a gun and carry it, which is what the Second Amendment was written to allow you to do. In a few states you can, but in the vast majority you cannot. Now the government is going to check the marketplace of ideas, and if they think someone has uttered a falsehood, the government is going to call you out publicly. The government does not have the freedom of speech. It's a

natural right that belongs to human beings. They have no business getting into the marketplace of ideas or the marketplace of rights. The Bill of Rights means what it says, and anybody running for Congress who fails to articulate that publicly is unworthy of your support. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Have a nice weekend.