Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/14/23 Jim Bovard on Washington’s Tyrannical Surveillance and Censorship of Americans

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Jim Bovard returns to the show to discuss a pair of articles he published recently for the New York Post. The first digs into the sought-after expansion of Section 702, which would free up federal spies to surveil even more of our digital communications. They also talk about the exposure and fight against Washington’s efforts to censor the internet. Discussed on the show: “Congress wants to unleash federal spies at your hotel and coffee shop” (New York Post) “More nails in the coffin of Biden’s censorship regime” (New York Post) Jim Bovard is a columnist and the author of Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty. Find all of his books and read his work on his website and follow him on Twitter @JimBovard. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, you guys, Scott Horton here to remind you that it's fun drive time at the Institute right now. We only do this twice a year, but it's got to be done. And I'm proud to do it, too. We've got an incredible crew of the best writers, authors, and podcasters in the Libertarian Movement. From Jim Bovard, Lori Calhoun, Tom Woods, and Ted Carpenter, to Keith Knight, Kyle Anzalone, Hunter Durenc, Connor Freeman, and all the rest of the guys. It's the best team around. We've published three books this year. Keith Knight's Voluntaryist Handbook, Lori Calhoun's questioning the COVID company line,

and Joseph Solis Mullins, the fake China threat. And here any day now, we will be publishing Thomas E. Woods' Diary of a Psychosis, Jim Bovard's Last Rights, and Keith Knight's latest, domestic imperialism. That makes 13 books so far, with more coming in the new year, including my new one, provoked how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine, which I know is already overlong and overdue, but I'm working on it, I promise. And which brings me to the point, we don't have a big glass office building in downtown Washington. The money we raise goes straight to payroll and book production costs, and that's about it.

The Libertarian Institute is the best bang for your buck in the movement. If you believe in what we're doing, please go to Libertarian Institute.org slash donate for detail. on how you can help keep us going into the new year, and the great kickbacks we offer as well. And we thank you for your support. All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com,

author of the book, Pools Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003. Almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com

slash Scott Horton's show. You guys on the line again. This is not a redo. This is a whole different interview. it's the great Jim Bovard the author of most books including most recently last writes

the death of American Liberty published by the Libertarian Institute. That's right libertarian institute.org slash books and amazon.com slash you know click through from my website so I get a kickback what a great book and

of course you know Jim because he's written for all the biggest newspapers in America over the last decades and including right now He is a regular at the New York Post where he's trying desperately to protect our rights here. The piece is called, oops, that's a separate one. That's, I want to talk about that one too. But wait, it's this one. Congress wants to unleash federal spies at your hotel and coffee shop.

You don't say that they're not already in my hotel and coffee shop. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Jim? Doing fine. Thanks for your having me on, Scott. Happy to have you here. Listen, I suspect that they're following us all around all the time, but you're saying they're legalizing it? More?

Well, I've always tried to think positive. But no, so there was this bill that from the House Intelligence Committee, they were gung-ho on expanding this foreign intelligence surveillance act, warrantless surveillance, or the FBI can snatch up your emails and your other Internet stuff with no warrant, even though you're an American citizen. and they were pushing to expand that to hotel Wi-Fi. So, I mean, so folks thought your Wi-Fi comforted in was bad already. Oh, my goodness. Oh, man. Yeah, you know, I guess this is the kind of thing that we know from the Snowden Leaks that the NSA has been getting and the FBI has been able to rifle through. But now you're saying the FBI will be able to at least legally do this themselves.

Is that right? This is a proposal in Congress that was passed unanimously by the House Intelligence Committee. This was not in the final bill that the House of Representatives passed today and said what they did was simply perpetuate the current FISA law, which basically lets the FBI, you know, vacuum up without a warrant, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans' communications. Yeah. So then I have it right. The Senate version included the worst provision, but you're saying the House version passed today does not. But then we just have to wait for them to screw us in conference committee. My understanding is that the Senate version simply perpetuated the existing law, as did the House version. But in the background, there was this Biden Big Brother Better Act. from the house intelligence committee which i assume the congress might uh take up when they

after their long vacation i see so they've upheld the patriot act standards so far and then but the threat is that they're still going to escalate when they get back well it's it's a really horrendous standard that they have right now and the uh the the the the fiza court has admitted but they were at least three million americans whose privacy was wrongfully violated by the the FBI using this FISA Section 702. So you got three million cases of constitutional violations. Congress doesn't give it for Shaw, but they simply say, well, let's just extend until next year. There was a lot of pushback.

Congressman Jim Jordan, the House of Judiciary Committee Chairman, pushed through a bill that had a vote of 35 to 2, bipartisan support, to mandate the FBI needs a warrant, a court warrant for most cases when it's going through this NSA data that was seized, seized by the NSA, in order to find out to find the people's emails. Currently, they don't need to do that. All right. Now, the FISA Act, that's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the FISC, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the guys for all this is if they have an objective, reasonable belief that one is an agent of a foreign government. or an agent of a foreign power, right?

Or you're saying, no, this applies all to U.S. persons here. Well, there is the, the fees of vacuum, the national security agency vacuum, pulls in vast amounts of information. And there is basically a very low standard as far as to suspect a foreigner to, you know, go through their email and other stuff. And then if that foreigner had any contact with an American, or if you as an American had contact with another American who would contact with that foreigner, you know, boom, they just vacuum you up.

That's my understanding. Senator Rand Paul had an excellent speech yesterday, the Florida Senate, walking through how this law has morphed and pulled in vast numbers of innocent people. Yeah. I mean, having, it's so easy to see how they do the spate and switch deal where they say, well, look, we've got to have this low threshold for the national security agency to protect us, but don't worry, they can't prosecute you, you know what I mean? So if they're violating your privacy, you wouldn't even know. Oh, by the way, the FBI can then rifle through all their data and use it against you.

So same damn difference. And what's happened, apparently, in many criminal cases, the FBI or other agencies have used some of this data which they got via the NSA and which they got without a warrant. and then did not disclose the source of the information when they were prosecuting people, which is a complete violation of due process. But, you know, hey, first time that ever happened. Right. So now they're specifically mentioning hotels and what was the other thing,

as though they were previously exempt. Is that a real change here? Well, so my understanding from the House Intelligence Committee bill, hotels, libraries, coffee shops, and other places which offer Wi-Fi service. So my understanding from the legal experts that are read on this is that the feds could basically pressure those places to make sure that they turned over information without a warrant to the FBI. Right. And there aren't some hotels. I'm sure there's quite a few coffee shops that would say, hell no, if the FBI came in and said, show us all the emails or the information from your Wi-Fi users. But this is, I mean, there is no need for this kind of law. There's no need for this kind of mandate. It's just, it's one more Pandora's box of endless surveillance and endless trump cards.

agencies can play against private entities. Well, but Jim, what about the federal court cases where they ruled that Snowden was right and that the stuff that he exposed was illegal and then they struck it down and they forced Congress to pass these laws to fix it all like in the deal? Scott, it's important for you to cut back on the weed. Yeah, I mean, there were there were some judges that had some very. eloquent decisions spurred by Snowden. Snowden is a hero, as I said in USA today five years ago. Snowden should get the presidential medal freedom for what he did. But basically, Congress didn't

do much at all. And they were kind of said, yeah, well, this is not so good. Now, it's funny. If you turn it back the clock for the last time that Pfizer was reauthorized early 2018, there was there was about 67 or maybe 84 minutes in which it was unclear if Congress would actually do that because President Trump saw an episode with some comments on Fox News that said, oh, this is a terrible law. So Fox did Trump did a tweet or two say, oh, this despise the stuff was terrible. We don't need this. But, you know, there was a full court press on him and Trump flipped within less than two hours.

And so, of course, it got renewed. Yeah. Well, it's interesting here that you mentioned that Bob Menendez and his corruption here is this is part of how he got busted. Is that right? They were spying on the Egyptians and then who happened to be on the line? I don't know if that was the case, but part of what really amused me about this House and Tell them's Committee fixed that they, you know, their fix for Biza was. Okay, so if the FBI violates your rights illegally, wrongfully, without a search warrant, the feds don't have to tell you. So you're blindfolded. It's the total opposite of what happens if your data is in a breach of a private company. So the House Intelligence Committee took action to end that abuse and said that, you know,

for now on, people have to be notified if the FBI. wrongfully searches their records. However, this only applies to members of Congress. Yeah. Well, that's as it should be. That's why they call it the rule of law, Jim. It means it... True.

And so the point I was making about Senator Menendez is, you know, perhaps what this, what Congress will do next is mandate the Justice Department has to give advanced notice to members of Congress. Congress in case they're doing Google searches that could get them in legal trouble because Senator Menendez was Googling on the value of gold bars, and I guess he was found in possession of a few of them that were, shall we say, tied to the government of Egypt. That's the allegation. Of course, he's innocent until convicted by hopefully a non-hit wit jury, so, you know.

I don't think that applies to government employees. Almost nothing applies to government employees. So, you know, I don't know why. Except for the very, yeah, the only exception to what applies to government employees is generous pensions. Yeah, seriously. Well, look, I mean, regular people aren't truly presumed innocent when they end up in court. I think Senator Menendez is, ought to be presumed. He ought to have his trial held in his prison cell where he's already sentenced first.

You know, that's just me. And I think it's hilarious and ironic, too, that he's in trouble for getting along with Egypt rather than their neighbor, who he obviously has been an agent of influence for for many years in the U.S. Senate, no less than Charles Schumer or some of the other worst. I didn't know he was doing separate Libya. No, Jim. Israel, of course. Israel. They got all this extra money because they got it from us. Now, listen, speaking of censorship, let me ask you about this article, more nails in the coffin of Biden's censorship regime. Dare I read that headline as hopefully somebody wrote it? Hey, I didn't say it was my headline. So, yeah, I was, well, see, you know, this is the holiday season.

So I'm trying to have much more upbeat headlines for the stories about how the government's blowing your rights to pieces. Yeah, man. there you go well i appreciate that have full take here and you do have a great picture of matt taibi and michael schellenberger uh here featured testifying before congress and we got these lawsuits and we got these great uh twitter file journalists working on this and we're learning more all the time and the courts are angry about it and the congress is fighting about it so tell us what's up yeah so the uh there's been a lot of good pressure it's one of their really good things about the how the gop take over the house of representatives they've done

some excellent hearings on the weaponization of government power. They haven't gotten the credit for it from the mainstream media because most of the media coverage has been in the tank for the feds. But they've been pushing it out. And they're putting out layer after layer of detail of how the, the craven details of how the feds and federal contractors suppressed censored American speech. It's great that there was a federal district court, that said that, the Federal Appeals Court said that, and now it's before the Supreme Court. And one of the things which is interesting here is how the feds are seeking to define consent, because part of the defense for the saying that the FBI didn't censor it, well, you know,

the FBI made a request and people consented. Yeah, you know, you get the FBI saying, you know, this is a problem, you know, take action on this. It's a same. same time, you've got President Biden who came out and accused social media companies of murder for not suppressing any information that might make people hesitate to get their COVID vaccines, which Biden also pulled strings to force the FDA to give full approval to, even though the evidence warned of a lot of problems with those vaccines. Yeah. Hey, guys. Did you know that I don't just write books? I publish them. Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director, so yeah.

13 of them now, including my four. We published five more in 2023. Lori Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullen on the fake China threat, Jim Bovard's latest, last rights, and our managing editor, Keith Knight's, domestic imperialism. And we've got more great titles coming in 2024. Check them out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books

and help support our anti-government efforts at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And thank you. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion

leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets. If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them. You need to put some, at least, into precious metals. Well, Roberts and Roberts can set you up with the best deals on silver, gold,

platinum, and palladium. and they've been doing this since 1977. Hey, if you just need some sound advice about sound money, they're there for you too. Call Tim Fry and the guys at 800-874-97760. That's 800-874-9760, or check them out at r-rbi.co. That's r-rbi.co.

You'll be glad you did. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters, August 29. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. Well, I mean, and that's the whole thing about the censorship regime, is the censors have been bad. and wrong on everything, right? It was all, I, well, I guess Taibi says it was, part of it was

begun in the name of counter propaganda against ISIS recruitment, which of course was all the fault of the Obama administration building up ISIS in the war in Syria before it blew up in his face and he had to turn around and fight it again. So there's that. And then, but from that, then they needed something to do. And so then they started enforcing Russia. Russiagate narratives and then COVID narratives and then Ukraine narratives and then I guess. Well, and yeah, and a fundamental problem here is that the feds claim they have to secretly intervene to protect America's cognitive infrastructure. Now, I don't know about you, but, you know, the thought of the government helping out my cognitive, cognitive infrastructure, you know,

I think I'll stick with cigars. Or maybe I'll go back to cigars. Yeah, man, they've got that nicotine you need. Not like that Kamala hair is... I'm just... You know, I've got the damn d-tis of nicotine deprivation here. You know... I was hoping to make my hair grow back. It hasn't.

I'll tell you what, Jim. I think that might be what's wrong with me as I quit smoking 12 years ago. But, you know, they got all these handy vape pens now. So that's some kind of nicotine, maybe with less cancerousness. I don't know. Well, I enjoy cigars, but I haven't had one for six months.

Yeah. But yeah, man, seriously, the cognitive, this, that, whatever. We're talking about where they're going to give this job to Kamala Harris, too? Like, they assigned her the Gaza crisis. Yeah, Kamala Harris, she's going to solve Gaza and... The cognitive infrastructure and the border. That's right. Artificial intelligence.

She's going to protect this from Skynet. And she's going to figure out who's allowed to say what on Twitter about what her government is doing. Well, this is a fascinating thing. It's great how Schellenberger and Matt Taibi and others have brought out, thanks in part to Elon Musk, opening the secret vaults, to show how far the federal government felt it was entitled to control what Americans said in public. It's interesting. If you think back, okay, this is probably before your time, but there was a time maybe at least until the 1980s, when people would write letters to the editor of the local newspaper. Yeah, no, I remember those days.

Okay, and so, and that's similar to what a lot of people comment on, on Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere. And so, and, but all of a sudden you have the fed saying that people should not be allowed to post on Twitter or Facebook if they're raising doubts or even making jokes about COVID vaccines. I mean, this is a huge example here. The feds were outraged that people made jokes about the COVID vaccines. It's like, okay, if you can't joke about government mandates, then we have no freedom at all.

Yeah, seriously. Aside from the damn mandate, so. Yeah, well, look, I mean, a guy went to jail for a Hillary Clinton meme about, hey, you can vote this Wednesday, just text to this number. And to this day, there's the exact mirror image counterpart meme by a Democrat saying, hey, you dumb Trump voters vote this. Wednesday just text this number and by the way it never worked of course the text I think there was even a thing where they got an automatic thing back telling them that it was a joke or something anyway and they put the guy in prison for it now the guy went to jail I think he's in jail right now well and it's it's a hell of a thing that the the government I mean if you think back to the

Soviet Union folks had almost no freedom but they But they did make some great jokes. There was a lot of great anti-government humor coming out of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. But maybe the U.S. government doesn't approve of those kind of jokes because they have certainly tried to suppress them. And it's like it just makes the government even more laughable. And, you know, it's even worse than the Biden press conference.

Seriously. Well, I mean, the thing is, what are we going to have to resort to underground zines again? I don't know. I don't know, but it's fascinating to see so much of the media and there's so many politicians rally to the defense of the FBI and these federal censorship contractors because they have been so brazen in trying to squash criticism, objections or anything like this. And if this doesn't cross a bright red line, then the folks who are defending this, they have no bright red line. none and it's like um you keep lowering your expectations and is just like it wasn't low enough fast enough you know what's interesting to me jim is um with elan musk taking over twitter a year ago and obviously

somewhat loosening up the rules um i wonder especially in the times of a major crisis a news story like what's happening now in the Gaza Strip whether it becomes very apparent, say for example, to people who are on both whether Twitter is that much freer and

less censorous than Facebook is now when they never really went through the Twitter files and they didn't go through a regime change the way Twitter has? I don't know. I mean, Facebook sold their soul so long ago if they ever had a soul.

So I don't know. I mean, I've, I see a lot of diversity of opinion on Gaza on Twitter. And, you know, it's a better source in a lot of the American media. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you, I was at a place and the TV was on and everything was told from Israel's point of view. And then I looked at my phone and I saw the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian. point of view. And it's pretty hard to reconcile the differences. I mean, not that there are no victims on the Israeli side, because there certainly are. But just overall, it's, you can't really

call it a war. It's something other than that. And you can see the power of narrative there and just, you know, like they say on Matlock, you got to tell the whole truth. Because a half of truth is just the same as a lie and on TV they can get away with it but with social media it just becomes less and less possible for them to pretend and you think about like in your mind's eye from back in history something's going on on the west bank of the gaza stripy you don't really have a picture in your head of it because they never show it to you and now they just can't make it go away like that you know well it'll be interesting to see if that continues so yeah for Sure. Well, and then it really is coming to the Supreme Court, right? I mean, the Supreme Court's going to hear the case. I mean, it makes me nervous about the Supreme Court member from the Chevy Chase Country Club. But one of, you know, it's just so sad because, you know, Donald Trump could have put a great Texas judge, Judge Don Willett on the court and said, you know, he puts Kavanaugh, who's, you know, he was knee deep.

and a lot of the Bush administration abuses, so, you know, whatever. Well, they say Gorsuch is a little bit less worse. Is that right? Oh, very much. I think he's had some really great decisions and some great lines with Orno arguments. I've got a bunch of quotes from Gorsuch and the new book, Last Rights. Yeah, that's right. I recall a couple. I was like, what was I reading recently that had some good quotes from him? And it was you, of course. Yeah. yeah he was uh he uh came in very handy the government has criminalized everything you know yeah okay this is my man all right well all right all right we'll put him in on the first page yeah

well look i mean as always it's not just an argument from authority if what they're saying is really sharp and good and quotable and useful that hey even this supreme court justice is saying that this is not right even if he doesn't win every time It's a powerful dissent for showing people what's right and just how far they've gone. God help us, if people really start to feel after it's already been a decade of this and after another decade that, like, of course, this is just how it is. Government has to curate the news for us. Otherwise, we'd get it wrong.

And people really believe that that's just how it always is. You know, gee, Scott, who's going to build the roads? Somebody's got to censor the channels, you know? Yeah, I mean, things are bad already. There was one poll, recent poll, that showed that 55% of American adults said that government should, you know, protect people from false information. And I guess that would mean canceling all the elections. It's like, this is bizarre. And this is a time when only 20% of the people trust the government.

So what you have is that people cannot politically add two and two. Government's untrustworthy, but they're going to save us. some false information right where did i go wrong i know you know what i remember 25 years ago my friend rick told me well you know at least they know they're being lied to right you can see that they know something's not right but they just don't know who else to turn to other than whatever the guys who supposedly are our protectors they must be honest or why would we have given them that job well thank god they've got podcast now they can turn to yeah well the new york times says they're unfettered you know leg shackles

That's a badge of honored. Seriously. And it's a reason for us to really watch out. I mean, this is sort of the final frontier of free speech. And, you know, they just took a massive subsidy away from SpaceX and their internet project. $900 million, I think it was. And so obviously you didn't deserve that money at all in the first place. but you can see the government agenda there

for Elon Musk's businesses which are so government dependent that they're trying to punish him. It's a hard time's coming. Yep. All right, listen, I'm late. I got to run, but thank you so much for coming back on the show, Jim. You're great. Hey, thanks so much, Scott.

Really appreciate it. All right, you guys, that is the great Jim Bovard. He's at the New York Post, and he's at the Libertarian Institute. Yeah, that's right. And we just published his brand new book Last Rights, The Death of American Liberty, which is so dang good. I know you'll agree. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.