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We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
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I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys.
Introducing Kieran McCarthy, writing for theregister.co.uk.
Check this out.
Remember the FBI's promise it wasn't abusing the NSA's data on US citizens?
Well, guess what?
Welcome to the show.
How you doing, Kieran?
I'm good.
How you doing?
Really good.
Very happy to have you on the show here.
Very important article.
So this cuts right to the heart of the whole thing is, yeah, who cares if the NSA is sweeping up all the data in the world?
Even on us American citizens, because after all, they don't really have police power over us and can't do anything to us anyway.
So what do you have to hide and what's the big deal, huh?
Yeah, well, I mean, it's as bad as many of us feared that it would be.
And, you know, one of the senators in particular has been sort of chasing this for a long time, obviously, because he has access to classified information.
But what's been going on is the FBI has been using this NSA database, not just occasionally, as it said it would, and not just on national security issues, but routinely.
I mean, absolutely routinely.
While the NSA and the CIA was sort of referencing this vast database, sort of 10,000 times a year, roughly.
The FBI one day, I think, searched it something like 60,000 times.
No, it said 10,000 times in one day, in a single day, not in a year.
And so it had become completely routine to search this database for anything that they're interested in.
If they feared someone was up to some crime, they would just type in their social security number, pull all the records within this database that is only supposed to be used for, you know, foreign intelligence.
And so then this is not the counterintelligence division.
This is the criminal division of the FBI.
Yeah, this is just the FBI, FBI, you know, ordinary people in the FBI.
Now, I mean, from their perspective, they're doing their jobs.
They have access to this incredibly useful database.
And so why not?
The problem is with that is that they're not supposed to have access to this.
And so the legal justifications for this have been very, very suspect from day one.
And everyone knows it.
And the only way it was sort of held up was the FBI kept claiming in, you know, in public, in Congress, under questioning, that they were only very rarely using it and only for issues of national security.
And then, of course, this came out of the FISA court is quite a secret court.
This heavily redacted opinion came out from last year, which pointed out that that simply wasn't true on any level.
To the extent where the FBI wasn't even, you know, wasn't didn't have consistent rules for accessing.
It says that the FBI agents weren't aware what the rules were.
And then the sheer number of queries means that they were just it was just absolutely part of their standard approach for digging into any issue.
Yeah, you got to love that when FBI agents are pleading ignorance of the law, when they're literally lawyers with power of attorney to represent the United States of America.
What's particularly egregious about this is that this was a very high profile, or at least in the in the sort of in the context of the spine breaker, a very high profile issue, especially with the questioning in Congress.
There was a whole point in which several congressmen said they were going to fight it and try and strike down this entire spying program.
It was a pretty big issue.
And then months after this, you know, does this court this court opinion reveals that they were they still didn't have any good rules around it.
They still weren't registering the number of times it was being queried.
They still were unsure of what how they were supposed to or so they claim, well, what they were supposed to use it for.
And I mean, it's just it's unfathomable because there had been a very big and public debate about this.
And months afterwards, they are still just using this database as if it's just a regular database.
And it's not.
And it's pretty it's pretty appalling.
And then so whatever they find in there ends up in court.
Is that right?
Well, that's a good question.
No, I mean, I well, it's hard to tell because any any time things it's hard to get any information about how exactly they're stuck.
It's into the database, how exactly it's accessed, when exactly it's used in court.
I doubt whether they would use this data directly in a court.
They might use it in a FISA court and they might use it in a sort of terrorist court.
But I mean, in a in an ordinary court, no, I would doubt it.
It'd be a little bit like other classified programs.
They tend to use my understanding is they tend to use this data in order to help their investigations.
I think that they would be very wary about using the results of this in a public court hearing.
Well, that's the beauty of the parallel construction and all that.
Right.
They can just pretend that they learned whatever they learned some other way.
Yeah.
I mean, it's what's frustrating about this is that after Snowden, you would have hoped at least that there had been some changes.
But I think the mindset is still exactly the same.
It's still exactly the same as it was.
Some of these programs have been scaled back.
Some of them have not been scaled back.
There may be new programs we don't know.
But clearly, the mindset has not changed.
The FBI and the national security apparatus has lied.
I mean, it's not a matter of misunderstanding.
They've clearly lied about what they use this database for and who's allowed to use it.
And it really is a very it should be a bigger privacy issue.
It should be on everybody's lips.
But for some reason, it's not right now.
Well, lots of reasons.
But so first of all, it's important to point out that the FISA statute is a criminal statute.
And this law was passed, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, supposedly at least, in reaction to the COINTELPRO abuses of the Nixon era and using the CIA against peaceful protesters and all these kinds of things.
And so this law was passed to make it a crime for them to abuse the national, essentially national security state surveillance powers that they have for use, you know, to protect us from the Reds and turn it against the American people.
And so these are supposed to be felonies.
And when they violate that law, they're supposed to go to prison just the same way that these very same FBI agents would put us in prison for violating any federal law.
Yeah, I mean, is it going to happen?
No.
Should it happen?
Yes.
And they have no reason to fear breaking the law, do they?
Well, from the from the average FBI agent's perspective, so long as they haven't been told exactly what they can and cannot access from the from the average.
If you are an FBI agent and you have access, given access to this database and you are not specifically told you have to justify under these reasons, then sure, you'll use it.
Why wouldn't you?
I mean, if you or I were and that was part of our job and we were told we could access this database, then we would.
Right.
But that's the but that should not that is not the actual situation has been very clear.
This is a very specific database for a very specific use.
And it is being obviously badly abused.
Now, how do you find out who is responsible for that and how do you bring them to account?
I don't know.
I mean, Senator Ron Wyden tried his absolute best and it just continues on.
There's just this bold faced lying.
And then these very semantic arguments about what does this word mean?
What does that word mean?
Some very, very almost ridiculous legal justifications over how they're allowed to access this database.
And it's just allowed to continue on because everybody, as soon as people mention national security issues, everybody becomes very wary.
No one wants to be blamed for getting in the way of taking down the next terrorist attack.
But it's obviously gone so far beyond that.
I'm not sure what the solution is for for pulling this back, especially since Congress has reauthorized this program for another 10 years.
I think they authorized it for a long time.
Well, then again, I mean, these aren't necessarily, you know, 19 year old army privates following orders.
All of these guys have advanced degrees.
You have to have a master's degree to be an FBI agent, right?
You know, anybody, any FBI agent that chooses to chooses to dig into this would probably know.
And I would guess, well, I don't know how their systems work.
I would guess any decent FBI agent would know that this is a database that should be treated very, very carefully.
But then who knows?
Do they have to log into a separate account to search this database?
Or have they simply linked it up to a broader search?
Do they pull it all in on one screen?
Do they have to go to a different machine?
Can they do it from their own machine?
All of these details are not readily available.
And so it's hard to tell what's really going on.
Everything becomes sort of shrouded in the national security.
And so it's almost impossible to find out exactly what the situation is.
But when these things like this, called opinion, do appear, it's pretty shocking.
In the sense that everything that people feared was going on exactly with Snowden.
Everything that people feared was what's going on, is going on.
And that's the problem.
You also wonder, well, what else is going on that we don't yet know about?
And you don't know.
And they will clearly sit down in front of Congress and answer very specific pointed questions.
And give inaccurate answers in order to protect spy programs that they shouldn't have access to.
I'm not sure what the solution is.
Which is also a crime, right?
The solution is obvious.
You put them in prison for perjury.
Again, they would prosecute to the nth degree any American who perjured themselves in front of Congress or in front of the court.
That's the law.
And that's the real problem here is that the law only applies to non-government employees, to private citizens.
Government employees can do anything they want.
They have total immunity and impunity.
And they get away with essentially everything.
You'll see the cop that shot this lady in her house in Fort Worth last week.
He's going to get away with it.
He was on the clock at the time.
And we all know that's how it works.
And the cops all know that's how it works too.
None of them will ever go to prison no matter what.
I mean, maybe if they beat their wife to death on a Saturday night when they're off the clock.
But if they tap every phone in America, they won't do one day in jail and they know it.
So they have no disincentive whatsoever.
I do think there's, you know, you're tying two different things.
But I understand it's still the same sort of frustration that the government and government officials are not kept to the same standard of accountability.
There is a very clear, there are serious problems with policing.
And that is only going to stay where it is until there are some, until this shifts and there is some prosecution for things that are clearly beyond the pale.
The same is true with the FBI.
But, you know, it's very complicated and it's very difficult.
No one wants to do it.
I mean, on countless occasions you've had, you know, the head of national security sit and give wildly misleading, you know, just false answers in a public hearing to the People's Representative Congress.
And then when they are caught in it, just come up with some nonsense excuse and everyone pretends that that was fine.
I don't know what the answer is.
I don't see how, I don't see Congress, you know, sort of holding the director of national security in contempt.
But it may take something at some point, it may take something like that to try and change this sense of, yes, the sense that they can get away with these things.
And only occasionally do the programs get scaled back, but then they continue lying to people's faces about what the scale of the program.
I don't know what the answer is.
It is intensely frustrating.
The one thing I will give, will give the system does work is that we know about this.
At least sometimes with a delay, we know that we are being lied to.
But that doesn't really help because if no one is held accountable for clear misrepresentation of what's going on, then what's the point?
That's the problem.
Yeah, unfortunately, there's just so much ridiculous partisanship.
And, you know, the news cycle is just completely dominated by a million other things of lesser importance.
And this is the kind of thing that you really need both sides, quote unquote, to agree on that, hey, this has really gone too far.
Somebody's got to do something, something like that.
But you just can't have that in the current kind of atmosphere at all.
You have great groups, you know, great journalists like yourself and great activist groups, you know, speaking out and trying to pressure and whatever.
But in terms of any kind of real, you know, massive public discussion, unless until the next Snowden comes out with new revelations or something like that, it's just the attention has already sort of been siphoned away.
The pressure is gone.
Yeah, I think the biggest issue we have is that any solution to this abuse of laws and of spy programs would have to be, it would have to end up being political.
I don't see how the government internally would resolve these issues, especially when, to their minds, this is extremely beneficial.
And it is, it gives them access to a lot of information.
But so the programs were created through Congress.
They have to be sorted out through Congress.
And in this atmosphere that we're in where nothing is more important than beating the other side, I don't see how it can be resolved.
And I do think there is an element of people are obviously aware of that.
And so I do think people feel a little bit emboldened to do more than they would normally because they know that there is not going to be any particular moment in which they are called to account, in which they face jail time.
I think they know that.
And so I think they feel, well, I'm doing my job and, you know, the worst comes to worst.
I will just be told off and then we will scale back the programs.
So there's no real pressure.
But what we do know is that these U.S. citizens are being observed, spied upon and having their records searched on a daily basis with no real justifiable legal reason for it.
And whether you agree with that is right or wrong.
I particularly do not like it.
But it isn't.
The law wasn't written that way.
If the FBI and the NSA and the CIA want to have these powers, then the law should be written in order to give it to them.
We can have an open democratic debate about it.
The law has been decided to not give them those powers.
They are taking them regardless.
And then they are lying about it.
And that's a big problem.
Well, not to quibble too much there, but the Constitution actually forbids them from passing laws that legalize these kind of abuses, no matter if 99 percent of the people want it.
Which, of course, they don't.
So this court's judgment says that the FBI has broken the Fourth Amendment here.
And I think that's fairly clear.
I mean, I think it's fairly clear that they have.
It's really hard to debate it.
And if it were ever to get to a court, presumably get up to the Supreme Court, I think the Supreme Court would find the same.
It has recently with various other privacy issues.
But the question is, what will be the case?
And will it get up there?
Who knows?
I hope someone brings a case.
I hope they push it through.
But, of course, whenever you enter something like this, national security interests, it all becomes a thousand times harder.
The government can withhold documents, ask for court hearings to be done in private.
And there's always some kind of deal that's struck somewhere along the line.
It's very frustrating.
At least we have this to see, to show, or at least sort of say it is quite clear that this system is being abused.
And then hopefully, you know, next time around, Congress will take this a little bit more seriously and not just green light it and not just listen to the views of the national security operators.
They will actually question it and use this as an example of where they were specifically asked questions and specifically gave wildly misleading answers to the point of they were blatant lies.
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Well, you know, like you say in this piece, and as you mentioned before, it's Ron Wyden who's really been pushing, you know, he's been the best on this in the Senate.
And if you go back a few years, you know, to the Bush years when the NSA spying scandal first broke and all of that, it was a few good Democrats who were really, you know, the best leaders on this, were the best hope the American people and the Bill of Rights had on this issue.
But now it's not just the politics of Trump are all screwy, but the politics of Trump have the Democrats rallying around the FBI like never before, because they're here to protect us from our commie Russian traitor president, they think.
And so, you know, they any attack on the FBI, it makes you a useful idiot of Vladimir Putin who's trying to disrupt our democracy or whatever narrative that they're so invested in.
And so they just don't want to hear that at all.
Yeah, we're very, yeah, I agree.
We're in very, very noisy political times.
And there seems to be almost no room for reasoned discussion or agreement between parties.
There's countless examples of where everybody in fact, and here's the thing, the worst thing is that the majority of congressmen know that these things that they say in these arguments they have are ridiculous, know that they should be approaching it in a different way, but they're so caught up in partisan fights.
And there's everybody is so willing just to say whatever they want to say that day, in order to push the argument one direction or another direction we've lost, we've lost sort of just basic discussions of rights.
And it's very frustrating.
I imagine, you know, for a huge number of Americans, this is incredibly frustrating.
And this is a great example of where it would be very useful if lawmakers stopped fighting on partisan lines and actually looked at what they were supposed to be doing, which is representing the people and started questioning whether some of this apparatus is actually justifiable or legal or should be looked at.
And there was an effort, I mean, specifically on this spying program, there was quite a big effort by a few senators and they stood up and they were public about the fact that they were concerned that they wanted changes made to it.
But it was pushed through, because when you're talking about such powerful institutions, you can, you know, they're very useful political alliances, if you are a politician, if you have good connections with very powerful people, that is good for you.
And I think, I mean, you know, people like the FBI and the NSA are exceptionally talented at working behind the scenes.
They're very, very good at it.
And I think that's what we find happens every time.
I don't know what the solution is.
I think more people like Senator Ron Wyden, more people willing to, to stand up and, and stand up to very powerful interests would be great.
But when I think whenever it comes down to partisan politics that goes out the window.
Well, you know, just to be clear here for people who kind of maybe got lost in a little bit of this discussion, what we're talking about here is the ultimate phishing expedition, right?
We're talking about the NSA's haul, which is not bound by the Fourth Amendment whatsoever.
They get to, you know, they have a reasonable standard, much, much lower for, for kind of this, you know, mass sort of this general warrant to tap the whole internet, including Americans.
And then the FBI has access to that database to go essentially just trolling through.
I think as you put it here, they get a social security number, they type it in, and then they're just looking for what can we find to charge somebody with based on the kind of evidence collection that they do not have the right to do over us.
And that might not have happened to you or me yet.
But imagine you get caught up in that, where they just go fishing, looking for something on you and find you, which is, and find it.
I mean, this is in America, it's not supposed to be like that.
They're supposed to investigate crimes, not people in order to find a crime.
You know, this is huge.
This is everything.
Yeah, so I mean, this database is, is pulled together, it's specifically pulled together in order to look for foreign intelligence threats, i.e. people that are non-Americans outside of America.
And it's run by the NSA, and they tap an enormous amount of the global telecommunications networks are extremely good at their job.
And that has been, that's legal.
I mean, that has been approved, it's gone through Congress.
You can argue whether it should have what you can argue, there should be more constraints.
But that's that stands there, they gather it, it's legal.
And people tend to say, well, it's useful in the sense it will protect the US, where it's gone badly wrong, is through a series of ridiculous legal justifications, the FBI has access to that same database.
And they shouldn't have access to that same database, but they do.
Not only that, but because of the way they've justified it legally, the FBI doesn't have to keep track of the queries in the same way the NSA or the CIA do.
So you can get figures, the CIA looked at this database X number of times, I mean, it will release the figures, you'll get the figures out, not necessarily who has been, who has been looking at.
And also pretty much, you can say the NSA and the CIA do use it for the intent that it's supposed to be, which is looking for foreign intelligence problems.
But the FBI is clearly not doing that, and has been slowly forced over years to admit that it doesn't.
It uses it for its own investigations.
And it uses to search the database for US citizens for US crimes.
Now, from the FBI's perspective, this is great.
They suspect someone of a crime, they get a name or a telephone number or social security, and they punch it in the database, and they have this access to this vast database that they can then follow up on and search.
So the FBI, I'm fairly sure if they were to talk about this, which I wish they would, would say, well, this is an incredibly useful investigative tool.
We only ever use it to track down people that, you know, that have committed crimes.
But of course, the other argument, which I would say is a very strong argument, especially in the United States, is that you don't have right to this.
This is people's freedom.
This is people's own personal information.
And you are innocent until proven guilty and given access to the FBI to just trawl through millions of people's interactions is a step too far.
Even if occasionally it proves useful, it's a step too far.
And the problem is we're not having a discussion about that balance.
I suspect because the FBI knows that most Americans are opposed to that.
And so we're simply not having the conversation.
It won't be long now.
I mean, once the conversation starts, they're going to invoke this.
Well, we busted a couple of gangsters as their excuse since they never busted any terrorists with all this spying.
They had to admit all their illegal spying.
All they did was catch one cab driver sending some money home to Somalia.
So next, they're going to be like, well, but you know what, the NSA helped us get some stuff on the Jersey mob.
And so we're heroes.
I knew we had an excuse for using this stuff for something.
And they're going to turn this the whole argument upside down.
Unfortunately, that is true.
In a similar case, it was the whole issue with torture that the CIA carried out.
And the CIA repeatedly said that it was justified.
And they gave a series of examples of cases where they'd got information.
And then there was that very long congressional report.
I can't remember who carried it out.
And he found and put in the report, there has never, literally never happened.
There was never a situation where torture provided any useful action.
That's just a fact.
So yes, the CIA justified it by putting out, you know, not exactly correct information, incorrect information, I'd say.
And I'm pretty sure if we were to finally have a debate about this, which we should, about what the FBI is doing with this database, they will say the same.
We, it's incredibly, it's been incredibly useful.
And probably if you were finally to dig into it, you would find that actually it wasn't incredibly useful.
But who knows?
That'd be a very long process.
It will take even if it starts today will take years.
And at the end of it, we still don't still not clear whether anything would change.
So there's no doubt it'll be useful.
I mean, if they're using it this broadly, there's plenty of domestic crime, private crime that takes place in America that they will be able to invoke.
Certainly a lot more of that than legitimate material support to terrorism, which they claim to be looking for in the first place.
But you know, the thing about it, too, is when we say crime, we should also specify that that includes offenses that are no crime at all, just violations of government dictates.
This famous book by I forget which law professors from a few years ago called three felonies a day, about how everyone is in violation of federal law, everyone, and state law too, but especially the feds.
If the FBI wants to put you in prison, they can find some offenses on you, no problem.
And if they have the NSA's trash to dig through on you, your goose is cooked.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, there have been lots of instances.
You look at this, this FBI program, where they have put away numerous people, they say for terrorism, and it's been effectively sting operations, very questionable, very questionable ethics, I would argue, with some of those.
I don't quite know why that is being done or how it's being justified.
But it is it exists.
There's no doubt about it.
And yes, if you want to make a case against something, you can.
Then this database would be incredibly useful.
I would imagine tie all sorts of things together.
The question is, is that should we be living in that kind of society?
And I would say, well, number one, I would argue no.
Number two, I think that everybody knows that Americans broadly wouldn't agree as well, which is why we don't have public discussion about it.
Because I think if it was open and public, the majority, the vast majority of Americans say, well, of course, there's crime, but this goes too far.
Well, I sure hope you're right about that.
There was a poll came out yesterday about how the left and the right all hate the First Amendment.
It goes way too far in protecting people's freedom, don't you know?
So that's the society right now.
We are living in very interesting times.
And, you know, this spying program is just one example of how it is we're not playing on the level.
And I no wonder people are getting upset and angry with one another, because a lot of this is duplicitous.
People are saying one thing and doing another.
And we all know about it.
And then people will stand up and tell you that that's not true.
It's very maddening.
There are very few straight shooters these days.
And at the same time, this is a clear abuse of people's personal information.
And it shouldn't be happening.
And everybody knows that it is.
And I can't see how it's going to change.
So that is inherently infuriating.
Well, something's going to change.
I think it'll probably get worse.
But something's going to change.
No, seriously, thank you very much for sticking your neck out and doing such great reporting on this very important issue here, Kieran.
Well, I'll keep doing it somewhere along the line.
Hopefully something will change.
Yeah.
Well, that's what it takes.
It's that kind of work.
So really appreciate it a lot.
Everybody, that is Kieran McCarthy from San Francisco, writing in The Register, theregister.co.uk.
Remember, the FBI's promise it wasn't abusing the NSA's data on U.S. citizens?
Well, guess what?
Thank you again.
Thank you.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
