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Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and get the finger that FDR we know Al Qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else except as a fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, 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 then there's going to be an invasion.
Aren't you guys introducing Brian Sadie.
He is the author of a three book series called rackets, which is about the legalization of drugs, gambling, and the decriminalization of prostitution as well.
And you can check out his website at Brian Sadie comments to a's and Sadie Brian Sadie calm and he's on Twitter as well.
Alright, so very important article.
We ran it here at anti war.com.
With the shutdown over, the government can go back to suppressing your rights.
Now I haven't caught up with the latest news this morning.
Maybe there's another shutdown again, although those things are mostly meaningless.
I know you know that they never stopped suppressing our rights just because the government was shut down.
What do they shut down the National Parks for a weekend or something?
Anyway, welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Oh, I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, anything that could possibly be considered a service, maybe would be suspended in a government shutdown.
As Chief Wiggum says on the Simpsons, we're powerless to help you not to harm you.
Yeah, Mark's like, I thought you said you couldn't do anything for me.
He's like, ah, technicality.
Okay, so now what are we talking about here?
The FISA reauthorization act of 2017, extending the controversial section 702 program.
I think I'm already bored.
Make this exciting.
Tell me what's going on.
Okay.
Well, let's see, where do I start?
Basically, it had to do with specifically the 702 program.
And what that is, that's, that's a program that allows the NSA to monitor different, quote unquote, targets.
It's no longer a matter of if they're a foreign agent or a terrorist.
It's just to look for any sort of foreign intelligence.
So that could be, you know, any business person, political activist, etc.
And most Americans, they have that exact same reaction.
I don't really care.
How does this affect me?
That's when people really start to care.
Yeah.
And as soon as you say section 702, man, that implies I have to learn about section 701 and 703 also, right?
I don't want to do that.
Well, it gives you an idea.
You're not going to make me read legalese, are you?
Right.
It just gives an idea of just how broad their searching and surveilling capabilities are.
And again, that's just what's on the books, not what actually goes on in real life.
Yeah.
But so the way that works is, so any American who has contact with any of these quote unquote targets, and again, it's this incredibly expansive definition of who can be a target.
Your information is stored in a database there with the NSA, and they have access to look in, listen to your records, read your emails.
It's not just a privacy matter.
But it's also a law enforcement matter.
So the FBI has access to all of this information, which again, we don't know how long it's stored potentially forever, probably is the case.
And they can then pass that information forward to whatever law enforcement agency that they think is appropriate.
And not only that, if you are charged with a crime, from the information that is in that database, they don't have to tell you that that's how that happens.
They have this sneaky process that's called parallel construction.
It's a nice little lawyer ease kind of term.
But I think a really good explanation came from a foreign, I'm sorry, a former DA agent who described the process as money laundering for evidence, but you can disguise the origin of an investigation.
And again, you don't have you don't have a right to that information in a court of law.
And just to basically, there's a few things I'd like to say, if, if this kind of program was public information, and let's say it was going on in Venezuela, Russia, you know, one of our geopolitical rivals, I can guarantee that, you know, most of the members of Congress, they'd be slamming the table, they'd be talking about how we have to have economic sanctions, you know, we, you know, we have to defend the civil liberties of the Venezuelan people, or wherever this hypothetical program is taking place.
But in our own country, whenever, whenever these things go about, all we do is we give more power to the government.
And it's a long cycle of abuse.
Where we have, you know, the public when when Edward Snowden leaks came out, the public and the media, they get really outraged.
But then when it actually comes time for Congress to go in there and exert some pressure, you know, reform, these types of these types of abuses, the exact opposite occurs, and we give more power to the government.
If you don't mind, I would kind of like to go back in time a little bit.
You know, again, most most people aren't familiar with that term 702.
And it's just part of this long road of that same cycle that I'm talking about.
The FISA court that came about in 1978.
And that was really a reaction to, you know, Watergate, FBI and CIA spying programs that was supposed to, you know, that was supposed to set everything in place.
And that, that started out to where this FISA court, they could only enter, they could only give the government the power to surveil if, if the suspected target was a foreign agent or a suspected terrorist.
Then came along the Bush administration, and the scandal with stellar wind program came about, or, like I should say, became public information that scandal surfaced, where it turned out that the Bush administration, they were doing warrantless wiretapping of, you know, roughly 500 Americans or so.
And that alone, you know, he, you know, he, each, each wireless warrant was, you know, he could have about 20 years in prison.
I think that's the term for each one of those wireless warrants for each one of those wireless warrants.
But instead of, you know, punishing this type of crime, what Congress did in 2008, they set up the 702 program, which enabled that basically legalized that sort of corruption and then gave the government more power.
And so in other words, this 702 program, it was just reauthorized.
There were a few people and again, not everyone in Congress is morally corrupt.
Rand Paul tried to filibuster it.
Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, they tried to filibuster it.
And this was again, this was on the day after Martin Luther King Day.
But eventually, in a bipartisan manner, Congress, they did authorize this.
The one thing that they tried to point to was a reform where they said that, well, if, if the FBI is going to go and look at this information, they have to get a warrant.
And that's sort of how the news portrayed it.
But in reality, the only actual reform that was made, was it says if the FBI, if if you're currently under investigation of a crime, then the FBI has to get a warrant.
But if you're not under investigation, they don't have to get a warrant.
So I could give a basic example.
So that's a really important distinction, right?
It's just like the exclusionary rule.
The exclusionary rule doesn't say the cops can't break into your house without a warrant and take stuff.
It says that if they do that, they can't use that stuff in court against you later.
So it's the same kind of thing here.
Oh, no, you're not under investigation.
We're just spying on you, not investigating you.
Right.
So think about it, you know, most people, you know, they're, they're law abiding citizens.
But let's say their neighbor is a member of, you know, the Sinaloa cartel, they are a notorious gangster, and their neighbor is under investigation.
So in that, in that example, the FBI has to get a warrant to spy on them, or to use that information for their, you know, for their investigation.
But you, the law abiding citizen, you know, they can go through whatever records that they have in that database.
And now, so let me let me reiterate this just to make sure that I understand it and make sure everybody's clear what we're talking about here.
The NSA, with a very low standard, can, they can tap anything outside of the United States that they want.
And they can tap anything inside the United States that they can claim by the most broadest definition that they make up only is relevant.
And they've argued that relevant means basically anything.
And we know that they tap all international calls in and out of this country, and that kind of thing.
And so, but now what you're saying is, and I think Americans, by and large, go, you know what, the NSA can't prosecute me, right?
So if they're spying on me, and they know about me, like, who really cares?
Because they're the military, sort of, and their only job is messing with, with people overseas and all that.
So it's not really a problem.
But now you're saying, nope, the federal cops now have access, the FBI has access to everything the NSA sweeps up.
And they can just surreptitiously go about, basically go on a fishing expedition against anyone that they choose, find something that they can turn into a prosecutable offense.
And then, as you say, do this parallel construction, where they pretend that they came about whatever evidence by some other means, so that you can't even challenge it in court.
And then off you go.
And this to me, I mean, I don't know, there's a lot of different things you could put in this place.
But it doesn't seem like this goes to the very core of American freedom.
And whether we have any left or not, whether there's actually anything exceptional left about living in this society, you know, isn't this the place where, hey, you can't do this?
People, you say, hey, this is America.
And that just kind of implied, it just meant they didn't have to finish the sentence.
That meant, hey, there's a limit on what you can do to me, dude.
You know, but now that's just over.
Right.
Well, and I kind of would like to point out one other thing.
This isn't new.
As far as that parallel construction aspect, again, as far as public information, this is what's been dragged out from the government through freedom of information requests.
That goes back to 1992.
The DA's used it, the IRS has used it, that those are the two that we know of.
But again, the FBI can pass that information on to any law enforcement agency that they deem appropriate.
So this was the opportunity for Congress to do something about it.
Again, and this is what I like to point to, it's that cycle of the outrage.
When the Snowden leaks came out, I mean, that was pretty much universal outrage.
But again, when it actually comes time to reform it, most people didn't, this whole 702 thing didn't really come through their newsfeed.
Or if they did, most media outlets didn't really give it a lot of attention.
But there's just multiple aspects to it.
A lot of folks, the point that you were touching upon earlier, the basic privacy issue.
Most people think, oh, what are they going to do?
They're going to listen to my phone calls.
I don't really care.
And that there is, you know, there's something to that as well.
In many cases, the NSA, they have abused those privileges.
There's actually a term in the intelligence community where it's called Love Int, short for love intelligence, where they spy upon their lovers or wannabe lovers.
And, you know, nobody really ever faces any serious consequences for this.
And there's just numerous, there's so many of these scandals.
And in fact, there was a scandal that was revealed on the same day that this bill was signed into law.
And going back to what I was talking about with the Bush era, warrantless wire tap scandal, the NSA was supposed to hold on to all that information, because there's pending lawsuits, you know, that are in the courts.
But they revealed that accidentally that information had been deleted.
And that was on the same day that this, that this FISA bill was reauthorized.
Amazing, huh?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's just, it's just this constant lack of credibility on their part, but we continue to give more and more power.
And when you're talking, again, that subject of the average American, the thing that's really always bothered me is that public opinion on this issue, it switches by administration administration.
So in other words, if you're a Democrat, and there's a Republican in office poll show, that's when you care about this issue, because you fear the power of the government, when it's the when it's the opposition party in power, and vice versa.
If you're a Republican, that's when you really care about, you know, the NSA spying issues when the other parties empower you.
You know, that's fair enough.
That would be fair enough if the whole society was 20 or something.
And yet, but haven't you been through a few administrations back and forth right now and see how this works or what?
Yeah, right.
In other words, yeah, exactly.
Bush and Obama, they basically, they at least publicly, they pay lip service to civil liberties, they at least pretended.
And you would think that, you know, with this Trump administration, he's not even pretending that that would, that would at least change a little bit of this narrative.
And the other thing is, again, the biggest proponent of signing this bill was Nunez.
And you know, all of the controversy that's going on there with the FISA courts, yet at the same time, you're using that narrative that the government's abusing its power for in domestic spying, and we got to give them, we got to give them more power.
And the cycle just continues on and on.
Yeah, you know what, man?
Sorry to interrupt, but it's sort of relevant, kind of.
Did you read the article about James Madison, the Washington Post yesterday?
And now his job is reigning in Trump on this and that.
And so, you know, and one thing, it's like he's reigning him in on Iran.
Trump wants options to shoot up Iran's little fiberglass speedboats in the Persian Gulf.
And Madison says, yeah, I'll get to that and then never does get to that.
And so we go, wow, thank goodness we have this adult here to temper our dear leaders moods or whatever.
But then at the end of the article, it's Trump saying, yeah, but why do we even have troops in Somalia anyway?
I don't want to have troops.
What if we just pull them out?
Why don't, geez, you guys want troops all across North Africa too?
You guys want me to have troops everywhere.
And, you know, this is hearsay in the Washington Post.
I don't know.
But in the story, Mattis says, well, we're trying to prevent a terrorist from attacking Times Square.
When, of course, everybody knows the Times Square attack was direct retaliation for the drone war in Pakistan against the Tariki Taliban that had never attacked us before or since, by the way.
But anyway, and then he says, we don't have a choice.
He says you don't have a choice, Mr. President.
This is it.
And I don't know exactly how you take that.
It sounds like he's just saying, oh, because we must keep denying safe havens or else they'll come after us.
You know, but then again, you could also read that like, you know what, the Marine Corps is here to stay and you're not.
So this is, this is our jobs program and we're not giving it up.
Right.
The military industrial complex isn't going anywhere.
Your administration has a finite end.
But yeah, and that's that we don't have to sacrifice our civil liberties and still maintain basic national security.
Again, that's what I'm talking about.
It's that mission creep.
The original FISA law was just, it was just suspected terrorists or foreign agents.
And then when the scandals unfolded, we expanded the definition in these programs so that we didn't have to actually punish any wrongdoers.
I think a really interesting example is Ricardo Martinelli.
Most people are not familiar with that name.
He's the former president of Panama, and he lives in Miami.
And he's facing extradition for a domestic spying scandal.
And he'll probably go, he'll probably be extradited.
Now there's, there's all kinds of politics behind that.
He has business ties to Trump.
In particular, he was really the biggest proponent for Trump's Ocean Tower, I think that's what it's called, which was basically a money laundering club for Colombian cartels and Russian organized crime.
So there's, there's that backdrop.
But again, I like to give that example of when it happens in our own country, we're really blind to this stuff.
But when we see it in another country, you know, of course, that guy, he was engaged in domestic spying, he should go to prison.
But again, in our own country, we give more power to the government.
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Well, and you know, here's part of the thing too.
And we're seeing this with Trump, where it's kind of not even a secret, right?
There's the famous quote from Charles Schumer.
And he's saying, you can't cross the intelligence community.
They have 10 ways from Sunday for getting back at you.
So you dare not.
And he wasn't saying yes, this is something we all live with as representatives.
He was like speaking for them threatening Trump, or like being like, you know, kind of a cynical warning that like, hey, let me tell you something, buddy, you know, not that I like you or anything, but let me do you a favor here.
Don't you cross the CIA, they'll crucify your ass.
And it's like, really?
I mean, even out of the mouth of a senator whose entire job at should be at the very minimum, keeping up the pretense that he's the boss, not the CIA, you know, right, right.
And the thing is, there, there have been NSA whistleblower, again, what I'm talking about here is just the letter of the law.
I'm not talking about what actually goes on beyond it.
I mean, there have been whistleblowers who have talked about this type of stuff.
One of them is Bill Binney.
And he's on Fox News all the time now, again, because it helps, it helps, you know, that narrative.
Now they want to use the deep state narrative now that it sort of helps the Republican Party.
But you know, again, that will fade out when when there's a Democrat back in office.
But one of the things that Bill Binney and a number of other NSA whistleblowers have said is that basically, all of your communications are tapped everything, not just it's not just these things that we're debating about the letter of the law.
And that goes back to, well, there's a different whistleblower, in particular, Russell Tice.
And he said, specifically, when going back to when Barack Obama was just a state senator, that he was monitored, he mentioned, you know, US Supreme Court judges.
But basically, it's, you know, it's Hoover on steroids, you know, now with all this technology, you have so much more power than the days of Hoover.
So yeah, I think exactly.
You're saying like, Schumer, there's cracking the whip saying get back in line, get back on, you know, every little bit of your personal information can be taken out of context.
And again, I'm no fan of Trump at all.
But you know, if this stuff goes forward, you know, it has to be done in a principle way, you get to set a precedent, you can't just can't just, you know, do illegal spying to gain your evidence.
Yeah.
And there should be a lesson for the right here.
You know, when the CIA apparently accidentally turned over their own honest internal investigation of the torture program to the Senate investigators, and then they got mad that the Senate investigators had it the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and then the CIA tried to sick the FBI on the staffers and have them prosecuted for this.
In other words, they were really taking on Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee on this torture issue as though the CIA is a separate and equal branch of government alongside the President, the Senate and the courts themselves.
And when their job, you know, whatever you think of Dianne Feinstein, or Trump or any of these people, right is to say yes, ma'am to her.
Her name is ma'am to them, period, full stop.
She's the boss, not them, or else the Constitution is completely meaningless.
And yet, you see how brave Brennan acted against her.
And but the Republicans didn't defend her then.
And now look at him, where you have these exact same people were the ones who began this investigation against Donald Trump and tried.
I think the Republican narrative here is, is, you know, more or less correct that these guys decided that we're going to prevent this guy from being elected.
And then when that didn't work, they decided they were going to trump up this Russia BS to try to bring them down early.
And you know, see themselves as the guardians of, I wouldn't give them as much credit as to say us, but they thought that he was really a threat to the order of federal power and American global power.
He had bad mouth NATO a little bit.
So just where anti NATO fools believed in him for that reason, these people were terrified of him that he actually meant any of the things that he said about what, you know, his foreign policy was going to be when he expressed some reservations.
I'm sorry, I was gonna say the thing that I've never understood is, I mean, again, if you look at it, there's all kinds of just normal criminal investigations that you could go into his, his background there.
I mean, it's pretty well above board.
But the whole Russia hacking narrative, again, I still haven't seen any real evidence of that.
So yeah, that yeah, exactly.
That whole thing has mystified me.
And again, exactly.
We have to set if you're going to go through this process, you have to set an appropriate president precedent, it has to be done appropriate manner.
And the Democrats, they're all for this, you know, abuse of power to get him out of there.
But what happens when a Democrat gets back in office, and then the Republican, you know, military, industrial state or whatever term you want to use when when, when they don't like that guy, and then, you know, and they can abuse whatever rules possible and use all that power to push their guy out of all it's, it's really a scary process.
And kind of to get back to what we're really talking about is, if this can happen, you know, to people at a high level of power, you can only imagine what happens to the average person who can't fight back against the power of the federal government.
Yeah.
And yeah, it really is too bad about the partisanship and how crippling that is, when especially with the Snowden leak, you know, people, it's been a little while since I've talked about this, but if you just type in FF, pardon me, EFF for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF and NSA, and you will find the full collection of every Snowden document that's ever been released and every accompanying news story that came with it when they published it.
And any of us can go through there, learn about this, see just how bad it is, see all of James Bamford's terrible, and I mean that in a good way, reporting about how horrible all this stuff is, you know, all confirmed and in spades in all the Snowden documents and see the extent of this.
I mean, we ought to be able to mobilize all of American public opinion, left, right, libertarian and everybody else that this is way crossing the line.
It's by far an issue, absolutely, across the board.
Well, I'll give you the one concession that they made.
It was about what they called about information, and it can get really complex.
But to try and be overly simple, if somebody mentions somebody who's a target, that used to be something that they could collect.
And with enough pressure, that was something that NSA decided to publicly and the about collection.
But with this new bill, and again, I'm not a lawyer, but I've read different legal experts.
They say with the wording and the language of this new bill, that that reopened that, that hope the one the one concession that they were willing to make, at least publicly.
Yeah, it's really, it's really disturbing.
All right, man.
Well, listen, I'm sorry, because instead of ranting and raving at you this whole time, I really should have spared time because I wanted to ask you about this article to Ted Cruz further militarizing Mexico's drug war is a horrible idea, but that's gonna have to wait till next time because I gotta go.
But this has really been great.
I really appreciate your time on the show.
And I hope we talk about that.
That would be great.
All right, good deal.
Okay, guys, that is Brian Sadie.
Check him out at anti war.com here.
The article is with the shutdown over the government can go back to suppressing your rights.
And he's the author of a three book series rackets about legalizing drugs, gambling and prostitution, which is great.
The website is Brian Sadie.
Again, that's two A's and Sadie Brian Sadie.com and you guys know me, man.com etc.
You know what is
