Biden Signs Expansion Of Warrantless Surveillance Program

President Biden has signed an expansion of Section 702 of FISA – a powerful tool that gives the government the ability to spy on digital communications without a warrant. FISA has been abused constantly over the years to spy on activists, journalists, and sometimes even members of Congress. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

Link - https://www.wired.com/story/section-702-reauthorization-expansion/

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

President Biden has signed an expansion of Section 702 of FISA. It's a powerful tool that gives the government the ability to spy on digital communications without a warrant. FISA's has been abused constantly over the years. We all know about it. It's been used to spy on Americans. They've had hearing, after hearing, after hearing, where they've proven that it's not just foreign agents they're looking at. They're looking at Americans. They're looking at mom and pop with these mechanisms. Pick it up from there.
Yeah. So now we get this not just a reauthorization of 702, but the expansion of it. And that is what is so horrifying here, right? We're more than 20 years past when we launched this war on Terror with the Patriot Act and the domestic spying operations. We've ended those conflicts and we're still doing this. This doesn't make any sense. And I think that's what Americans need to understand is if we've ended our war on terror, if we're the winners of that conflict, why are we still doing this today? Why are we still allowing the federal government to sit there spy on us? Labor unions, environmental activists, protestors of any kind on both sides of the isle.
Journalists.
Journalists, members of Congress have been swept up in this.
Yes, yes.
And what they do, and what this expansion allows them to do to a larger degree, is if they get this information about an American citizen, they hold it. They don't use it.
50 years.
Years until they need it. Right. 50 years they can hold it now. And so when it does come out, oh, well this guy's causing a lot of trouble for the corporations. He's a union activist. Let's see if his name is in the 702 database. They search for it and then they destroy the people.
Farron, it's even worse than that. Okay. That's bad enough. But what this also does is it broadens the definition of what electronic service provider is. Okay. If you're taking a look at what they mean by this, it's virtually anybody who has anything having to do with storing information about you or about me. It could be virtually any entity that stores information. That's how far this has expanded. They're trying to say, well, it's not just the tech companies that we're gonna warlord over. It's gonna be anybody. Could be your local cleaner that stores information on the folks that come in there and get their laundry taken care of. It could be anybody. And that's the expansion where it's called the ECSP. It's the electronic service providers, basically in the country. And this opens the door to all of them. They're all gonna be somebody, hey, when the NSA calls, you better give us that information. Right?
Yeah. And people, if you think well, oh no, it's only for people that have contacts with outside foreign people that are targets. Go back and look at the hearings where innocent Americans have been swept up in this every single year. It can happen to you and it may have already happened to you.
Well, you're gonna get the comments, oh, well, I'm not worried about it. I'm not doing anything wrong. That is so childlike thinking. I mean, think of how childlike thinking that is. I'm not doing anything wrong, therefore, what am I worried about? Right.
Yeah.
That is somebody who hasn't taken a civics class, hasn't taken a history class, and has really low information about what the government is capable of doing.