America faces a Great Big Ugly Surveillance State

Trump's March executive order on "Eliminating Information Silos" seems designed to enable a Great Big Ugly Surveillance State.

Great Big Ugly Surveillance State | Ron Paul Institute | Ron Paul:

June 16, 2025 - "On March 20, President Trump signed an executive order 'Eliminating Information Silos.' The order directed heads of federal agencies to make sure officials designated by the president 'have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems.' The executive order did not attract much attention until it was more recently revealed that the administration was working with tech company Palantir to create a database containing all information collected by all federal agencies on all US citizens.

"A database consisting of all the information of American citizens collected by the various federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Pentagon would be a major step in creating a total surveillance state. This database could come in handy to future Dr. Faucis seeking to enforce mask and vaccine mandates. 

"Those with access to this database could see personal health records, education records, and tax returns. They may even be able to see how many firearms individuals have purchased and if they were associated with any organizations the government had labeled 'extremist.'

"Despite the obvious threat to liberty the 'big ugly database' poses, some commentators and 'influencers' who would normally oppose, or at least be skeptical of, expansion of the surveillance state are supporting it because they believe it will be used to locate illegal immigrants. Some conservatives are supporting this proposal because it will help identify students who have publicly opposed the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Ironically, many of those supporting government cracking down on 'anti-Israel' students came to fame (and in some cases fortune) as critics of 'wokeness' and cancel culture.

"The abandonment of liberty because fear drives people to trust government promises of safety is a phenomenon we have witnessed several times.... An obvious example is the way many former friends of freedom supported the PATRIOT Act and other infringements on liberty following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. We also saw it during the covid hysteria when many embraced mask and vaccine mandates. Following the 2008 market meltdown, normally rather staunch opponents of government intervention supported the bailouts because they agreed with then-President George W. Bush who said he had 'abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.'

"Palantir, founded in 2003, has worked on helping government become more efficient at collecting and storing information about US citizens. The company, which was named after the seeing stones from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, is ... literally the creation of the surveillance state since one of its early investors was In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm controlled by the CIA.

"Those discouraged by the surveillance state’s continued expansion under President Trump should be encouraged that more Americans than ever, including many who voted for President Trump, are seeing through the lie that the only way we can be safe is to surrender our liberty to politicians, bureaucrats, and crony capitalism. This should inspire us to redouble our efforts to spread the message of liberty."

Copyright © 2025 The Ron Paul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Read more: https://ronpaulinstitute.org/great-big-ugly-surveillance-state/

REAL ID enables real authoritarianism

REAL ID: Phony Security, Real Authoritarianism | Ron Paul Institute | Ron Paul:

April 21, 2025 - "Those who hoped the second Trump Administration would reject big spending, war, and restrictions on liberty continue to be disappointed. A new disappointment came when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced her department would in May begin enforcing the REAL ID law.

Ron Paul, 2007, Photo: R.D. Young. CC BY 2.0 Wikimedia Commons.

"Passed in 2005, the REAL ID Act created federal standards for driver’s licenses. The law requires everyone applying for a driver’s license to provide the DMV with his social security number, proof of legal residence, and two proofs of his home address. 

"The REAL ID Act allows the Homeland Security Department to mandate, as it sees fit, the including of addition[al] items in the related government database, including 'biometric' identifiers. Biometric identifiers include personal data such as retina scans, fingerprints, and DNA.

"People who doubt that this database will be used to violate the rights of US citizens should ask what a present-day J. Edgar Hoover — a former FBI director who was notorious for collecting private information on politicians and other prominent individuals — would do with a database containing personal and even biometric information on American citizens. They should also consider the IRS’s history of targeting presidents’ political opponents. 

"Americans also have the threat of violations of their rights by hackers. The government has a poor track record of protecting data of US citizens.

"REAL ID’s supporters deny the law turns state driver’s licenses into national ID cards because states have no mandate to implement REAL ID. However, citizens of any state that refuses to adopt REAL ID will be unable to use their state-issued IDs for boarding an airplane or riding on a train. Once the initial uses of REAL ID are established, the government will then require REAL ID for other activities. For instance, local transportation authorities may be offered federal funds to implement REAL ID requirements for public transportation. 

"Several pro-Second Amendment organizations oppose REAL ID because it could be used to monitor gun owners. There is nothing in the law prohibiting a future progressive Homeland Security secretary from requiring REAL ID for a firearms purchase. Imposing a REAL ID mandate on gun ownership would further the authoritarian objective of having a database containing the name and address of, and how many and what type of firearms are owned by, every law-abiding gun owner in the country.

"REAL ID also menaces health freedom. One of the few victories for liberty during the covid hysteria was the failure of 'vaccine passport' schemes to be more widely imposed. These schemes attempted to forbid people from returning to their normal lives unless they proved they were 'fully vaccinated' against covid.

"REAL ID was marketed as a weapon in the 'war on terror.' However, Thomas Massie, the most consistent and courageous defender of liberty in the House of Representatives, pointed out that 9-11 hijackers used passports from their own countries.... 

"Like most post-9-11 security bills, REAL ID does nothing to protect the American people’s safety. It does, though, do much to endanger their liberty. REAL ID could even be the final piece of the transformation of America into a total surveillance society where government monitors, and thus controls, our actions. Americans who understand the danger must work to get the Trump administration to reverse its position."

Copyright © 2025 The Ron Paul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Read more: https://ronpaulinstitute.org/real-id-phony-security-real-authoritarianism/

Secretive UK govt unit surveilled Covid scientists

The UK government's secretive Counter-Disinformation Unit was used during the pandemic to monitor social media posts critical of lockdowns and Covid vaccination of children, including some by prominent scientists.

Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent |  The Telegraph - Investigations team and Tony Diver,

June 2, 2023 - "A secretive government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of controversial lockdown policies during the pandemic, The Telegraph can reveal. The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to tackle supposed domestic 'threats', and was used to target those critical of lockdown and questioning the mass vaccination of children. Critics of lockdown had posts removed from social media. There is growing suspicion that social media firms used technology to stop the posts being promoted, circulated or widely shared after being flagged by the CDU or its counterpart in the Cabinet Office.

"Documents revealed under Freedom of Information (FoI) and data protection requests showed that the activities of prominent critics of the Government’s Covid policies were secretly monitored. An artificial intelligence firm (AI) was used by the Government to scour social media sites. The company flagged discussions opposing vaccine passports. Many of the issues being raised were valid at the time and have since been proven to be well-founded. The BBC also took part in secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation. 

"On Friday, MPs and freedom of speech campaigners condemned the disclosures as 'truly chilling' and 'a tool for censoring British citizens akin to those of the Chinese Communist Party.... In America, Twitter has released similar information showing how the US government also introduced a secretive programme to curtail discussion of Covid lockdowns.

"It can now be revealed that the activities of Prof Carl Heneghan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), were monitored by government disinformation units. Molly Kingsley, who set up a campaign to keep schools open during the pandemic, also had her social activity monitored....

"The CDU, which is still operating, was embedded in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The department has 'trusted flagger' status at social media companies including Facebook and Twitter, which means that requests for content to be removed are fast-tracked for consideration. In some cases, individuals whose social media posts were recorded by the units have subsequently faced sanctions by Twitter and Facebook. Ministers denied asking for posts by Prof Heneghan, Dr de Figueiredo or Ms Kingsley to be removed....

"The Government also ran a Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum, which brought together civil servants from the DCMS and technology giants - including Facebook and Google - as well as the BBC to discuss how to limit the spread of what was considered Covid-19 disinformation.....  The Lockdown Files, published by The Telegraph earlier this year, revealed that Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, repeatedly lobbied Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and now a Facebook executive, about vaccine misinformation.

"The CDU was established in 2019 and was focused on the European elections before turning to focus on the pandemic. During Covid, the unit worked closely with the Cabinet Office’s now defunct RRU, whose responsibilities included tackling 'purported "experts" issuing dangerous misinformation'. The RRU has admitted in an FoI obtained by Big Brother Watch and passed to The Telegraph that it made requests for social media posts to be taken down....

"A government spokesman said: 'The unit’s purpose is to track narratives and trends using publicly available information online to protect public health and national security. It has never tracked the activity of individuals and has a blanket ban on referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms. None of the people named in this report were ever referred to social media platforms by the Government and any claim otherwise is objectively false.' A BBC spokesman said the broadcaster attended the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum in an observer-only capacity."

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/02/counter-disinformation-unit-government-covid-lockdown/

How the British government manipulated social media to suppress opposition to its COVID-19 policies | History Debunked | June 3, 2023:

E-Verify could be a Trojan horse

 E-Verify Is Deeply Dangerous | Brownstone Institute - El Gato Malo:

May 11, 2023 - "The e-verify program is one of those subtle Trojan Horses that government is so good at. It starts with a widely perceived problem that has widespread support: that the country is full of illegal workers. Whether or not this is actually a problem is a matter that can be debated, but ... [t]he relevant bit is that it’s popularly seen as such in many quarters.

"The solution looks simple: create e-verify. All employers are required to check citizenship/work eligibility when hiring. It seems simple, straightforward, and people will support it because it does not harm them, it keeps others from competing with them. we’re simply solving the problem of 'stop flooding into work, there are no jobs for you any more.' (Well, except in agriculture which is being carved out)....

"But there is a much more subtle twist here: it’s a classic trojan framing. You lose the minute you wheel this thing in. You have already surrendered, you just don’t know it yet. 'There is this seemingly simple thing you want' is dangled, but what it’s really doing is turning a right into a privilege and gathering the power to administer that privilege into the hands of an unelected, unaccountable government agency run by people you have never heard of and probably never will.

"I will remind you of Coyote’s Law: 'Before granting any power to government, first imagine that power wielded by the politician you hate most, because one day, it will be.' Try applying that here. You’re going to give a federal agency an individualized on/off switch for employment for everyone. Sure, you might like this one thing that they do with it, but what else might they use it for soon? Rep. Thomas Massie speculates.... [see video] 

"I certainly cannot disagree. My only quibble is that I fear that this is the optimistic case and that this tool will inevitably expand in use to become a full-blown instrument of social credit systems and systems of social control.... 

• You cannot hire her. She is an undesirable for her political views.
• You cannot hire him. You are behind on your diversity requirements.
• You cannot hire a new worker, inflation is too high.
• You cannot hire at all. We don’t like you.

"Every scary thing that can be said about government-run digital currency also applies to government control over who may be hired.  And if you think once they have made this a privilege managed by central control that they will not immediately start the mission creep or commence dreaming up a new crisis to justify massive expansion into some new area be it vaccines or DEI or who knows what, well, you should call your history teacher and ask for your money back.... 

"You’ve seen the slavering desire to shift, alter and force this sort of 'We get to decide who gets to go where and get what' all through government in everything from college admissions to hiring to lending. Do you really want to hand a tool this potent to people like that and trust that they will 'only use it to do nice things?'...

It’s always easy to get suckered into these things with a sympathetic use case. 'We’re just banning pro-Nazi speech!' sounds fine. Few want to hear it. Fewer will stand up for Nazis. But once you grant the power for such a ban, you have given up your right to free speech. The rest is just a negotiation about the terms of your censorship.... 

"Want to play again with your livelihood? This is not a wooden equid that should be allowed within the gates. Not now. Not ever. No on e-verify."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/e-verify-is-deeply-dangerous/

E-Verify Will Be Used to Surveil Americans | Free the People | Guest: Rep. Thomas Massie | May 19, 2023: 

UK military spied on lockdown sceptics

"A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government's Covid lockdown policies," reports the Daily Mail.

Army spied on lockdown critics: Sceptics, including our own Peter Hitchens, long suspected they were under surveillance. Now we've obtained official records that prove they were right all along | Daily Mail - Glen Owen:

January 28, 2023 - "Military operatives in the UK's 'information warfare' brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response. They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No 10.

"Documents obtained by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, and shared exclusively with this newspaper, exposed the work of Government cells such as the Counter Disinformation Unit, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office. But the most secretive is the MoD's 77th Brigade, which deploys 'non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of adversaries'. According to a whistleblower who worked for the brigade during the lockdowns, ...  British citizens' social media accounts were scrutinised – a sinister activity that the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing.

"Papers show the outfits were tasked with countering 'disinformation' and 'harmful narratives... from purported experts', with civil servants and artificial intelligence deployed to 'scrape' social media for keywords such as 'ventilators' that would have been of interest. The information was then used to orchestrate Government responses to criticisms of policies such as the stay-at-home order, when police were given power to issue fines and break up gatherings. It also allowed Ministers to push social media platforms to remove posts and promote Government-approved lines....

"Mail on Sunday journalist Mr Hitchens was monitored after sharing an article, based on leaked NHS papers, which claimed data used to publicly justify lockdown was incomplete. An internal Rapid Response Unit email said Mr Hitchens wanted to 'further [an] anti-lockdown agenda and influence the Commons vote'. Writing today, Mr Hitchens ... says: 'The most astonishing thing about the great Covid panic was how many attacks the state managed to make on basic freedoms without anyone much even caring, let alone protesting. Now is the time to demand a full and powerful investigation into the dark material Big Brother Watch has bravely uncovered.'

"The whistleblower from 77 Brigade, which uses both regular and reserve troops, said: 'I developed the impression the Government were more interested in protecting the success of their policies than uncovering any potential foreign interference, and I regret that I was a part of it. Frankly, the work I was doing should never have happened.' The source also suggested that the Government was so focused on monitoring critics it may have missed genuine Chinese-led prolockdown campaigns.

"Silkie Carlo, of Big Brother Watch, said: 'This is an alarming case of mission creep, where public money and military power have been misused to monitor academics, journalists, campaigners and MPs who criticised the Government, particularly during the pandemic.... Contrary to their stated aims, these Government truth units are secretive and harmful to our democracy. The Counter Disinformation Unit should be suspended immediately and subject to a full investigation.'"

Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11687675/Army-spied-lockdown-critics-Sceptics-including-Peter-Hitchens-suspected-watched.html

Surgeon General wants social media users' data

Vivek Murthy's Demand for Data on COVID 'Misinformation' Is Part of a Creepy Crusade to Suppress Dissent | Reason - Jacob Sullum:

March 3, 2022 - "Last July, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory that called for a 'whole-of-society' effort to combat the 'urgent threat to public health' posed by 'health misinformation.' Today Murthy asked tech companies to do their part by turning over data on 'COVID-19 misinformation,' including its sources and its propagation through search engines, social media platforms, instant messaging services, and e-commerce sites, by May 2. 

"While Murthy himself has no power to compel disclosure of that information, the companies have strong incentives to cooperate, since the Biden administration can make life difficult for them by filing lawsuits, writing regulations, and supporting new legislation. President Joe Biden has endorsed the campaign to suppress 'misinformation,' going so far as to accuse social media platforms of 'killing people' by allowing the spread of anti-vaccine messages. Murthy's advisory, which defines misinformation to include statements that he deems 'misleading' even when they are arguably or verifiably true, says the battle against it might include 'appropriate legal and regulatory measures.'

"All of this is more than a little creepy in a country where people have a constitutional right to express their opinions, even when they are outlandish and ill-founded. It is especially chilling given the administration's highly elastic definition of misinformation, which includes criticism of controversial pronouncements by agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC itself has a long track record of misrepresenting scientific evidence and misleading the public..

"'Defining "misinformation" is a challenging task, and any definition has limitations,' Murthy concedes in his advisory. 'One key issue is whether there can be an objective benchmark for whether something qualifies as misinformation. Some researchers argue that for something to be considered misinformation, it has to go against "scientific consensus." Others consider misinformation to be information that is contrary to the "best available evidence." Both approaches recognize that what counts as misinformation can change over time with new evidence and scientific consensus. This Advisory prefers the "best available evidence" benchmark since claims can be highly misleading and harmful even if the science on an issue isn't yet settled.' 

"What does that mean in practice?... Remember that 'what counts as misinformation can change over time.' So if you questioned the evidence in favor of general masking during the first few months of the pandemic, that was not misinformation, because it was consistent with the CDC's position at the time. It was also consistent with advice from Murthy's predecessor as surgeon general, Jerome Adams, who in February 2020 declared that masks 'are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching' COVID-19. 

"But after the CDC began recommending general masking on April 4, 2020, saying anything like that suddenly became misinformation. That September, then–CDC Director Robert Redfield declared ... that masks were more effective as a safeguard against COVID-19 than vaccines would prove to be. If you doubted Redfield's claims, according to Murthy, you were aggravating an 'urgent threat to public health'.... 

"Last August, in a move that was consistent with Murthy's demands, YouTube suspended Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) for propagating COVID-19 misinformation by saying 'most of the masks that you can get over the counter' have 'no value'. Five months later, the CDC largely agreed with Paul, saying 'properly fitted respirators provide the highest level of protection,' while 'loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection.' By Murthy's reckoning, the CDC's blessing transformed misinformation into scientifically valid advice....

"The notion that dissent from the official line on public health issues should be treated as an 'urgent threat' to be addressed by a 'whole-of-society' crusade, possibly including 'legal and regulatory measures,' is fundamentally illiberal and inconsistent with freedom of speech. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki describes the administration's demands for suppression of 'misinformation' as 'asks.' But that characterization is risible given the power that the executive branch wields over the companies whose 'cooperation' it is seeking. Censorship by proxy is still censorship."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/03/03/vivek-murthys-demand-for-data-on-covid-misinformation-is-part-of-a-creepy-crusade-to-suppress-dissent/

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "Xi Jinping has frequently stressed global cooperation to fight COVID-19. In turn, the world has started to look more like China. Localities introduced tip lines to report lockdown violations and countries unveiled new fleets of surveillance drones; Chinese company DJI donated drones to 22 U.S. states to help enforce social distancing rules. 

"Speaking through official channels, the CCP has avoided literally telling other governments to 'lock down.' Rather, the CCP has shamed governments for not locking down and relentlessly advertised its 'pandemic response' (which, of course, means lockdowns). In March, Chinese state media bought numerous Facebook ads extolling China’s pandemic response; all of them ran without Facebook’s required political disclaimer. On July 7, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the CCP specifically approached local politicians to endorse its pandemic response....

"For decades, the CCP has co-opted scientists through its unparalleled overseas influence network, the United Front Work Department, which expanded dramatically under Xi. In June, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that 189 of its grantees had received undisclosed funding from foreign governments. In 93% of cases, including that of Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, the undisclosed funding came from China. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, a smaller organization, reported 16–20 cases of undisclosed foreign financial ties; all but two were with China....

"In a May interview for China Central Television, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the esteemed medical journal The Lancet, emphatically praised China’s lockdowns, saying: 'It was not only the right thing to do, but it also showed other countries how they should respond in the face of such an acute threat. So, I think we have a great deal to thank China for …' The fact that Chinese state media so widely shared a particularly credulous New Yorker article by Peter Hessler about China’s coronavirus response did not escape China expert Geremie Barmé, who cautioned its author that it reminded him of 'another American journalist, a man who reported from another authoritarian country nearly a century ago … Walter Duranty'....

"The CCP has shaped scientific narratives by consistently promoting the falsehood that 'China controlled the virus'.... Of course ... China expelled journalists in March and its infection data is manifestly forged; U.S. intelligence has confirmed China’s data is intentionally misrepresented. Nonetheless, China’s fake numbers have been paramount in scientific discourse. By demanding elite publications repeat the Orwellian lie that 'China controlled the virus,' the CCP has normalized that lie for Western elites to repeat themselves, exploiting China’s fastidiously managed reputation and the fact that most Westerners do not yet know it as an untrustworthy, totalitarian state....

"Within China, the CCP has pretended to believe its own lies only at its own convenience, reserving the right to use COVID-19 as a pretext for unrelated authoritarian whims — demolishing retirement homes, detaining dissidents and reporters, expanding mass surveillance, canceling Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil and postponing its elections for one year. In Xinjiang, where over 1 million Uighurs are imprisoned, lockdowns have gone on since January and have involved widespread hunger, forced medication, acidic disinfectant sprays, shackled residents, screams of protest from balconies, crowded 'quarantine' cells, and outright disappearances.

"The most benign possible explanation for the CCP’s campaign for global lockdowns is that the party aggressively promoted the same lie internationally as domestically — that lockdowns worked. For party members, when Wuhan locked down it likely went without saying that the lockdown would 'eliminate' coronavirus; if Xi willed it to be true, then it must be so. This is the totalitarian pathology that George Orwell called 'double-think.' But the fact that authoritarian regimes always lie does not give them a right to spread deadly lies to the rest of the world, especially by clandestine means.

"And then there’s the possibility that by shutting down the world, Xi Jinping, who vaulted through the ranks of the party, quotes ancient Chinese scholars, has mastered debts and derivatives, studies complexity science, and envisions a socialist future with China at its center, knew exactly what he was doing."

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Also read:

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

Bipartisan majority supports violating constitution

Red and Blue America Agree That Now Is the Time to Violate the Constitution | The Atlantic - Adam Chilton, Kevin Cope, Charles Crabtree, & Mila Versteeg:

March 25, 2020 - ""To what extent should the Constitution be violated to fight the coronavirus? Lockdowns, especially ones that apply to people who haven’t tested positive for the virus, are constitutionally questionable. The threat ... to prosecute residents who spread false information about the virus ... could violate the First Amendment. Some people ... have challenged ... city ... authority to force a gun shop to close, citing their right to arm themselves. Perhaps most alarming, the U.S. Department of Justice 'has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies.'

"To assess how Americans weigh the trade-off between preserving civil liberties and halting the spread of the coronavirus, we ... presented a nationally representative sample of 3,000 U.S. residents with eight possible policy responses to the outbreak, all of which may be unconstitutional, including forced quarantine in a government facility, criminal penalties for spreading misinformation, bans against certain people entering the country, and conscription of health-care workers. We also asked our sample to imagine that public-health officials had reviewed the policies and estimated that each would likely save some number of lives, hypothetical figures that we provided.

"A majority of respondents supported all eight of these policies, most by considerable margins. The proposals with the lowest support were seizing businesses and banning all citizens and noncitizens outside the country from entering, but these policies still had 58 and 63 percent support, respectively. The proposals with the highest levels of support were banning noncitizens from entering the country (85 percent) and conscripting health-care professionals to work despite risks to their own health (78 percent). Both policies burden a defined minority of the population, so it’s not surprising that large majorities support them..... About 70 percent of respondents supported restricting people’s ability to say things that may qualify as misinformation. Likewise, 77 percent of respondents support suspending all religious services and gatherings.... And even when we explicitly told half of our sample that the policies may violate the Constitution, the majority supported all eight of them....

"Perhaps the most striking feature of our results is the broad bipartisan endorsement of these liberty-restricting policies. Like other surveys, ours reflected a huge gap between Democrats and Republicans in approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic: 34 percent of Democrats expressed approval, while 88 percent of Republicans did. One might have reasonably concluded that different policy preferences were driving these responses....

"But our findings suggest that’s not the case. Democrats and Republicans ... show almost identical levels of support for detaining sick people in government facilities, conscripting people to work, prohibiting the spreading of misinformation, and banning all people (citizens and noncitizens alike) from entering the country. Seventy-four percent of Democrats supported each of the eight proposed policies, while 71 percent of Republicans did....

"Often, efforts to roll back civil liberties face political opposition, but now bipartisan support for rights-restricting COVID-19 responses could smooth the path for constitutional erosion. James Madison predicted as much when he described constitutional rights as 'parchment barriers,' easily transgressed when the majority is so inclined. And indeed, history presents numerous examples of liberty violations made in the face of security threats ... the Alien and Sedition Acts ... Japanese American internment camps during WWII, and the use of torture after 9/11. After the threat has subsided, Americans must recognize any constitutional violations for what they were, lest they become the new normal."

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-america-constitution/608665/

Coronavirus healthy for surveillance industry

The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Set Off A Massive Expansion Of Government Surveillance. Civil Libertarians Aren't Sure What To Do | Buzzfeed News - Rosy Gray & Caroline Haskins:

March 30, 2020 - "The coronavirus pandemic, which has grown to over 740,000 cases and 35,000 deaths around the world, has been so singular an event that even some staunch advocates for civil liberties say they’re willing to accept previously unthinkable surveillance measures. 'I’m very concerned' about civil liberties,' writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept ... told BuzzFeed News. 'But at the same time, I'm also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.' Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance....

"And he is far from the only prominent civil libertarian and opponent of surveillance trying to calibrate their response as governments around the world are planning or have already implemented location-tracking programs to monitor coronavirus transmission, and have ordered wide-scale shutdowns closing businesses and keeping people indoors. Broad expansions of surveillance power that would have been unimaginable in February are being presented as fait accompli in March....

"While the US hasn’t announced a nationwide stay-at-home order like France and Italy have, large parts of the US are under some degree of lockdown, with nonessential businesses shuttered and nonessential activities outside the home either banned or discouraged. And while President Trump and his allies have focused on the economic devastation wrought by this shutdown, some libertarians have raised concerns about the damage those decrees have done to people's freedoms....

"Surveillance at previously politically unimaginable scales has reached countries around the world.... In South Korea, the government is mapping the movements of COVID-19 patients using data from mobile carriers, credit card companies, and the Institute of Public Health and Environment. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's internal security agency to tap into a previously undisclosed cache of cellphone data to trace the movements of infected persons in that country and in the West Bank. And in the Indian state of Karnataka, the government is requiring people in lockdown to send it selfies every hour to prove they are staying home.

"No such tools currently exist in the United States — but ... [t]hose doors are already being broken down. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network — a collaboration between Facebook, Camber Systems, Cuebiq, and health researchers from 13 universities — will use corporate location data from mobile devices to give local officials 'consolidated daily situation reports' about 'social distancing interventions.' Representatives from the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network did not respond to requests for comment....

"Representatives from data analytics company Palantir have reportedly been working with the CDC on collecting and integrating data about COVID-19, while Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state agencies to track patients infected by the virus. Neither Palantir nor Clearview AI responded to requests for comment....

"Those efforts cause concerns for people like Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, who told BuzzFeed News that such tools, once deployed, would inevitably be used for more purposes than to fight the pandemic. 'We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable,' she said. 'It's not necessarily a question of if data that was handed over to the government because of this crisis would be repurposed. It's a matter of when.'"

Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/they-were-opposed-to-government-surveillance-then-the

PATRIOT Act extension buried in funding bill

Why the Hell Did Democrats Just Extend the Patriot Act? | The New Republic - Sam Adler-Bell:

November 20, 2019 - "Tuesday ... the House of Representatives voted to fund the government through December 20 ... to prevent a government shutdown and forestall a debate about border-wall funding.... Democratic leaders had slipped something else into the bill: a three-month extension of the Patriot Act, the post-9/11 law that gave the federal government sweeping surveillance and search powers and circumvented traditional law-enforcement rules.  Key provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire on December 15, including Section 215, the legal underpinning of the call detail records program exposed in the very first Edward Snowden leak.

"'It’s surreal,' Representative Justin Amash told me on Tuesday, just before the vote. Amash, an independent who left the Republican Party over his opposition to President Trump, pointed to the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. Republicans have 'decried FISA abuse' against the president and his aides, he said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 'and Democrats have highlighted Trump’s abuse of his executive powers, yet they’re teaming up to extend the administration’s authority to warrantlessly gather data on Americans.'

"By tucking the measure into a must-pass bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced many members who oppose the Patriot Act to vote in favor of its extension.... Amash submitted an amendment to strip the Patriot Act language from the budget bill, but the amendment was blocked by Democrats on the Rules Committee.  Just 10 Democrats defied the leadership to vote against the resolution....

"There’s no other way to spin this,' a progressive staffer on the Hill told me. 'This was a major capitulation. The progressive caucus has touted itself as an organization that can wield power and leverage the votes of its 90 members. And they didn’t lift a finger. Democratic leadership rammed this down their throats.'"
Read more: https://newrepublic.com/article/155793/hell-democrats-just-extend-patriot-act

Trump signs temporary spending bill, punting government-shutdown risks to just before Christmas | Markets Insider - Gina Heeb:
November 21, 2019 - "President Donald Trump on Thursday approved a measure that would stave off the threat of a government shutdown until just days before Christmas.... The short-term spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, was signed into law just hours before a critical midnight deadline. Federal funding was scheduled to expire after that point, and several federal agencies would have been forced to shutter. But it will keep the government running only until December 20....

"Border-funding issues were avoided in [the] stopgap measure signed on Thursday, but other major provisions were tucked in. The legislation reauthorizes parts of the Patriot Act through March, raises the pay for members of the military by about 3%, and increases the Commerce Department budget ahead of the 2020 census.... The Senate passed the continuing resolution 74-20 earlier on Thursday."

Read more: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-punts-government-shutdown-threat-just-before-christmas-spending-bill-2019-11-1028709853

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Rand Paul disagrees with impeachment call (video)

Rand Paul on fellow libertarian Amash's impeachment call: Russia probe was 'un-libertarian' | Fox News - David Montanaro:

May 30, 2019 - "Sen. Rand Paul does not agree with Rep. Justin Amash - a fellow libertarian Republican - that the House of Representatives should move forward with the impeachment of President Trump.

"Amash, R-Mich., made headlines in recent weeks for his lengthy Twitter threads laying out his argument for impeachment based on the Mueller report.... Paul, R-Ky., said on America's Newsroom Thursday that he takes the opposite view from Amash, seeing the origins of the Russia investigation as being 'un-libertarian.' He explained that the powers, specifically FISA surveillance, utilized in the FBI counterintelligence probe are the kind that libertarians have long warned could be abused by the government.

"'I see an abuse of power from Comey, Clapper, Brennan, from all these guys,' Paul said. 'I think they took this great power we entrusted with them to spy on foreigners and they directed it against Americans for partisan reasons.... I think it’s wrong for any Republican to think, 'Oh gosh, this is a legitimate investigation.' I think it’s a very partisan investigation."

Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-justin-amash-mueller-probe

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Trudeau govt. targets "fake news" on internet

Feds unveil plan to safeguard 2019 election from foreign meddling, disinformation | CTV News - Rachel Aiello:

February 27, 2019 - "The federal government has unveiled a series of new measures aimed at ... enhancing Canada's readiness to defend the democratic process from cyber threats and disinformation.... The objective is to have a plan ... without being seen to be interfering in the campaign.

"This will be done through what’s being called a 'Critical Election Incident Public Protocol' that will be overseen by five senior level non-political government officials.... The members of this new high-level group will be responsible for deciding when, and how they decide to inform Canadians about concerning online behaviour or content that comes to their attention. It is comprised of the Clerk of the Privy Council, Canada’s National Security Adviser, and the deputy ministers of the Justice, Public Safety, and Global Affairs departments....

"The overall plan is four-pronged, and was announced by Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan. The next federal election [is] just nine months away....

"In addition to the public alert protocol, the government announced the creation of a Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE), to prevent 'covert, clandestine, or criminal' attempts to interfere in elections and respond to them. It is comprised of intelligence officials from CSIS; RCMP; the Communications Security Establishment; and Global Affairs Canada....

"In an effort to keep a closer eye on international threats, the government is activating the 'rapid response mechanism' at Global Affairs to identify, respond, and share information about threats.... This will include monitoring foreign social media activity....

"Gould is in the process of talking to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter about their role in Canadian elections, and she is asking them to commit to apply specific measures that they have enacted in other countries, such as Twitter's ad transparency centre. Though, this expectation is not among the newly legislated requirements for these platforms.... [NDP democratic reform critic Nathan] Cullen was critical of there not being further measures to compel social media companies to comply....

"Lastly the government is launching a new campaign for citizen-literacy about misinformation online.... As part of this effort the government is spending $7 million on 'digital, news, and civic literacy programming'....

"These measures are in addition to ongoing efforts to secure Canada’s electoral system, such as: passing Bill C-76, which imposes new limits and penalties related to spending and foreign participation ... and, collaborating with social media companies on plans to combat fake news and disinformation from interfering with public opinion during the campaign. Bill C-76 also gave Canada's Elections Commissioner new powers to conduct investigations into election interference, and compels social media platforms to create databases of their advertising during the campaign."

Read more: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/feds-unveil-plan-to-tackle-fake-news-interference-in-2019-election-1.4274273
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PATRIOT Act warrant misused in FL sex sting

Sneak-and-Peek Warrant for Hidden Cameras at Florida Massage Parlors Faces Scrutiny - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

March 4, 2019 - "A central component of the recent investigation into Chinese massage-parlor sex was the secret installation of hidden cameras at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. Now defense attorneys are challenging the legality of this move. Permission for such surveillance stems from a provision of the PATRIOT Act that was passed with promises only to use the power against possible terrorists....

"In this case, police secretly filmed massage rooms in January 2019.... Caught on camera getting a massage and maybe more were New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and dozens of other men, who now face misdemeanor charges for allegedly soliciting prostitution. Workers and managers at the businesses were also arrested and stand accused of prostitution and racketeering.

"Police were able to secretly install the surveillance cameras thanks to a sneak-and-peek warrant. Such warrants were sold after 9/11 as a way to stop terrorism, but in practice they've mainly been used in investigations of drug crimes.

"Of the more than 11,000 such warrants issued in 2013, for instance, only 50 were related to terrorism; 9,401 were parts of drug investigations. In 2011, 5,093 of 6,775 requests for sneak-and-peek warrants were related to drug cases; just 31 were related to terrorism.....

"Now they're being used to stop prostitution under the guise of busting up international slavery rings.... [J]ust as local cops and federal authorities have used anti-terrorism tools to prosecute potheads, they've been keen on attacking all prostitution (a misdemeanor crime under local laws throughout most of the U.S.) as 'human trafficking,' a federal crime. Police in Palm Beach and Jupiter counties have been trotting out that claim this time too, although no sex trafficking or forced labor charges have been filed.

"As with so much of this case, that claim looks strange in light of the fact that the authorities spent months visiting and watching these businesses but not rescuing the women that they now say they suspect are trafficking victims....

"Several folks quoted by the Sun-Sentinel suggest that this case represents an unprecedented use of sneak-and-peek warrants — but that's not true even within Palm Beach County. As the same paper noted in 2014, Palm Beach authorities ran a similar massage-parlor sting operation back in 2007. They used a sneak-and-peek warrant to install cameras and catch sex acts on video back then, too. In that case, one massage parlor worker was arrested for prostitution and 25 men were arrested for solicitation of prostitution."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/04/sneak-and-peek-warrant-for-florida-sting
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Leyenhjolm to run at state level

Australia's Libertarian Senator Won't Seek Re-election - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford|

January 8, 2019 - "Libertarian Australian Senator David Leyonhjelm is resigning from national politics, but he isn't leaving government behind. Instead he's looking to take his fight against the nanny state to the local level.

"Leyonhjelm, of Australia's Liberal Democratic Party (that's the country's label for libertarians), was elected to office in 2013 and re-elected in 2016. He has spent a lot of that time advocating for the liberty to own guns, marry somebody of the same sex, legally smoke marijuana, and be free from unwarranted government surveillance.

"Well, at least gay marriage was legalized (after a lengthy, complicated public vote). The rest has been a struggle. Even after the Australian Senate made it easier for terminally ill patients to import medical marijuana, the country's Department of Health continued to threaten people who attempted to do so. And the country has actually ramped up surveillance authorities on its citizens and is now potentially threatening everybody's data privacy and security with anti-encryption legislation. Meanwhile, as Australia's extremely high taxes on cigarettes has created a massive black market for the goods, the country has responded by attempting to stop large cash transactions....

"Leyonhjelm has now decided to focus on fighting the country's nanny tendencies on the state level. He says he's planning to run for the Upper House in New South Wales (home of Sydney and the country's highest population concentration of nearly 8 million).

"He told Sky News that he wants to fight against red tape on the state level, focusing on familiar overregulation issues like liquor licensing, rules on where you can smoke or vape, gambling, laws that control business hours, and issues like assisted suicide and, again, drug legalization....

"An election analyst at Australia's ABC Network ... predicted that Leyonhjelm would have a tough time keeping his Senate seat. The ruling government has made it harder since Leyonhjelm was elected for minor parties to reach the polling thresholds needed to win seats under the country's preferential voting system. But he could fare better with the New South Wales Legislative Council, though he's going to be competing against other third parties as well."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/08/australias-libertarian-senator-wont-seek
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Brett Kavanaugh and due process

The Constitutional Reasons to Oppose Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court - Foundation for Economic Education - Brittany Hunter:

October 1, 2018 - "After two days of political theater, the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to delay the vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court for a week. In that time, the FBI will conduct an investigation surrounding the allegations made against him.... And the real losers, unfortunately, are the American people, who are being diligently distracted from Kavanaugh’s actual policy record.

"To be sure, claims of sexual misconduct should certainly be brought to the public’s attention, especially when they involve a nominee for a position as powerful as a Supreme Court Justice. And in the #metoo era, failing to take these allegations seriously would be most unwise. But losing ourselves in this political circus and the subsequent media frenzy surrounding Kavanaugh’s sexual past glosses over another aspect of his professional career that should concern every single individual: his promotion of the national security state....

"The years of 2001-2003 were ... the years that Brett Kavanaugh served as associate White House Counsel for then-President George W. Bush.... One of the most egregious acts perpetrated against the American people at this time was the PATRIOT Act. And one of its greatest supporters was Brett Kavanaugh [who] referred to the PATRIOT Act as a 'measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional approach' in an email sent to a colleague....

"The PATRIOT Act obliterated the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to privacy and due process by giving the federal government sweeping new powers to conduct surveillance on the American people.... But [Kavanaugh's] support of the legislation that signaled the downfall of American rule of law does not simply end with his favorable comments. Kavanaugh was also one of the individuals tasked with its drafting....

"The 2013 Edward Snowden leaks were arguably one of the most significant events to occur over the last decade.... In many ways, the Snowden situation drew a line in the political sand. Those who stood for freedom believed in the people’s inherent right to privacy and in upholding the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.... However, in a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh ruled that 'the Government’s metadata collection program is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.' He also later stated that 'that critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program'....

"Due process is a staple of our American legal system. And ... there is more to due process than allowing Judge Kavanaugh to have his day in court. If the government would like to gain access to the private communications of American citizens, it must do so by going to a judge and obtaining a warrant. This warrant must specifically state what property is being searched and what is being searched for, as is specified by the Fourth Amendment.

"Requiring law enforcement to go through the proper channels to secure a warrant before violating the privacy of American citizens is part of due process..... [D]ue process is not meant for one class of people; it is meant for every American citizen whether they are nominated for the Supreme Court like Kavanaugh, or happen to have a radicalized parent like sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was targeted and killed by the U.S. Military without any semblance of due process."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/the-constitutional-reasons-to-oppose-kavanaugh-for-the-supreme-court/
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See also : Libertarian makes SCOTUS case for Kavanagh

HR 6729 expands Patriot Act surveillance powers

House to Vote on 'Human Trafficking' Bill That Strengthens PATRIOT Act Spying - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

September 24, 2018 - "A new bill that borrows language from the PATRIOT Act promises to nab human traffickers using the same surveillance techniques that law introduced to catch terrorists and their associates. We all know how that went... Now, legislators like Rep. Ann Wagner (R–Mo.) hope we won't notice if they feed us the same liberty-poisoning bologna with a new excuse.

"It's 'a disguised effort to expand the #PatriotAct,' tweeted Rep. Justin Amash (R–Mich.) on Saturday. 'GOP leaders put "Fight Human Trafficking" in the title to conceal the bill's true purpose: to give the government more power to unconstitutionally spy on law-abiding Americans without a warrant.'

"Wagner's bill (H.R. 6729) — the deceptively named "Empowering Financial Institutions to Fight Human Trafficking Act" of 2018 — is the latest in a long line of assaults on civil liberties disguised as attacks on the biggest crime panic of the decade, sex trafficking. Wagner [also] brought us the SAVE Act in 2015 and FOSTA in 2018, both of which take aim at online anonymity, web publishing, social media, sex workers, and free speech under the guise of saving children....

"H.R. 6729 would allow financial institutions, federal regulatory bodies, nonprofit organizations, and law enforcement to share customer bank records between them without running afoul of rules regarding consumer privacy and without opening themselves up to lawsuits.... But these entities need not demonstrate that the 'sharing was made on a good faith basis,' according to the current text of the bill....

"Cops working specific cases or pursing specific suspects can already obtain their financial records by going through court channels and using the subpoena process. What they want here is access to wide swaths of (subsequently shareable) financial data on customers accused of no crimes and facing no charges. And they want this data to be served up proactively by bank staffers ... and by nonprofits, who would be empowered to share information gleaned through the provision of social services.

"The language echoes Section 314 of the PATRIOT Act [which] was used by authorities to demand all sorts of information from banks. It also led banks to start dropping people with Middle Eastern surnames.... Jeff A. Taylor wrote here at Reason in 2004 [that] Section 314 turned out to be a 'ticking time-bomb for anyone a buttoned-down banker might consider suspicious'.... It would go on to be used ... as an all-purpose way for the feds to [monitor] random consumer financial transactions. A 2016 bill to directly expand Section 314 of the Patriot Act was narrowly defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives.....

"Introduced on September 6, Wagner's new bill has already received a first vote by the House Committee on Financial Services (44 for, five against) and five co-sponsors.... A full House vote is scheduled for Wednesday."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/09/24/house-to-vote-on-human-trafficking-bill
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Libertarian makes SCOTUS case for Kavanaugh

Here’s The Libertarian Case For Brett Kavanaugh’s Nomination | The Federalist - Ilya Shapiro:

July 29, 2018 - "While Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has been warmly received on the Right, libertarians haven’t been uniformly thrilled. The night of the announcement, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) tweeted that it was a '[d]isappointing pick, particularly with respect to his #4thAmendment record,' also mentioning 'government surveillance' as an area where Americans can’t afford a 'rubber stamp.'

"A few days later, my Cato Institute colleague Matthew Feeney did a critical dive into Klayman v. Obama, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected ... a 2015 challenge to the National Security Agency’s telephony-metadata collection. Kavanaugh wrote separately to say the program passed constitutional muster.... But should this be that big a worry?... this ... has likely been superseded by Carpenter v. United States, where the Supreme Court this past term ruled that police need a warrant to access cellphone location data....

"Kavanaugh has both rejected executive supremacy in favor of judicial review and praised Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), which argued that the military can’t detain U.S. citizens absent a congressional suspension of habeas corpus.

"Kavanaugh [has also] lauded Scalia’s role as the court’s 'most tireless advocate for the right to trial by jury [under the Sixth Amendment].' Accordingly, in United States v. Moore (2011), Kavanaugh found that a criminal defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights had been violated when the government introduced Drug Enforcement Agency reports at trial without allowing the defendant to confront the report’s author....

"Kavanaugh has also been a leading advocate of interpreting statutes to incorporate robust mens rea requirements, protecting individuals from criminal sanction unless the government establishes a 'guilty mind'.... [I]n United States v. Burwell (2012) ... he argued that a defendant could not face a mandatory 30-year sentence for carrying a machine gun during a crime because the government had not proven that he knew the weapon to be a machine gun.... [In]  United States v. Williams (2016) ... he commended a majority opinion that reversed the conviction of a gang member involved in a hazing ritual 'to underscore the critical importance of accurate instructions to the jury on mens rea requirements'....

"Kavanaugh dissented from a decision upholding the Securities and Exchange Commission’s broad theory of liability in enforcing fraud laws against a broker who transmitted a fraudulent statement dictated by his boss. Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case (although of course Kavanaugh will be recused from it if he is confirmed).

"All this goes without mentioning other issues ... from the Second Amendment — he would’ve struck down DC’s gun-registration requirement and ban on semi-automatic rifles, using an historical rather than a 'tiers of scrutiny' approach — to a skepticism of broad judicial deference (Chevron, Auer, etc.) to executive agencies. As he repeated at his nomination ceremony, 'the Constitution’s separation of powers protects individual liberty.'"

Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/29/heres-libertarian-case-brett-kavanaughs-supreme-court-nomination/
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See also: Brett Kavanaugh and due process

NSA deleting millions of unwarranted call records

NSA Purging Millions of Improperly Collected Call Records Is Important (and Not About Trump) - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:

July 3, 2018 - "The National Security Agency (NSA) has announced that it is deleting millions of phone and text records it has gathered since 2015, because it is holding a bunch of records it was not supposed to have....

"In this case, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act in 2015 to better control (and potentially limit) the NSA's access to the metadata (that is, everything but the conversations' actual content) of Americans' communications. This reform was part of a backlash against the mass surveillance exposed by Edward Snowden, and the bill was passed after some privacy-minded lawmakers, such as Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), forced a part of the Patriot Act to expire that was being used to justify mass amounts of domestic snooping.

"Under the USA Freedom Act, the NSA no longer collects and combs through our communications metadata itself. Instead it now has to request records from telecommunications companies using strictly defined search terms....

"The problem, as Charlie Savage of The New York Times uncovered, is that the telecom companies were accidentally sending too many records in response to NSA requests. And so the agency was receiving private personal information about Americans' communications data that it neither asked for nor had the right to examine:

"As a result, when the agency then fed those phone numbers back to the telecoms to get the communications logs of all of the people who had been in contact with its targets, the agency also gathered some data of people unconnected to the targets. And so the agency was receiving private personal information about Americans' communications data that it neither asked for nor had the right to examine.... 'If the first information was incorrect, even though on its face it looked like any other number, then when we fed that back out, by definition we'd get records back on the second hop that we did not have authority to collect,' [an NSA spokesman] said....

"The NSA requested more than 500 million telecom records just last year. It is unable to determine which records it has the authorization to collect, so it is purging all of them....

"Many of the same privacy-minded lawmakers who managed to force some of the surveillance authorities of the Patriot Act to expire also opposed the USA Freedom Act. Congressmen like Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) voted against the bill because they believed it still gave the government too much power to collect our records without warrants. Sen. Paul rejected the USA Freedom Act for the same reason....

"Unfortunately, Trump has shown that he's perfectly fine with snooping on Americans  ... [as he] happily signed a bill in January renewing and expanding the government's authority to secretly spy on Americans under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/03/nsa-purging-millions-of-improperly-colle
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Warrant needed for cell location info, SCOTUS rules

Carpenter v. United States Decision Strengthens Digital Privacy | WIRED - Louise Matsakis:

June 22, 2018 - "In a highly anticipated decision released [June 22], the US Supreme Court ... decided in Carpenter v. United States that the government generally needs a warrant in order to access cell site location information [CSLI], which is automatically generated whenever a mobile phone connects to a cell tower and is stored by wireless carriers for years....

"'We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. 'In light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection.'

"Roberts was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented....

"At issue was an antiquated legal principle called the third-party doctrine, which ... comes from United States v. Miller, a 1976 case in which the court ruled that law enforcement doesn't need a warrant in order to access bank records because 'the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party.' Three years later, in 1979, the court ruled ... that the third-party doctrine also extends to call records collected by phone companies.

"But on Friday, the Supreme Court said that cell site location information is a 'qualitatively different category” of information. CSLI allows law enforcement to paint a nearly complete picture of Americans' movements. Last year, AT&T and Verizon jointly received nearly 125,000 requests from law enforcement for CSLI data, according to their transparency reports. Law enforcement officials will now only be able to make such requests after obtaining a warrant, which will require them to demonstrate probable cause....

"The court declined to decide on whether law enforcement seeking a smaller window of records — fewer than seven days ... constitutes a Fourth Amendment search. The opinion also allows for exceptions for emergencies, like 'bomb threats, active shootings, and child abductions.'

"Carpenter v. United States began in December of 2010, when a series of robberies hit Michigan and neighboring Ohio.... Timothy Carpenter, who was later convicted of committing several of the robberies and sentenced to 116 years in prison ... argued that obtaining the records constituted a Fourth Amendment search, and therefore the police should have needed a warrant. His motion was denied, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear it last year....

"Fourteen of the largest US tech companies — including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft — filed a brief in support of updating the Fourth Amendment for the digital era. It was technically not filed in support of either party, but largely backed Carpenter's position. The cohort even included Verizon, which cooperated with the National Security Agency as part of its broad bulk surveillance programs for years."

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/carpenter-v-united-states-supreme-court-digital-privacy/
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Libertarians & everyone else react to #TheMemo

Here's What Rand Paul, Mark Meadows, and Others in Washington Are Saying About the Nunes Memo - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:

February 2, 2018 - "Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, released his short memo today after the White House agreed to its declassification. The document claims that the FBI withheld from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the 'Steele Dossier,' used as justification to snoop on former Donald Trump adviser Carter Page, was funded by Democratic Party sources and pushed by FBI officials with an agenda against Trump....

"House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calls the memo 'partisan spin'.... Yet she doesn't actually counter any of the claims in the memo itself.... John McCain (R-Ariz.), no friend of Trump's, does not want the Nunes memo to threaten the investigation of whether Russia colluded with members of Trump's campaign during the election outcomes....

"But some Republican lawmakers, like Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), have been philosophically consistent. This tweet may sound like what we've been hearing from other Trump supporters:

So, there it is. The FBI took an unverified political dossier, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and they used it as a central piece in their request to get a warrant for spying on American citizens and political opponents in the Trump campaign.

... but Meadows, as a member of the House Freedom Caucus, supported reforms to the FISA amendments that would have put tighter restrictions on using secret surveillance of American citizens....

"Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who tried to organize a filibuster to stop FISA from being reauthorized without reforms, applauded the memo's release for similar reasons....  Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) who attempted to get surveillance reform through the House and failed, has a like-minded thread of tweets....

"The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is no fan of Trump's, but it's one of the major civil liberties groups concerned about unwarranted FBI surveillance of Americans. And in the wake of the Nunes memo, it wants more information to come out. From Christopher Anders, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office:

Rather than one side or the other cherry-picking facts, all Americans deserve to see all of the facts, including both the minority report and the underlying documents. The goal should be more transparency, not less, particularly when a congressional committee chairman makes serious charges of abuse but does not provide the facts to either prove the charges or allow Americans to make up our own minds.

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/02/heres-what-leaders-are-saying-about-the
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