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All right. My guest today is an American whistleblower a weed his my guest today. I'm going to read his Wikipedia. He's an American whistleblower who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013. When he was a Central Intelligence Agency employee and subcontractor. I think you know who it is. Ladies and gentlemen a man who I think is a hero, please give it up.
for Edward Snowden
The Joe Rogan Experience trained by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day
It's Egan man. It's
good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's been
like a year. It's been like a year believe it or not. You look exactly the same and the studio looks exactly the same. You might be on another part of the world. No one knows. Yeah, it's just my apartment that I rent. You know,
I don't like to give out a lot of information about where I'm at and that kind of stuff. So it's very
smart a plane will
that I've got the lights down low. So it looks kind of a nice gray least. I think it's
I think it's beautiful. It looks amazing. First of all congratulations on the recent ruling was a Ninth District Court of Appeals yet what it was it said that what you exposed with the warrantless wiretapping was in fact illegal, and there are many people that are calling for you to be pardoned
now.
Yeah, it's so much has happened this ruling. This is actually not the first time the federal government has the appeals courts have struck down some of the federal surveillance programs as unlawful. But this one is really important because it happened from an appeals court. It wasn't from a single judge. It was from a panel of judges and what they had ruled was that the nsa's bulk collection of Americans phone records was a lie.
And this is the very first sort of mass surveillance program that I and the journalists really that the news was broken back in 2013. So this is a huge victory for privacy rights. What it means is there was this provision of the Patriot Act Like remember the Patriot Act remember
like a zillion years ago. I do everybody was laying out Patriot Act patronizing
your friend Alex Jones, you know, I think he
was worried about the terrible name.
The there's a real problem with that name because if you're against the Patriot Act, it's like against babies like like this is the probaby act but meanwhile probaby act they get to look through your email. You know what I mean? It's like the word Patriot is attached to that in a very disingenuous way like calling that the Patriot Act is it's really creepy that they could do they should have like a number like bill a one. Yeah, you know, you know I'm saying so you can debate the merits of it. It's just so much propaganda attached to that name.
The Patriot Act.
This is one of the funny things because it should be a warning for anybody who's in like, you know, just anywhere in the country and they hear on the news. They're talking about like the save puppies, you know act. There's actually one that's been they've been trying to push through recently, which is basically outlawing meaningful encryption from the major internet service providers. Like it's Facebook or Google for whatever reason got out of bed in the morning and they actually wanted to protect your the
Security of your Communications in a way that even they can't break like right now Google and Facebook. They do a great job keeping other people from spying on your Communications, but if Google wants to Rifle through your inbox, right a Facebook wants to go through all your direct messages and give that to the federal government like you tap one button and boom they've got all of it happens every single day. Well companies like Facebook have recently realized. This is a real problem.
For them because first off they get all these censorship demands that you've seen where like there's D platforming requests and if it happens in one country, right like if the US government is allowed to decide what can and can't be said by this person on this platform or the u.s. Goes look we got a Court warrant. They said a judge said we think this person is a criminal we want you to hand over everything you have on this person and they do it right Facebook. Does this
Well guess who's next? Right the Russian government shows up at the door the next day the Chinese government shows them door the next day and if these companies don't play ball, they get shut down in that country. They can no longer alone no longer operate and so the idea that a lot of them have that they've considered and this has actually become a bigger thing at the covid crisis where we start talking about like contact tracing these companies want to know where everybody is at all the time so they can hand this over to Medical authorities or whatever.
There's this idea called end-to-end encryption. Which what it means is that when you send a message, you know, when Billy sends a message to Bobby Billy and Bobby both have the keys to unlock that message and it could be sent through Facebook. It could be sent through Google. It could be posted, you know on a bulletin board in the Town Square, but without that key which the people who run the bulletin board, right the people who owned the bulletin board Google Facebook. They don't have that key only the
Phones and laptops of the and the people on those they're the only people have the key. So if somebody comes to Facebook and says we want to see that information Facebook hands over the encrypted message, right and Facebook goes. Well. Here you go. Here's our copy, but we can't read it. You can't either now you've got to actually do some work on the government side and go get that key yourself and then you can read it. Right but we can't read it Congress is trying to stop the basically proliferation of that.
Basic end-to-end encryption technology and they're calling it like the child online Predator act or something like that where they say. It's all about protecting the posting of like child exploitation material and really really horrible stuff, but that's not actually what the law is about the laws about making it easier for spies and law enforcement to reach deeper and deeper into your life with a simple warrant stamped by any court. And the funny thing is
This never used to be the way law enforcement worked in the United States. I mean when you hear about a warrant, what does that mean to you? What can the cops get with
Warren?
Well, usually I think it means that they can come in your house and search right the real issue with warrants and when it pertains to encryption like when you're talking about the child safety act or whatever. They're calling it anyone would say, yes, we have to stop child Predators, but the problem with having the ability to use something like that to stop child predators in my eyes. I start thinking well if I really wanted
Look into someone what I would do is I would send them some malware that would put child pornography on their computer and then I would have all of the motive that I need to go and look through everything like say if they're if they were a political dissident if they were doing something against the government and you were someone who is acting in bad faith and you decided okay, we want to look into this guy, but we don't have a warrant. What what are the laws? What what can we get away with it while we have the child.
Child endangerment act and so because of that we're allowed to peer into anything but we just have to have motive. So we have to well do we have motive? All you'd have to do is and we both know this it's very easy to put something illegal on someone's computer. If they're not paying attention. It's very easy to install like you could send someone a text message that looks like a routing number for a package. They're going to get they click on that and then you what does that with these?
Always have Pegasus right you you've read up on this. Yeah, so well, it's it's from Brian fogle's new film The dissident which is about Jamal khashoggi. He's murder and how the Saudis used that to use. They actually tapped into Jeff Bezos his phone and that's where all of this is the suspicion is that that what that's where all of those National Enquirer photos came out and all the attacks on him because they had access to his actual phone.
Go through this. So someone could easily get into your stuff. If you're not paying attention and then they could use you know, whatever acts they've come up with whatever. It's the Patriot Act or whatever act with it could just get into everything. You're doing. Look at your WhatsApp messages. Look at your your Facebook messages. It's real sneaky. So and it's dangerous. It's a dangerous precedent to set.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to this. Let me go into some of that a little depth so you mentioned the NSO group and
Pegasus malware
set and this is very much a real thing. Like you're well-read Guy. This is like
This company the CEO is name I think is shalev. Leo is running Israel. It was previously owned actually buying American Venture Capital firm. I believe they've been re-bought out but it doesn't really matter their entire business is preying on flaws in the critical infrastructure of all the software running on the most popular device in the world. The number one target, right is the iPhone and this is because the iPhone as secure
It is relative to a lot of other phones is a monoculture. Right? Like if you if you have an iPhone you get these little software update notifications all the time. They're like a please update to the most recent version of iOS and that's a fabulous thing. That's a wonderful thing for security because the number one way that people's devices get screwed. If it's not just through user error, right like you entering your password somewhere. You shouldn't it's like a fake site that looks like Gmail, but it's not actually Gmail. You just gave the guy your password now.
He uses your password to log in but to actually break into a device is that it's not patched right patch means getting these security updates these little code updates that fix holes that researchers found in the security device. Well apples really good about rolling these out all the time for everybody in the world. The problem is basically all these different iPhones right? You got an iPhone 6 you got an iPhone 8 you got an iPhone x you got
Phone, you know 3 whatever. These are all running a pretty narrow band of software versions. And so these guys go if they want to Target for example Android phones like Google phones like a Samsung Galaxy or something like that. There's like a billion different phones made by billion different people half of them are completely out of date, but what it means is not one version of software the running. It's like 10,000 and this
is actually bad for security on the individual level, but it's good for security in a very unusual way which is the guys who are developing the exploits the guys like this NSO report trying to find ways to break into phones. They now have to have like 50 different handsets running 50 different versions of software. There are all changing. They've got different Hardware. They've got different chipsets for the like they've got different like all kinds of just technical variables that can screw up the way they attack
Your phone and then when they find one it only works on like this Samsung Galaxy line. It doesn't work on like the Google pixel line or it doesn't work. I'm like a Nokia line or something like that. Whereas they realize if they find a way to attack an iPhone, which is actually you know, this is difficult. This is really difficult stuff. Now, it works against basically every iPhone and who has iPhones all the rich people write all the important people all the lawmakers.
All the guys who are in the so they've made a business on basically attacking the iPhone and selling it to every two-bit Thug who runs a police department and the world, you know, they sell the stuff to Saudi Arabia. They sells the this to Mexico and there's a group of researchers in Canada working at a university called The Citizen lab and these guys are really like the best in the world at tracking what Anna so group is doing if you want to learn about this stuff the real stuff look up citizen lab and the NSO.
And what they have found is all the people who are being targeted by the NSO group the classes of people to countries that are using this and you know, it's not like the local police department in Germany trying to bust up, you know, a terrorism ring or something like that. It's the Mexican government spying on the head of the Mexican opposition or trying to look at Human Rights Defenders who are investigating like student disappearances or its people like the
Friends and Associates of Jamal khashoggi who was murdered by the Saudi government or its people like dissidents in Bahrain and these like petrol States the these Bad actors nationally will pay literally tens of millions of dollars each year just to have the ability to break into an iPhone for a certain number of times because that's how these guys do what they sell their business plan. They go will let you break in any iPhone just by basically sending a text message to this phone.
Own. All you need to find is the phone number or person is running on iPhone and we will exploit something which will
give you total that happens to someone. I'm sorry. But if that happens to someone could they just get a new phone and does the exploit is the exploit specific to their account? Well, or is the exploit on the physical phone? It's so
the question or the answer to this is it really depends on the exploit like the easiest forms of exploit or rather the easier types.
Exploits are way they send you a text message. Right and it'll be like an iMessage or something like that and it's got a link in it. It'll be like, oh gosh terrible news, you know your buddy's father just died and we're making funeral arrangements. Are you going to be there? It's the day after tomorrow and when you click the link for the funeral arrangements, it opens your web browser and the web browser on your phone is always the biggest most complicated process in it, right? There's a
zillion lines of code in this is opposed to an instant messenger where this fewer lines of code in it and they'll find one thing in that where there's a flaw that lets them feed instructions not just to the browser but basically escape the little sandbox that the browser supposed to plan that's supposed to be safe where it can't do anything to harmful. It'll run out of this sandbox and it'll ransack your phone's like hardwired operating system that the system image.
Like give them privileges to do whatever they want on your phone as if they are you and then as if they have a higher level of privilege than you they have system-level privileges to change the phone's operation permanently. Right? And this is the problem is on the phone. You can replace the phone, right and they'll lose access to that. But if they've already used that to gain the passwords that you use to access, you know, your iCloud or whatever when they have control of the phone.
Phone they've already got your photo roll, right? They've already got your contact list. They already have everything that you've ever put in that phone. They already have all your notes. They already have all your files. They already have everything that's in your message history, right? They can pull that out immediately and now not because they have, you know, all your contacts and things like that. They see that phone stop being active. They know you've changed your phone number. All they have to do is find the new phone number and then they can try to go after you again. The benefit is with that old style of attack if you get that message,
And you don't click that link. You're somebody in a vulnerable class, right? You've had these kind of attacks against you before it looks suspicious. You don't know who this person is. The number isn't right something like that. And you save that link. You don't click the link. You don't do anything with that link, but you send it to a group like citizen lab. They can basically use that link to basically use like a dummy phone like a sort of a trojan horse to go to the site that would attack you were phone and catch it and this
What the sort of process that all of their research is based on there are other more advanced types of attacks that actually don't have these defenses against them that are far more scary.
But the bottom line is can I stop you for a second? What is citizen lab citizen lab? You just hit the citizen lab is the
name of this research group at the University in Canada who basically studies state-sponsored and corporate malware attacks against Civil Society. It's Rhonda run by a guy named Ron deibert.
And I believe you guys will have to fact check me on that one. I think he just published a book. I actually was publishing a book about all of this but it's really they are the world leaders in my opinion and basically investigating these kind of attacks and exposing them. It's true Public Service. Let's go back to that. One thing. I ask you about warrants and you talked about the fact that I'm like people could plant evidence on things and then get motivation or
Rather they could show probable cause right to the court to then investigate you and then they can get everything and you said you know, you thought that a warrant man that can go in search your house. And this is the kind of thing that we you know, modern people are used to thinking of in the context of a warrant cops go to a specific place looking for specific things that are elements of a crime now, you know, you you've heard all these things where like cops find a way to like stop somebody and they
like are like, oh I smelled pot or whatever and they try to you know, toss their car or whatever or plain sight doctrines where they open the door and the guy sits down talk. So I'm going to go, you know, I see how a bong or something, you know, that's paraphernalia you're going to jail. But until I think it was 1967 warrants in the United States could only be used to gather two things that were called the fruits and instrumentalities of a crime.
Which meant even if the cops knew you did it, but even if cops knew you you know rode the Subway or worked for this company or whatever. They couldn't get all the company's records. They couldn't if they existed get all the emails that you have a wrote. They couldn't get your friend to turn over like an exchange of letters that you had with this person the fruits of the crime were the things that they gain from, right if they've robbed the bank the cops could get the sack of money. The instrumentalities were the tools that were used, right.
Right, like if you use Dynamite or a crowbar or getaway car, they could seize all of those things. But the idea that the cops can get everything the idea that the FBI can get all these records, you know, all of these things your whole history is very much a new thing and nobody talks about that today. We just presume it's normal. We presume it's okay, but between 1967 and today think about how many more records
There are about your life and now things like how you live private things about you that had nothing to do with criminality and everything to do with the intimacy of of who you are and the fact that all of that now today is exposed and not just to let's say you love the US government. Let's say, you know, you are like throwing cookouts for your local police department, but every other government in the world to and we really need to ask ourselves how much information
Malaysian do the authorities of the day need to do their job or how much do we want them to have how much is proper and appropriate lean and necessary and how much is too much and if we decide the cops shouldn't have this if we decided to spy shouldn't have this. Well, why in the hell should Facebook or Google or somebody trying to sell you Nikes? Why should they have
this?
Yeah, what's the answer to that? They should yeah, I mean, right but nobody wants to go backwards. Once you have gained a certain amount of access and you could justify that excess like we're stopping crimes like the Patriot Act. And then which later the Patriot Act to which was even more overreaching. Once they have that kind of power. They never go. You know what we went too far. We have too much access to
To your privacy and even if you've committed a crime we shouldn't have unrelated access to all these other activities that you're
involved. Yeah, and I mean, that's exactly the thing about the whole save the puppies act. Right if it's got a name like that you got be like no, there's something doesn't smell right here. This is this is this yeah, there's something bad in this and I mean they this so this gets back to that.
Initial topic of what did the Court decide right? And so we have the Patriot Act and the Patriot Act was this giant law that had been written been written long before 9/11. It was just sitting on the shelf and the Department of Justice the FBI, they knew they couldn't pass this they knew nobody would live with it because it was an extreme expansion of government Authority and then 9/11 happened Ryan. That's really where it all started to go wrong. That's where we got the rise of this new authoritarianism.
The we see continuing and the United States today Ryan like if you stinky and you know, like you have problems what's what's happening under Donald Trump, but you also had problems under like what I was happening with Obama and the expansion of the war on whistle blowing you had problems with the Wade drone strikes were going out of control. It will really where did this all start right? Where did it start to go wrong? Personally? I think 9/11 was where we made a fundamental mistake.
And that was we were so frightened in the moment because we had such an extraordinary and rare terrorist attack succeed which by the way could have been present prevented and I think we discussed this in the last episode.
The Congress, you know, they were they were just terrified. They said look intelligence Services cops FBI who ever anything you want blank check here you go. That was the Patriot Act and at the time groups like The American civil liberties Union. They were like
We are worried that this goes too far because God bless them. That's what the American civil liberties Union does and one of the provisions that they had a problem with was this section 215 of the Patriot Act, which I believe they were calling it the time at the library records provision and what it said basically this tiny little little phrase and the law said the FBI can basically get any records that hit deems relevant to a counter and terrorism investigation on her.
Or and the worst thing the ACLU could imagine was that these guys would go to the library and get what kind of books you're reading and like shock horror. This is the worst thing these guys could do and so they protested and they lost and this pass and it went on and lo and behold 10 years later. We find out in 2013. They had used this provision. The people were worried about just going after individuals Library records.
To instead get the phone records of not an individual not a group but everybody in the United States who was making calls on us telecommunications providers delivered to the NSA daily by these companies, right? So no matter who you are no matter how innocent you were the FBI was getting these because they said well, every phone call is relevant to a counter terrorism investigation and the court went finally, you know, this is seven years after 2013 then what guys
Too much if your definition of relevance is basically anything anywhere. All the time is relevant to a counter terrorism investigation the questions what then is not relevant. What is the limiting principle on this? What where is the end and this is a very important thing because even if it's not enough, right, even if this doesn't shut down all the programs the program was actually already stopped a few years ago because of previous Court decisions and changes in law the fact that the courts are finally
The beginning to look at these the impacts of these sweeping new technologies that allow governments to see all of these connections and interactions that we're having every day. They're finally putting limits on it. And that is I think transformative it is the foundation of what we will see in the future will begin the beguine be the first meaningful guarantees of privacy rights in the digital
age.
Now that you have been at least according to this court exonerated or Justified what what happens to you? And what happens to what they've been doing and how how much of the brakes do they hit on this like how what changes does anything change in the government's sweeping surveillance?
It's a great question. I mean
You would think when?
You get a court not even a first level corporate an appeals court that looks at these issues, you know the talking about serious stuff to talk about counterterrorism investigations, by the way in the same thing in the same decision. They said the government has been arguing, you know for 20 years. Now, these programs were saving lives. They were stopping terrorist attacks. They said, you know first they said Mass surveillance and stop 54 terrorist attacks in the United States, then they dropped it to 7 and then
They dropped it to one and the one terrorist attack or terrorist conspiracy. Whatever that they said it did stop was this case that was just cited and the court found and this is important after looking at the government's classified evidence. So this is not just the court deciding on their own. This is the government going look here's all the evidence that we have the top secret stuff the stuff that nobody can see please don't you know say our program is ineffective or whatever.
The court looked at it and they went holy crap. It did this invasion of all hundreds of millions of Americans privacy happening over the span of decades did not make a difference. In this case. They said even if or even in the absence of this program if it hadn't existed of government had never done it, they still would have busted this ring because they were already closing in on them the FBI already had all the evidence.
They needed to get a warrant to get the records through traditional means and the fact the government had been saying Congress had been saying for years and years and years that this program was necessary. The governor. The court says that was misleading which is legalese for saying the government's effing Liars on this so that raises the question of okay, like as you said, well what now? How does this change everything? Well does mean the government has to stop doing this particular.
I kind of program directly but that program had already shut down and the government has a really great team of lawyers for every agency, right the doj is got lawyers. The White House has lawyers. The FBI has lawyers. The NSA has lawyers in the CIA has lawyers. And the only thing these guys are paid to do all day is to look at basically these legal opinions from the court that says all the ways the government broke the law and go huh?
Is there any way we can just read Jigger this program slightly so that we can dodge around that Court ruling to go. All right, you know the abuses are still happening but they're happening in a less abusive way and then it's business as usual. So this is always the process with the Court's ruling against the government. This is not an exceptional thing in the case of the you know, it's NSA and CIA. What?
Happens is when the government breaks the law as the court has ruled them to do last week. There is no punishment right? There is no criminal liability for all the bastards at the head of the FBI the head of the NSA who were violating Americans rights for decades those guys don't go to prison. They don't lose their jobs. They don't even see the inside, you know smell the inside of a courtroom where they're the ones wearing handcuffs and because of that it creates a culture.
Sure of unaccountability of impunity, right which means with each generation of government officials. They study this they study the cases against them. They study where they won. They study where they lost and what they do is they try to create exactly what just happened which is a system where they can break the law for 10 years, you know 2001 to 2013 basically and no one even knows that it's happening classification protects that right then eventually it gets exposed.
There's a leak or somebody Blows the Whistle on it, right? It becomes a scandal the government, you know, they'll disown this program. They'll change the law there but somebody like the ACLU will sue the government and so the courts will finally be forced to look at these things. But the wheels of Justice turn slow, right the government will try to put the brakes on it the plaintiffs the Civil Society organizations that are suing will have to gather evidence is really difficult to do because
has the government is not providing anything. It's all classified. And then basically it takes another five years another 10 years for the court to get to the verdict and then we have it but then nobody goes to jail, right? Nobody actually faced a serious consequences who is responsible for the wrongdoing and so the cycle continues but having said that like it might feel disempowering my people might go all we can't win but this is in the context of a system where we lack accountability where the government
Always have a culture of impunity. This is what winning looks like because things do get better. The problem is they get better by decades. They get better by half centuries and centuries. If you look at the United States, you know, 200 years ago a hundred years ago things were objectively worse on basically every measure the fact that we have to crawl to the future is a sad thing when we know it could be fixed very quickly by establishing some kind of criminal liability.
Ability for people like James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence who lied under oath to Congress and the American people saying exactly this program didn't exist. The NSA wasn't collecting any information on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans when in fact they were doing that everyday Obama did not fire him right Obama did not charge him Obama let him serve out the end of his days and then retire happily but it's not an Obama problem, right? We see the same kinds of
Abuse is happening under the Trump Administration. We saw the same kind of abuses happening under the Bush Administration and the only way this changes materially is if our government changes structurally right and and that's kind of the issue that I think everybody in the country sees when you look at the economy when you look at all the struggle when you look at all the class conflict and divide in the political partisanship that's happening today. The problem isn't right like about this law.
Or this Court ruling or this agency. It's about inequality of opportunity of access even if privilege right? I know people don't like talking about that. It's uncomfortable people like oh my God, you know, are you whatever but the reality is we have a few people in the country, you know, the Jeff Bezos the Bill Gates that own everything like 10 people only half the country and half the country owning nothing at all and
Applies to influence right when you have that kind of disproportionality of resources, you have that kind of disproportionality of influence your vote means less your ability to change the law means less your access to the courts means less and that's how we end up in the situation where we are
today.
This is very disheartening.
Well, it doesn't have to be because the important thing is we can change it.
Was
can we though? I mean the like what can we do and what can anybody change this point to stop this overwhelming power that their government has to invade your privacy and to all the things that you exposed when you talk about how the particular program that was in place has been shut down. But all they do is manipulate it slightly do it so that you can argue in court that it's not the same thing. That is a
Thing come up with other justifications for it and withhold evidence and then drag the process out for years and years and years and for you to be so optimistic is really kind of spectacular considering the fact that you've been hiding in another country. Allegedly. We don't even know you might be in Ohio. We don't know, you know, we don't know like but but but you are essentially on the lam and for exposing something that has now been determined to be illegal, so
You are correct. When you go back to Obama's hope and what was this a collision his website hope and change hope and change a big part of Hope and change was protecting whistleblowers. Do you remember that? And that was all deleted later later on they were like, yeah, let's go back and take that shit out. We didn't know I didn't know what it was like to actually be president back then. I was just trying to get in there but the hope and change stuff was still there when you were being tried was still there when they
Chasing you and and trying to find your location when the guardian article came out the hope and change shit was still still online. Yeah, and that's the fact that you're so optimistic even though you've been fucked over. Royally. I mean you are in my opinion. You're a hero. I really think that and I really and I really think that what what you exposed is hugely important for the American citizens to understand that absolute power corrupts. Absolutely.
Absolutely, and these people had the ability to look into everything and they just still do they have the ability to look into everything you're doing and the fact that through these years it literally stopped zero terrorist attacks 0 so this sweeping overwhelming intrusion of your privacy had no impact whatsoever on your safety.
Well, it wasn't about safety. It was about power right they told it was about
Safety
that was again. It's the saved the puppies act. If you if you see government saying all these things or for safety there protecting you and they never establish the efficacy of it. The the chances are there it probably isn't effective because you know, the government leaks all the time, you know, if they say we save this person we did that, you know, whenever they're being criticized they go on TV and they're very seriously go. Well that's classified.
And you know, we can't expose that and you never hear of the successes we do because it's so important that they stay secret. Look I worked for the CIA work for the NSA. That's bullshit. Hey do something great. You know, it's on the front page of the New York Times by the end of the day because they're fighting for Budget. They're fighting for clout there fighting for Authority. They're fighting for new laws not constantly
and so there are no real accomplishments that are in the shadows that they just don't tell us
any very rarely. Think about when we got Bin Laden, right?
Yeah, I was like I want a press conference within the next 20 minutes. And again, this is not to bag on Obama. Any president would do this. That's just how it is. Now, of course, there are some secret successes, but it's about stuff that no one cares about it's stuff that wouldn't win them political clout. It's like they gained an advantage negotiating position on the price of shrimp and clove cigarettes, which was actually one of the stories.
He's that came out of some kind of classified disclosure that I think was from Wikileaks that kind of stuff. It actually does happen. Right but we're never having a conversation of do you want to give up all of your privacy rights so that we can get better prices on shrimp and clove cigarettes. Like that would be a very different political conversation than do you want to give up all of your privacy rights? Because if you don't your children will die.
And you know, yeah,
you know, it's save The Puppy right exactly save the puppies
2020. So this this thing you asked about you know, me and optimism, like I have been criticized relentlessly for being a naive Optimist, right and my answer is that you don't do what I did unless you believe that people can do better. I took a very comfortable life. Yeah.
I was living in a lie with the woman that I loved I had to do basically no work would go in the office and read spy feeds about people in all day long and I could have done that. You know for the rest of my life quite happily would have been great. I set that on fire because I believe that what I saw was wrong. I believe the people deserve to know about it and I believe that if people did know about it that things would change I did not believe
Leave it was going to save the world. I did not believe I was going to get you no ticker-tape parade in a pardon, you know be welcomed with open arms and there's actually if you watch Citizen for which is the documentary from 2013 where I was meeting with reporters and Laura poitras had the camera rolling in the room when we talked for the first time I said, you know, the government's going to say I harm National Security. I put everybody in Jeopardy. They're gonna charge me under the Espionage Act.
And they really did try to destroy my life. They tried to put me in prison forever and to this day. They are still trying to do the same thing. That's just how it is. You know, this wasn't
like even though even
though yeah,
even though the the most recent ruling has showed that you were correct and what they were doing was illegal and you exposed a
crime. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is this is a Continuing Story in 2013, you know when this first came out
Didn't Obama went out on stage, you know because he was getting singed in the press and said, you know take it from me. Nobody is listening to your phone calls, even though nobody says metadata and nobody said they were listening to your phone calls. It wasn't like they had headsets on you know, 300 plus million people in the United States you'd have to have computers do that. But what they did do was they collected the records of your phone calls and to an analyst to intelligence.
Let's that's more valuable than the transcripts your phone calls. We care less about what you said on the phone than who you called. When you called them. What else you're doing what your phone was doing? Right the websites that you would access the cell phone Powers. They were connected to all of those things that metadata creates What's called the social graph your pattern of life. It says based on when your phone becomes active in the morning when you start calling people when you start browsing when you
You check your you know, Twitter feed your scrolling on Instagram. Whatever. That's when you wake up when it stops. That's when you go to sleep. We see where you are. We see where you live. We see who you live with all of those things, right? That's just from metadata. You don't need the content of your Communications. I don't need to see what picture you post it on Instagram to know you're awake and active and you're communicating with this person at this phone this place this area code this IP address, you know this version.
Software with are using Android or iOS, you know, all of these things and now is we get smart phones as your cars begin connecting to the internet. It's just richer and richer and richer data, I don't know where I was going with that. Sorry. I got off topic, but
The bottom line is things get better. They get better slowly. Oh, right. Sorry the Obama was saying, you know, nobody listens to your phone calls, right? That was June 2013 by January of 2014 giving his State of the Union Address. He went although he could never condone. What I did the conversation that I started has made us stronger as a nation. He was calling for the end of this program the passage of a new law called the USA Freedom Act and under save the puppies act.
Which was better than the thing it was replacing but still really bad and he did that not out of the goodness of his heart. He did that because the court in December of 2013 had ruled these programmers were unlawful and likely unconstitutional and this is again, it's not an Obama thing. It's a power thing. This is how the system works, right but year-by-year step-by-step things get better. We make progress a little bit at a time and the fact that someone is suing the
Fact that the ACLU is bringing this case and we should thank them for that for years, which is a difficult and expensive proposition with no guarantee of success means that we have stronger privacy result rights 7 years later as a result. That doesn't mean we saved the world. That doesn't mean we relax we sit down on the couch. You know, there's the golden Sunset that's not how life works. It is a constant struggle, but when we do struggle when we do stand up we believe in something so
Strongly, we don't merely believe in it. But we risk something for that belief. We work together and we pulled the species forward and inch at a time. We move away from that swamp of impunity and unaccountability into a future where hey maybe not just a little guy breaks the law and goes to jail, but maybe a senator may be an attorney general may be a president right and that
Would be very good precedent to have.
Do you wonder whether or not someone will use you as a political chess piece at this point and decide I mean, I believe if it's correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you have overwhelming support of the general public. Most people believe that what you did was was a good thing for America and that you are in fact a patriot. I think the vast majority people and the people that I have talked to I have talked to a few people that disagree with that they're missing.
Formed they were misinformed about what you did and what information you were leaked or whether or not people's lives were put in danger because of that and I had to explain the whole chain of events. And where the information actually was how it was leaked and what you had done to protect people. There's there's a could you please explain that because it wasn't just that the information was dumped. Yeah. So I mean, this is really the
subject of our our last conversation goes on for three hours, but I wrote a book.
Yeah, but I just would just to you so this will stand alone. Just I'll
go through it. So the idea and this is the subject of my first book permanent record, which was why I came on last year and actually just this week the soft cover came out. So it's more affordable for people who didn't want to get it before is this story? Right? It's who I am where I came from why I did this how and what it meant. I didn't just reveal information. I gave it to journalists.
Right, these journalists were only given access to the information on the condition that they would publish no story simply because it was newsworthy or interesting right? They weren't going to click bait classified documents. They would only publish stories if they were willing to make an independent institutional judgment and stand by it that it was in the public interest that this be known right and then as an extraordinary measure on top of that before they publish the stories, right and this is not me.
Publishing things putting them out on the Internet or blog or something, which I could have done would have been very easy. It's not me telling them what to write or not to write. They're doing this this Guardian The Washington Post, you know, they're Spiegel. They are then going to the United States government in advance of publication and giving the government a chance and adversarial opportunity to argue against publication to go you guys don't get it, you know snowden's a liar these documents are false or
He's not lying. And yes, these are true. But these programs are effective. They're saving lives whatever and here's what we can show you to convince you. Please don't publish this or leave out this detail and I never case I'm aware of that process was followed. And that's why now in 2020. Remember we're seven years on from 2013. The government has never shown a single example of any harm that has come as a result of the publication of these documents back in 2013 the revelation of mass surveillance.
And it's that's what I wanted to bring here. And I mean it's like it's unscientific. But I've seen polls run on Twitter very recently in the last few weeks. When this part in question came out where 90% like 90 plus percent of people were in favor of the pardon and that's crazy even in 2013 when we were doing. Well, you know, it was like 60 percent in favor among young people, but it was like 40 percent for older people.
That's because the government was on TV every Sunday, you know bringing these CIA students going who were there with the very Stern faces going over this caused Great damage and cost lives and everything like that. But those arguments stop being convincing when seven years later after they told us in the sky is falling the atmosphere never catches fire, right the oceans never boil off. We're still alive and I think people can see through that and that was again this
Is exactly what you said people don't know this history that that 10% who were against it and actually a lot of the 90% who are even in favor of it. They don't know the details. It wasn't well covered by the media at the time. It was all about this person said that and that person said that is it true. Is it false, you know sort of they were playing on character. They're trying to make a drama out of it. And that's a big part of why I wrote permanent record and it's been tremendously gratifying.
To see people connect to it and actually this I you know, I mentioned it we talked on Twitter when we were talking about the possibility of having this conversation and I was like, I looked back at our first conversation we had and it's had like 16 million views man. That's for a three-hour conversation like set
and then probably an equal amount of people just listen to it in
audio, right and that that was just for one clip on YouTube. There were smaller clips that I talked about cell phone surveillance. That was
another 10 million views 77,000 comments. The book on Amazon has thousands of reviews. It's got a 4.8 rating which is liked by the number of people and how it's rated. That's one of the best autobiographies according to Ordinary People the audience in like years and to see that after these years of attacks and to me is evidence that despite all these news guys at night going. Well Senator, you know.
No one really cares about privacy these days these kids with their Facebook's and their Instagrams, you know people do care what they're actually feeling is kind of what you got to earlier with like this Sensation that nothing changes my even when we win we lose but the thing is you've got to have a broader view of time. You've got to look at the sweep of History rather than the atmosphere of the moment because right now yes, things are very
a bad and even if you love Donald Trump because I know some of your viewers to you got to admit a lot of things in the world suck right now a lot of things in the country suck right now, but the thing is they only get better if somebody does the hard work to make them better and there's no magic wand. There's no happy ending right life is not that simple but together we can make it better and we do that through struggle.
Do you has there been any discussion about someone pardoning you has there been I mean this is the question initially with that led to this, but I wanted you to expand on what would actually went down. But has there been any discussion about you being pardoned or someone using you as like I said a political chess piece because you would be a smart thing. And if anybody has had a problem with the intelligence Community it is Donald.
Up. I mean, he's the only president in our in any memory that has had open disagreements and been openly disparaging of the intelligence Community. Well, that's not true. It was JFK that didn't cover in. That's right. Forgot about that. Good point. Yeah that that went terrible for him for Trump for trump. It actually seems to be a positive in some strange way. If anybody is going to Pardon you I would imagine that would be the guy
so
So this idea of like the political bargaining chip has actually been used in a different way. There was the idea and it's funny because this was actually promoted by all these like CIA Deputy directors on who are responsible for these abuses of Americans rights who are writing opinion piece in the newspaper and they were like, you know, what if Vladimir Putin, you know sends Snowden to Trump is like an inauguration gift wouldn't that be terrible for him and they were like hint hint, you know?
But I don't think when we talk about this stuff.
I don't think there's anything I can do to control. One of the things people have asked is like what I accept a pardon from Donald Trump and I think that Miss ends apprehends. What a pardon is and how it works. A pardon is not a contract a pardon is not something that you agree to Pardon is a constitutionally enumerated power. I think it's Article 2 Section 2 where?
The reason that it exists is basically a check on the laws and the Judiciary where the laws as written become corrosive to the intention of them and this is something that I think actually is Meaningful, you know, people are like are you going to ask Donald Trump for a pardon and the answer is no, but I will ask for pardon for Terry Albury Daniel Hale and reality winner and all.
The other American whistleblowers who have been treated unfairly by this system the whole thing that brought this up was two weeks ago. Some journalists asked the president like, you know, what do you think about Snowden? Are you going to Pardon him? And he said he seemed to be thinking about it. He heard I had been treated very unfairly that's accurate because it's impossible to get a fair trial under the Espionage Act, which is what I've been charged under and every American whistleblower since Daniel.
Ellsberg the 1970s has been charged under this law the Espionage Act which makes no distinction between someone who is stealing secrets and selling them to foreign governments, which neither I nor any of these other people have done and giving them freely to journalists to advance the public interest of the American people rather than the private interest of these spies, you know individually and this is the kind of
This is the kind of circumstance for which the pardon power exists where the courts and judges will not or cannot end a fundamentally unfair and abusive circumstance in the United States either because they're fearful of being criticized of soft on terrorism or whatever or because the law prohibits them from doing. So the problem with the Espionage Act is it means you can't tell the jury why you did what you
Did you cannot Mount what's called a public interest offense where you say? Hell? Yeah, I broke the law. I took a classified document and I gave it to the journalists and the journalists published and then it went to the courts and the court said this guy was right the government was breaking the law in the courts. If I were, you know in prison today as reality winners in prison today or rather Daniel Hale who revealed government abuses related to the Drone program or Terrier?
Albury who revealed problems with racial policies in the FBI how they were being abused when these guys are on trial. All of that stuff is forbidden from being spoken Daniel ellsberg's lawyer asked Daniel Ellsberg. Why did you do it in court in open court under oath, you know, why did you publish or provide a journalist the Pentagon papers and the prosecutor said objection objection. He can't say that.
The judge said sustained fine. He can't say it and his attorney looked at the judge like he was crazy and said, I've never heard of a trial where the jury is not allowed to hear why a defendant did what they did and the judge said, well, you're seeing one now and this is why the part of power
exists.
Well, that's what's so creepy about something like the Aspen not Espionage Act. If you can't even establish a motive, you can't even explain that you were doing this for the American people that there's a real precedent that should be set for this kind of thing, especially in regards to what you're being charged with which has now been determined that you were exposing something that was in fact illegal. And this is it's it's it's incredibly unamerican thing. It's very on.
Can it really is but this it's disturbingly.
So I mean we see these kind of injustices happening in the United States every day and it's not about the Espionage Act specifically. I mean, you see what drug charges you see with civil forfeiture asset forfeiture. We're like, you know, they take an old lady's car because her nephew was selling weed or something like that and there's no way for her to get it back whether we're talking civil whether we're talking Federal whether we're talking sorry civil or criminal whether we're talking federal or state.
8 we see where the system of laws in the United States is letting people down constantly, but the question becomes how do we fix this? How does that get addressed and you know, you can mount a national campaign. You can try to change the law but as we talked about before unless you're unless you're Jeff Bezos unless you're Bill Gates that's very difficult to do but the governor can pardon people for State crimes the president can pardon people for federal crimes, but we have
Developed a compassionate culture that actually looks at this like every president has abused their pardon power are there pardon authority to sort of let their cronies off the hook we've seen under this President we've seen in the previous presidents sharam, but it is very difficult to establish an understanding among average people that it's actually okay for presidents to use this power more. Liberally when particularly we're talking about
nonviolent offenses when we're talking about things that have not, you know, they're not that controversial but they are being controversial eyes because of the political atmosphere of partisanship where everything has to be criticized for political Advantage from one side of the other everything's become a
football.
More particularly in your case. When you're talking about polls that show 90% of people support you being pardoned and this recent ruling that what you exposed was illegal. I wonder how much the president actually knows about your case, you know, because it's a good question. It's a meeting. He's famous for barely paying attention and briefings. And you know, I mean, I just I can't imagine that in 2013. This was fully on his radar where he investigated it and read all the
Commands really got deep into it. I can't imagine he really knows everything that went down. I bet he hasn't seen citizen for I mean I bet Aisha, I really you know me calling me. I don't watch it. Listen if I had his number I really would and I do know people who know him and I am going to communicate that after this conversation. I think that would be I literally think that would win him a tremendous amount of political favor. I really do I think particularly
we at this point in time where people are really like if there's ever a time where people are fed up about the overreaching power of government. It's during this pandemic lockdown, you know for good or for bad whether it's in correct or incorrect people are very frustrated right now with power. They're very frustrated right now with the the Draconian measures that some states have put in place to keep people from working and and their eyes keep people safe and all this would
Butte to the motivation to to Pardon you because I think that it would show people that the president actually does agree that there have been some overreaches and in your case not just in overeat but it a miscarriage of Justice a disgusting unamerican
overreach. I think when you ask this question about like how much does he know about the case the it's fair to say not a lot because he's intentionally being Miss advised by his advisors.
You've heard the Attorney General William bar who says he would be, you know, vehemently opposed to a pardon for me his secretary of state Mike Pompeo has literally I think said I should be killed John Bolton at least said I should be killed and you know, I think when this conversation first came up a couple weeks ago Mike Pompeo probably had hit every pain in the white house because she's trying to make sure things like this don't happen. I think there are a lot of people who try and control
President but this whole question about you know, what's right for me. What's right for the president in terms of political Advantage is the wrong question. This is why I haven't been advocating for part and I didn't ask for a pardon from Obama. I did ask for pardon for Chelsea Manning, which we didn't get but we did get clemency and that's an important thing mmm because
What we need is we need for pardons to be made not as a question of political Advantage, but as a decision taken on to further the public interest and this is why I say pardon, you know, all of these previous whistleblowers Thomas Drake and John kiriakou Terry Albury reality winner Daniel Hale. There are many names Daniel Ellsberg, right? He wasn't convicted so he got out, but these people deserve recognition as the Patriots have stood up.
And took a risk for the rest of us that they are look at the current cases, right? They don't even require an exercise of the pardon Authority. But Julian Assange right now today is in court in the UK fighting an extradition trial to the United States for those who don't remember this is the guy who's the head of WikiLeaks, right? And he really fell out of favor in 2016 because he published the Hillary emails and everything like that or podesta emails, but he's not being
Being charged for that the extradition trial has nothing to do with that actually the US government under William bar, right? The current attorney general is trying to extradite this guy and put him in prison for the rest of his life for the best work that Wikileaks ever did that has won awards in every country basically around the planet including the United States, which is the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, right detainee records and Guantanamo Bay, I think
That are about explicit war crimes and abuses of power torture and people who were killed who should have been killed violations of use of force protocols and all of these things. Right and this could all be made to go away if William bar the Attorney General's simply dropped the charges and he should why isn't
it?
Well, Julian Assange is literally been tortured. I mean the guy was locked in that Embassy for how many years with no exposure to Daylight just completely trapped and I've seen videos of him skateboarding around the the embassy we looks like he's going crazy in there and now he's in jail and on trial the whole thing is it's so disturbing because you know when it when it boils down to like what what did he do? That is illegal.
What did he do that people disagree with that people the United States disagree with in terms of the citizens. Well, he exposed horrific crimes. He exposed things that were deeply that we the United States citizens are deeply opposed to and the fact that that
Is something that you in this country can be prosecuted for that they would try to extradite you and drag you from another country. They kick him out of the embassy and bring them back to the United States to try him for that. It seems like we're talking about some Kangaroo Court. It seems like we're talking about some some dictatorship where you know, you have these no protection to freedom speech no protection under the First Amendment no protection under the rights of the press it just
It's so disturbing that there are workarounds for our Constitution and our Bill of Rights that are with that. We all just agree to just accept that this is happening. There's no riots in the streets for this. There's no no one's up in arms that they're trying to extradite Julian Assange. No, no one mean it's not in the news like for whatever reason the mainstream news has barely covered it over this his current Court proceedings in the
in the UK
know I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that they see Julian Assange by this day. I mean the the lot of the mainstream media the broadcast Outlets as a partisan figure now and it's really sad because the most dangerous thing about the charges against Julian Assange is if they extradite Julian Assange if Julius hot, she's convicted. He's charged under the Espionage Act the same act that I'm charged under the same thing that all these whistleblowers are charged under
But he is not a source the way as abusive his Espionage Act charges have run in the last 50 years is the government had sort of a quiet agreement. They never charged the Press Outlets. They never charged the New York Times then every charge the Washington Post. They don't charge the journalists. They charge their sources. They charge the Chelsea Manning's right? They charge the Edward snowden's they charge the Thomas Drake's the Daniel ellsberg's but the
Press they're left alone. They are breaking that agreement with the Julian Assange case Assange is not the source. He is merely a publisher. He runs a press organization people like oh Julian Assange is not a journalist. He's not whatever there is no way you can make that argument in court in a way that will be defensible particularly given what we've talked about with the government and how careful they are to avoid prior Court precedents and to work around it and create, you know, obscure legal theories that are legal fiction.
Everyone knows they're a lie. Everyone knows these theories are false. But under the law, you know, they'd been just enough that they can pass the argument through and get the conviction. They want you cannot convict Julian Assange the chief editor and publisher Wikileaks under the Espionage Act without exposing the New York Times The Washington Post CBS ABC NBC, you know, CNN Fox whoever to the same kind of charges under this.
Aunt and every coming president and I think people don't think about
that.
That that is disturbing. You know, another thing that's just well there's many things that are starving about this case. But another thing that's been disturbing it was he was a guy who the left supported up until 2016 and then it became inconvenient right and getting
Bush. It was great. Then when he's dragging. Yes Clinton, it's not so
great. Right right. When when the the footage was revealed from the believe it was a helicopter that show was
Collateral murder remember that video that was collateral now Iraq. Yeah, it was a dainty
helicopter and Iraq firing on to Reuters journalists. Yeah, that'd yes militants or something.
Yes. Exactly. That was the left's he was the darling of the left. I mean, they were all free Julian Assange and it's just it's so interesting how that narrative can shift so completely to all the
A sudden he's a puppet of Russia. And that's what it became in 2016 and that propaganda stuck and people who were progeny a massage before now all of a sudden I've seen these people say Fuck Wikileaks, you know and fuck Julian Assange like that guy's a puppet of Russia. I'm like like how much have you looked into this? It's amazing how that kind of propaganda when you just get the surface veneer of the the the whatever the narrative there. That is.
They're trying to push how well it spreads that all these people who were these educated left wing people. Now all of a sudden were anti Wikileaks and I'm like, do you not remember how this whole thing got started? It was the Iraq War which we all opposed. Do not remember this whole bullshit lie about the weapons of mass destruction that got us into this crazy War. I didn't Julian Assange and Wikileaks expose so much of this.
This and yet here. We are in 2016. It turns up on its head and now he's a puppet of Russia and and Wikileaks is bad because inconveniently the information that he released damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to people forgetting what principles are and why they're important. Yes, right. You can hate Julian Assange. You can think Julian Assange is a puppeteer.
You can think he's the worst person on earth, right? He's a Reincarnation of Hitler or Stalin or whatever and still realize that convicting him harms you it harms your Society it harms your children's future the people forget about this and today is world where everything's become partisan, but the ACLU cut their teeth they made their reputation on defending a nazi march through a Jewish neighborhood.
And this is because it's about the right to assembly the right to freedom of speech. You do not have a right to be free from a fence right? There is no constitutional right to a safe space, but that doesn't mean you do nothing. That doesn't mean you have no opinion. That doesn't mean you have no political power what it does mean is that you have to recognize that everyone has the right to their own opinion even terrible opinions what we have
Protect is the speech is the platform is the assemblies. The association is the process that allows us to understand and recognize and identify when people did break the law when they did harm others to go to a fair trial where the jury can consider why they did what they did what they did and not just whether it was legal or illegal, but whether it was moral or immoral whether it was right or whether it was wrong and whether they are the lowest person, you know, the most ordinary citizen in the country or
The highest elected official hold them to the same standard of behavior the same rule of law. Whereas today, you know, we call them public officials and private citizens. But if with the all of the surveillance all of the data collection people in power commercially or governmentally they know everything about us and we know nothing about them we break the smallest law we go to jail. We get a fine we get screwed. We can't get a job we can't get along but if
Hey, you know flagrantly abuse their office their Authority they get a pass they go on the speaker's circuit, you know, it's it's all sunshine and rainbows for them. And the way we change these things is remembering our principles and being willing to stand and defend them.
It's also instinctual for people to be partisan. And it's Tribal. It's a tribal thing and in this day and age people are rabidly partisan and the rejection of nuance is so disturbing to me and it's so disturbing that a lot of this happens from the left now, whereas the left used to be all about freedom of speech. The ACLU is I mean, it's just you automatically think of liberal people when you think of the ACLU, but they say yeah
just for the record.
It is a nonpartisan organization.
Yes, but supported overwhelmingly certainly by by left-wing people. I mean, obviously they are nonpartisan, but but people are so partisan today that this rejection of nuance it's so it's so easy for people to look at things as left versus right and ignore all of the sins of their team and
second-rate on defeating the other side and it seems to be a giant part of the problem today so much so that people are in favor. A lot of people are in favor of De platforming people that just simply disagree with them and I want to talk to you about that because that seems to be a gigantic issue not seems to be it is a gigantic issue with social media whether it's with Twitter or YouTube or many things in fact Unity 2020.
Is something that my friend my friend Brett Weinstein is putting together this idea that we should look across.
Both parties for people that are reasonable and rational people and look at what we agree with rather than simply sitting on partisan policy on party lines and only voting, you know blue across the board or read across the board and let's look at reasonable people from both sides. Whether it's Dan Crenshaw and Tulsi gabbard or whoever it is that are they represent different parties, but they're both reasonable people. Let's get them together and have these communications.
Banned from Twitter. They were simply banned banned from Twitter for simply saying reject both Trump and Biden look for a third choice. So this is not there's nothing offensive about what they did. In fact, they're they're encouraging Choice. They're encouraging this idea that we don't have to be a two-party system that in fact, even though we have had libertarian and green parties. We kind of look at it like bullshit. It's like a protest vote.
Vote if you vote green party, you know, you're not going to let that person for president. It's kind of like we tolerate it but when someone like Ross Perot came around and threw a monkey wrench into the gears and became very dangerous for both sides because the Republicans lost a lot of votes and that's how Bill Clinton got into office and George HW Bush did not get a second term directly because the influence of Ross Perot so they changed the requirements for getting into the debates and everything became very different and very,
complicated after that the fact that they would be that Twitter will be willing to ban Unity 2020 specifically because they're calling for people to walk away from this idea that you have to either vote for Trump or Biden and trying to get mainstream acceptance of a potential Third Party candidate is extremely disturbing but deep platforming in general I think is extremely disturbing because it's a slippery slope if you decide that someone has views
Is that are opposite of yours and they bother you those views bother you and you could do whatever you can to get them off of a platform. It's very dangerous because someone from the right who gains power or someone from a opposing part of the gains power if they get into a position of power in social media if they own gigantic social media company like Twitter or YouTube and they decide in turn to go after people that agree with your ideology. Well, then we have a freedom of speech issue.
You and your asses, you're literally supporting the suppression of freedom of speech. If you're supporting D platforming people on social media, and I've always thought that the answer to someone saying something you disagree with or something. Someone saying something UV Emily oppose is a better argument. That's what the it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be you should expose the problems and what they're doing and I'm seeing so many people particularly on the left that are happy when people get
D platformed and people that just Arc just are contrary to their perspective contrary to their ideology. And it's it's I think it's very dangerous and it's too easy too easy to accept it's in this this goes back to what you're saying this partisan Viewpoint that we have today, fiercely rabidly partisan in a way that I've never seen in my life.
Yeah. I think the question of D platforming. This is one of the the
Central issues of our time that's really overlooked and it's under appreciated. So many people on both sides are in favor of this when it's somebody they don't like right. Yes.
The central issue is this do we want companies deciding what can and cannot be said?
Do we want governments deciding what can and cannot be said if the answer is yes, it is a very different kind of society than we have had traditionally. I do think we need to understand where this impulse came from how it came to be and why it seemed reasonable and a lot of people forget this and it came from Isis if you remember the Islamic State was all over YouTube. They were all over Twitter that we're all over.
Book and they were literally burning people alive in cages. They were beheading people, you know, pushing people off buildings just a horrible stuff and that raises a tough question for a lot of these companies now, it's very easy to make the argument that all right. This is a direct call for violence. This is literally supporting terrorism. And as a private company, we have no obligation to let people use
our platforms. Therefore we're closing their accounts, right? We're shutting this off. We're racing that we can do whatever we want. It's our website don't like it leave constitutionally. There's no freedom of speech issue implicated there because the Constitution restrains the federal government and the state governments and certain circumstances not private companies. But once that precedent had been established that they
Do this for Isis they started going what what about these other people what about these things that could be construed as calls to violence? Okay, what if they're not violence at all? What if it's harassment? What if it's abuse what if it's racism what if it's you know criminality what if it's drug culture? What if it's pornography what if it's whatever and there will always be more what ifs and the categories of prohibited speech will constantly expand. So we need to ask ourselves. Well who is best
in place to make those decisions about what can and cannot be said traditionally the access to broadcast was limited you had radio you had TV. If you didn't have that you have the Soap Box on the corner right or the local University the coffee shop and somebody owned those places or somebody ran those places, you know, the college President would say this Coast person would be invited to speak. This person wouldn't be invited to speak.
And I actually think it's right and proper for people to be able to protest speakers to say this person shouldn't speak at our college, but I think the college itself the institution has to be willing to make value judgments about why they invite certain people to speak and if that person is very unpopular speaker. If that person is a representing a Viewpoint that is not well supported by the college if it's not necessarily what students want to hear.
But the administration believes like The Faculty believes that it's something students should hear isn't that why we have universities. We don't go to class to learn, you know, the necessarily like you don't go to a literature course to read the things that you want to read. You just go home and read those yourself you go to study a curriculum to something else you want to benefit from The Experience from the perspectives of others. The question that people have is how does this expand into
The wider audience right? What happens when you move Beyond University what happens when you move to news broadcast what happens when you move to the internet what happens when everyone everywhere can broadcast and this is where I think things get really tricky not can people say what they want as long as they're not advocating violence or whatever. I don't think this should be a difficult issue but this gets complicated when you have things like YouTube's the next video suggestion algorithm because
the idea of universal speech Universal ability to broadcast is exactly as you said. Well, what is the counter for this? You've got freaking Nazis on the internet and I'm not talking like whatever the guys got a trump sticker on his truck. I'm talking goose-stepping, you know, swastika bearing actual freaking not see you have those people out there on the internet calling for violence calling for all these terrible things. And normally the way you deal with this even in the case of something like ice.
Is you drag them onto the platform you discredit their ideas before the world? Because if you don't if you drive them underground if you make them, you know, this this faction that's you know, hanging out at a radical mosque or you know, they're hanging out the hardware stores the freaking Nazis or whatever there are places where you create its own community that is sheltered from other perspectives its sheltered from other ideas and that
That is where extremism thrives where it cannot be challenged where it cannot be exposed for what it really is. But when you've got YouTube going, oh you like not see a how about not see be how about not CC right these people never get exposed to counter speech and this is where things get
tricky.
Well, it also gets tricky when you decide that someone is saying something that's offencive and you remove them from the platform. And then you open the door for other things being offensive things that maybe aren't offensive to you in the the slope gets slippery. And then you have wrong speak you have you have newly dictated language that you have to use you have new restrictions on ideologies things. You're not allowed.
Spouse. I mean Twitter will ban you for dead naming someone that will ban you for life. Meaning if you transition to be a woman and you call yourself Edwina and I call you Edward you I will be banned for life with no recourse, which is madness. It's Matt because I can call you fuckface and no one has a problem with it. Yeah, you know I'm saying I could call you a terrible. I could I could call you that and there's no problem. But if I choose a name that used to
to accurately represent you as a different gender because this is some new incredibly important distinction that we've decided. It takes precedence over everything else including it's more significant than insults more significance than demeaning of I call you a moron I could demean your intellect. All those things are fine. But if I choose to call you by a name that used to accurately accurately represent you when you were a different
Gender or when you identified with a different gender because of today's political climate that is grounds for Banning you for life. It shows you how incredibly slippery censorship can get because I would have never imagined that if you said to me ten years ago, well when someone becomes a transgender person 10 years ago 10 years ago, if you said this to me, what's if someone comes to transgender person you call them by their original name, you could be banned from social media for life. I'm like get the fuck out of here. They'll never get to that no one's going to be that unreasonable.
Annabelle that's crazy because you could call some people's so many disparaging insulting names, but you can't say their name that isn't even insulting dead naming that's what it's called. So it just shows you dead naming of today you agree with that today that opens up the door for all kinds of crazy shit five years from now ten years from now if we still get more and more rabidly politically polarized and we are idea of PC culture gets more and more extreme.
You're in you're on a greased Hill and if you decide to give up a little ground, the slide is imminent.
I think this is like you can argue on that axis. But I think incremental ISM and the failures of imagination going, you know, 10 years ago. We couldn't imagine this would have been a bendable fence is the wrong way to go about it. Because if you go back to the founding of the country saying, you know women should have the right to vote black people should have the right to vote, you know, that was
Imaginable that would get you equivalently D platform not welcome to the speaking Community or whatever sure but those are positive and inclusive thing. I'm not saying right. I'm associating these directly. I'm talking about the principal here because Teresa can attack these things in that direction go, you know, this doesn't seem right. But remember, it's Twitter making these rules its YouTube making visual. There's not a court making these rules and anybody technically today can decide who in can and can't who?
Can and cannot speak on their platforms the question is what should we do? What kind of culture should we promote? How should we have these conversations on how should make them available and I think civility is not too much to ask people. Generally as you say, you know calling people fuckface or more on or whatever is completely normal on the internet and that's not really going to get you banned from anywhere. And now you have all of these companies a sort of contorting themselves to fit into these blocks to not
Isolate or sort of anger all of these different demographics, but if we truly want to have a global broadcast a public Commons the question, I think that's more important here is not so much what should and should not be banned because that's accepting the premise of banning. It's how do we create an inclusive platform where everyone can talk and even strictly and harshly?
Agree with each other without it coming down to name-calling without trying to Doc's people without trying to basically dog whistle them or screw them or hurt them or harm them. However, now look I am not above calling people bad names on the internet. I've said terrible thing, I grew up on the internet right? I was an asshole. Right and we all were in the thing is the worst things that we say any moment today. They are permanent the internet never forgets, right so,
When you say these things and you know, there's a young audience listening right now to like everything and they think it's cool. They think it's funny or they don't think it's cooler. They don't think it's funny but they think they shouldn't be de platform for it. They are edgy, you know, they push the lines whatever they get that out there and they start emulating this Behavior. They start saying mean things they start saying cruel things. I did it myself right not in this context, but in whatever the equivalent would be, you know, 20 years ago.
Um and that there are going to be consequences for that. They're going to be judged by that whether they should or should not whether it is right or wrong because as you said there's so much tribalism today and I think we have to create positive examples. I think you're right. The D platforming is a huge issue. It is a tremendous issue, right, but we should think about what it is that we're actually fighting against and I don't think like trans issues or whatever when it comes down to basically
Ali civility is the hill to die on because I think there's better
arguments.
Well, I certainly think we should encourage civility. There's no doubt about it. What I'm getting at is that the idea that you can get banned for life for that is it's Preposterous. I think civility is one of the most important things our culture could ever promote and I think it's very difficult to promote civility online because the anonymous aspect of there's no accountability net interaction, right? There's no accountability. There's you you're not getting social cues from people. It's just a completely different world.
When you're interacting with people, especially for kids, you know, I mean, if you'd given me the internet when I was 15 years old, I would have said the most horrific things to people for sure and I'm sure many 15 year old kids are doing exactly that right now. I think the more we can encourage civility the better we all are in all aspects of our life, whether it's it person to person face-to-face or online. I try very hard to only say things online that I would say to someone's face.
And if you online now, I do not interact with people in any way shape or form that's negative. I don't do it. I don't I don't believe in it. I treat it the same way if it's avoidable. I avoid it and I think that's incredibly
important. But this does my pain important point which is I mean what it really gets to the core of the issue failures of Civility the fact that people say bad things. Yes, the people don't have accountability that there are you know, there's a whole spectrum of people out there from
Angels to Devil's right? There's Ordinary People and even the best of people have bad days and say terrible things for sure. We're all we do need people to have some responsibility for having a thicker skin, you know, if look guys I've had people literally advocating my murder right like that just torture and murder litter horrible things. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen in years and people that I've blocked on my Twitter account aren't the ones were
thing about like Bitcoin scams that are like, you know, send me 5
Bitcoins 95 Bitcoin back
and I'm not saying this is the example to emulate what it is though is we have to recognize that some people aren't worth engaging some people aren't worth listening to it's a lesson right? But that doesn't need me necessarily that you take their voice
entirely.
Yes, I most certainly agree with that and in terms of particularly in terms of D platforming my question to you about this is and I've raised this question of many people and I really haven't got a satisfactory answer. Do you think that things that get so huge like Twitter or Facebook or even YouTube do they become a basic right?
Is it like the utilities is it like electricity and water is like the ability to communicate online seems to me a core aspect of what it means to be a human being with a voice in 2020. And I don't think it's as simple as removing someone from Twitter is simply a company exercising their right to have whatever they want on their platform. I think when it gets as big as Twitter is I think we've passed into a
New realm and I think we need to acknowledge that whether it's Twitter or YouTube or Facebook or what have you I mean and I think it should be very difficult to remove someone from those platforms. And I think it should probably involve some sort of a trial. I mean, this is
much this is a really you're really tough issue. It's much larger than just the platforming because what we're really talking about is the internet is a public utility, right the internet is water and power as
and
Has its ability to shape
culture, right? Right, when you talk about something like, you know, Twitter and the size of it when the president is basically directing policy from Twitter. It's clear something threatening countries. Yeah. Yeah, that is our laws were not designed with that in mind. And unfortunately, we have a legislature that's just fundamentally broken this gets back to the electoral system, which you talk about.
Earlier, you know most countries in the world have a wide Suave parties. They're not this to party binary system where it's just two groups largely new corporatist groups that are just handing power back and forth the president changes, but the actual lawmakers the actual structure behind the president. The advisors are largely from the same cohorts. We don't have that.
Legislative we don't have that governmental structure that allows us to adapt in a way that truly represents. I think the broadest spectrum of public opinion in a way that allows us to respond to changes in technology in a meaningful way, which is what's left us stranded today where these companies are sort of deciding things for themselves. It's because there is a vacuum of legislation now, there's a question of do we want legislation people on different spectrums from
Terry into libertarian here, we'll go we want lots of legislation. We want no legislation, but there is a push in there has been a push in Congress for years actually since the 90s with the communications. Decency Act and the first crypto War where the government was treating the ability to encrypt your Communications to make them secret or private as you communicate with people on Monday were treating that as a weapon and saying you couldn't
Port this code without getting a license from the government and all kinds of craziness, but the communications decency act the idea that there would be obscenity regulations the some years ago. You may remember a scandal involving back page, which was like a variant of Craigslist. I had a lot of prostitution ads on it government has been trying more and more to say these kind of things can be done on the internet these kind of things can be set on the internet these kind of things can't be set on
Internet and they have been doing this largely under the guise. I would argue of the Commerce Clause right the federal government where they get the Constitutional authority to regulate what we say and do businesses. Wherever well they go. Well, the internet is global as International therefore its interstate commerce. And so we're going to regulate this as if you're you know shipping bushels of corn from Iowa to Florida, but it's a little bit different that and I think
what we need to recognize is that the internet is a utility and people individuals and corporate entities should be criminally liable for the things that they do online. That means if they have caused enough harm that you're willing to put them in prison. They've stolen from someone they have destroyed some piece of infrastructure. They have caused harm to someone
You know somebody died or they plotted a murder or whatever you take them through the courts. You try them on this the jury considers what they did. They consider why they did they consider the evidence and then you you let the trial system the traditional system that we've had for thousands of years worked this kind of stuff out or at least hundreds of years, but when you get the government and you get officials in Congress, you get officials and you know, whatever the local Department of this country or that country.
Tree, you know Russia has got a telecommunication sensor. So Bureau China's got one France Germany the United States all of these guys. I have different regulatory authorities. Whether it's the FCC in the United States are as common ions or in Russia and you cannot substitute their judgment for the Judgment of a jury before the Judgment of the people and the public broadly and I think it's dangerous that we are trying to have the government pick winners and losers when whether you win or lose determines
Not you can engage with the world whether you can have public presence on the internet Because the Internet is real life
today.
Yeah, it is and could it be that the option would be to extend the First Amendment rights to the internet in general and to if you want to run a social media platform, you know other than what we're talking about putting people in danger doxing people threatening people's lives doing things that can cause direct harm to people but the ability to express yourself and controversial ways should shouldn't we extend?
First Amendment protections to social media platforms.
I think this is a much more complicated question than it appears because you get into the whole thing of obligation of service. There is like there was a cause celebrate on the right. Actually that would seem like a similar issue where remember there was the cake shop somewhere where they didn't want to serve like a same-sex marriage thing. And again this gets back to civility but some
People are they have a very strong fundamental belief here that these people shouldn't be able to do this that or the other and if you impose that on them that requirement on them, they've got to serve, you know, whatever their businesses to these people. They don't like or that they don't agree with there's a compulsion of service there you start doing this with the internet and then there's a completely different country. You know, let's say there's a website in Belgium. That's now Bound by American laws. That's a Bound by this.
Side Twitter Can't Ban this person, even though they're against them. It seems
light isn't that a different argument though? Because we all these companies were talking about Twitter Facebook and YouTube are all based in America. Now, I agree imposing America First Amendment rights on a country from
particularly if the US starts changing laws, but this is the interesting thing about internet companies is they would that be there
loophole?
Yeah, would that be there loophole to get out of that?
Just sell it to chime right? But I mean, it's more fundamentally. We have to recognize either as a society. We can compel people to standards of Civility or we can't and we need to decide how we handle that because that's what all of these Tire around right? I think we have forgotten in many ways. Just we're not teaching people the golden well enough
Because we are all Angry. We are all in competition. And the funny thing is the guy on the right who's poor and living in a trailer is not much different than you know, that hippie on the left who's scrounging out of dumpsters, you know and raising their Black Flag to go to a protest they act like they could not be more different but their economics is circumstances could not be more similar and the reality is it's you know, the the
and the lawmakers and the business owners that are setting them at odds and we are all getting lost in our own ideological differences and lose sight of the things that actually tie us together and that if we work together, maybe we could change in a more meaningful
way and the more people you meet the more people you talk to you more you realize how malleable people really are an about how so many of these ideological perspectives that
that they so rabidly subscribe to they've adopted because it allows them to be accepted by their Community by whatever neighborhood. They're in whatever group of people that hang out with and they choose to adopt these these ideas about how the world is and so many of those people just don't experience people that are are different from them mean that that is the case with racism. That's the case with homophobia. That's the case of the many of the issues that people have with other folks is that they just don't know people from those other
Groups and they haven't experienced. You know, they haven't walked a mile in their shoes as it were I think civility should be encouraged as much as possible. Also though. I'm a comedian and I think I talk a lot of shit and that's in the sense of humor like you can misc and it's been done against me many times where they've taken things. I've said in jest and put them in quotes completely out of context and it looks horrible because
That's not what it that's not the way it was intended and it was intended in humor. Now. If you do have laws that in not just encourage civility, but mandate civility you're going to have a real problem with humor because you're basically going to cut the ankles out of Comedy. Not that I'm saying that all humor has to be mean and vicious it doesn't but some of the best is well, it's all
the can't be said, you know,
yes. Yes T things that can't be said I
There's a these are giant problem with online censorship today. And I think it's one of the biggest problems of our era and I do think it is because there is a massive slippery slope and I do agree with you about the cake people. You know, that that was a big issue was the cause celeb of the ride of these people. They should have the right A lot of people felt to not make a cake for someone who is doing who is doing something they think is immoral right but being
involved in a gay relationship, but there's also the problem of sensationalizing these things because the people that did find those people that didn't want to make those cakes. They went to a bunch of people that agreed to make the cake first they went and tried to find someone who didn't want to make that cake and then they turned it into a big story nothing even though I just think me I think you should make a cake for gay people because there's nothing wrong with being gay. Well, I think the people that made that
Decision to not make that I feel bad for them. I feel bad that they're they're bigger than that way and that it's such a foolish thing to care who someone is in love with whether it's the same sex Iran opposite sex, but also, I think it's weird that someone wants to go around and try to find someone who won't make a cake for them who wants to go from cake place to cake place to take place until I got aha. I found a bigot like and then make a big deal out of it. Like, you know, you're searching for victimhood.
I mean
I mean there's an argument that that's I mean, that's one way to look at it another way to look at it is that's activism. They're searching for Injustice. 40% greet.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, this is the thing
like
What is right and wrong this is this is what people forget is changing constantly when we're talking about public opinion because public opinion is changing constantly and this is why doing right by people. It's so sad that we've lost sight of this basic impulse to do unto others as you would have them do unto you yes.
Because when you talk about the internet when you talk about D platforming when you talk about humor, as you said, you know people are going back and they're looking at your jokes. They're putting in quotes as a different context. You're being attacked by it something you said looks bad. There's there's things that you've said things that I've said things that the person listening right now have said that they believed that they meant that they said 10 years ago that they said one year ago that they said three weeks ago.
But they no longer believes that they've abandoned they've been persuaded. Otherwise, they've changed their mind on and this was one of the central themes in the book permanent record is we are no longer allowed to forget our worst mistakes right there there they haunt us there used against us there weaponized and this Society has become aware of this and activists on all sides and become aware of this.
Immediately they use this to try to attack people on the other side of any issue that they don't like to go after their credibility to go after their character and what we are losing in that conflict and this is a rational strategy on the part of both sides in the moment because they realize there is a real political advantage to be gained. You can get People canceled very easily nowadays, but the thing is
When we make everyone we pin everyone to their worst moment when we do away with the concept of forgiveness, we do away with the potential for growth for change for persuasion. And this gets back to those those rat holes of extremism on on YouTube on Twitter on everywhere else where they start self-reinforcing and eventually reaching the bottom of the hole.
The worst of the worst with everybody else who's been canceled to and part of that is because they can't climb out or they think they can't climb out and there's a question. How do we resolve that? One of the nice things about the pre-internet society was as bad as you were as ignorant as racist as exploitative as whatever you don't like right as that person.
that character was
They could find something they could read a book. They could meet someone they could change their mind and even if nobody in that's how would ever forgive them rightly in some cases because they had done something truly. Terrible something truly unforgivable. They could leave they can move to a different town. They can move to a different state in that history would not follow them. They could reinvent themselves and they could become someone truly honestly better instead of being married to their prior ignorance.
That is a very important thing because we all are in a constant state of growth. If you're not you're really making some fundamental errors with your life. We're all in this constant state of accepting and acquiring new information gaining New Perspectives learning from our mistakes. And if unless you're dr. Manhattan, unless you're some person is not making any mistakes and you just have this all-knowing vision of the world. You're a finished product.
please if you are share that with everybody else but most of us are not most of us are in this weird state of being a human being on Earth where everyone is trying to figure it out and it's incredibly imperfect World incredibly imperfect Society the everything from the structure the economic structure to the societal structure everything down to the very last things everything's in perfect and the idea should be that we're
All communicating to try to grow together and that we're learning together and it's one of the more interesting things about interacting with people online is that you can get different perspectives and if you can let go of your ego and if you can let go of your preconceived notions, you can learn things about the way other people's see and feel and think about the world that could change and enhance your own ideas. And I think that that's it's important that we not just accept the fact that people are growing and
Getting better and improving but that we encourage it we encourage it and we reward
it and I think that's one of the interesting things that we're struggling with. I mean you see this in the context of police violence. You see this in the context of mass surveillance. You see this in the context of cancel culture. You see this everywhere one of the interesting things about this surveillance machine that has been built around us the sort of
Of architecture repression the turnkey tyranny as I described it so much is known about every person regardless of how innocent or how guilty they are. It's all in there, you know, the files are waiting to be accessed the data just needs to be collated. It's just waiting to be requested and analyzed and used.
What this means like there's this old idea of the panopticon, right, which is you you create a prison that is circular and in the middle of it. There's this great tower right that rises way up in at the very top of the tower. There's a mirrored glass room that the warden sits in and no prisoner knows where the warden is looking because the warden can see out but they can't see in and so
One believes that they are watched and so the idea is that no one will misbehave because they're all afraid that they'll be retaliated against for breaking the rules or whatever. But what we have seen is the surveillance machine has been built is we all realize into Italy intuitively innately inherently in ourselves. Even if we don't recognize it, even we don't speak to it we witness it in the news every night. There are
Records of wrongdoing criminality and government at the highest and lowest levels of our government corporations and you know prominent figures in society breaking the rules Ordinary People jaywalking littering, you know, polluting is small-scale petty stuff. All of that somewhere. There is a record of but in almost all cases it's not punished. What has happened is we have
in the chain of accountability
between knowledge of wrongdoing and consequence for wrongdoing my in this happened without a vote. It happened without our participation. We weren't asked whether this was okay, but I think in some way that is beginning to change the moral character of people and what we need to do starting with the top rather than the bottom because China is trying to do the reverse. They're going. All right. Well, there's a simple solution to this. Let's just start screwing.
Everybody who breaks the rules instantly and immediately, you know, you got a social credit score you protested so you're going off to a camp, you know, whatever but imagine what it would mean if we saw people we're now any official the minute they are guilty of the slightest infraction immediately exposed in the Press. They go on trial they gone all this stuff. They're ruined their disgrace.
East but it turns out every other member of Congress is going to court in the same week because everybody is in violation of something somewhere. We all have some measure of guilt largest small, even if we're completely innocent because again, our legal code is so complex. There's no way you can make it through a week without breaking some kind of rule value can't wear a green hat on Tuesday. But if this happened if there was accountability for infractions of the
Anytime an infraction of the rules was witnessed. The laws would change instantly to enshrine the right to privacy because the people in power wouldn't want to lose their position of power. They would ride want to lose this position and suddenly when they have skin in the game, they would realize oh everybody deserves this and I think there's just something interesting too that I haven't thought this out all the way fully so this could be you know, like I give give me some slack here, but I think this is really what
What has changed we have built a pen Opticon. But what sits at the top of it is a computer that computer Witnesses everything we do in reality. It's a distribution of computers. They're owned by many people and answer to many people but it does not get judge us for us judge us for it. And what is happening is the audience Society the people have realized that they can.
Through this computer they can see through the panopticon from a certain angle certain degree in certain direction and given time the cops that have been, you know monitoring all of us for years, right? They've got surveillance drones and stuff that they couldn't imagine a imagined and generations prior, but now every person on the street has a smartphone with a camera to and the cops are being witnessed for the first time and now people are trying to impose upon them the same.
Judgment that is classically been imposed upon us. And this I think is one of the Dynamics that the changes that is leading to this increasing conflict in society is when you realize that the people that throughout you know, your Generations a youth were told in Hollywood and stories are our common shared National myths the government's the good guys. The FBI is
I want to get the gangsters and terrorists and things like that. They're the best of the best the fact that they are people too. They're not only fallible. But in some cases, you know, small-minded and vicious their political their partisan the same way everyone else is people start questioning power and how it is used the basic legitimacy the way it impacts Our Lives what the limits of it should be but people yet have not realized one of the
Ponce's to this should be a limitation on the amount of power. The government has or rather not just government but institution institution is a concept right government or Corporation. The powers of institution should be limited to interfere in our lives instead what they're trying to do both sides, you know blue team red team whatever they are squabbling. They're fighting over who has their hands on the trigger who gets to aim the weapon rather.
Sure, the weapon
exists.
Are you talking about police violence when you're when you're saying these
things and that's a part of the yes, it's every direction but police violence is very much the public part of it. We see right now
that seems to be one of the most complex abuses of power because the kind of power that you give someone when you allow them to be a police officer is literally the power to end the life. It's not just the power to kick you off of Twitter it
The power to decide this this person who's just a regular person no different than URI with all sorts of problems in their own life and stresses and strains and a disproportionate amount of strain and stress for the actual job that they do means a spectacularly stressful position to be in life. But yet you give them the ability to literally with a finger pole and someone's life. I think that's being exposed in a way that
We've because of these cell phone cameras and because of social media it's being exposed in a way that we no one ever would have ever dreamed imaginable before and exposing how almost impossible it is to have that position as a human being. I mean this the position of power like that over folks and just to have a regular person with a normal psychology and not some incredibly brilliant.
Zen master who's in charge of you know, look overseeing drug crimes or pulling people over or you know assault or whatever it is. It's it I don't know the solution to that, you know, there's all sorts of things at play ignorance foolishness racism anger, but at the end of the day, it's about a human beings ability to have massive amount of Power by law over other human beings, which
Is always going to be a problem. It's just going to be a
problem. Yeah, I mean, I think we've known about this, you know, there's aphorisms that go back a zillion years, you know absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. You know, you give a monkey a stick the first thing he's gonna do is he's going to look for something to hit with it. But this is also one of the things you asked earlier about like how I can be hopeful how I can be idealistic when I see this
Of the problems the challenges arrayed against us when I understand not just that mass surveillance exists, but I understand the mechanics of it. I understand how systemic it is. I understand the resources behind it that want to prevent the change of it and instead want to entrench it and expand it to make it more powerful and have more influence over the direction of our lives down to this basic stuff about, you know, we are told that the cops are the best among his people sign up to become.
The cops I genuinely believe because they want to Serve and Protect more so than they just want to be the big Tough Cop guy and some people say, you know, that's naive some people say, that's Petty but I think it's different. I think the reason that I feel this way the reason that I am okay with seeing how much we fail seeing how much instability and violence and and just ignorance that we have in the world today is is I heffel lower expectation of the individual.
At the moment but higher appreciation for their potential and the reality is we are all inherently flawed. I have terrible person and I think in a lot of ways you're not as good as you want yourself to be but I know that I have become a better person with time.
You have become a better person with time. I think we all have and we all can or those of us who have not could if they chose to or if they had guidance or if they had love or friendship or someone who cared and directed them and helped them become better. Yeah, and that's I mean that is the story of human history because we were all the monkey and then we found a stick we could use it to beat somebody or we could use it to build a bridge. But if you look around at the world today, there's a hell of a lot of
bridges.
There are and I think in terms of police brutality, there's very few reasonable.
Solutions that seem to be actionable the seem to be something that you could just put into play right away in terms of like, how do you how do you deal with these violent encounters that police officers often have with people how do you deal with the PTSD that I believe a vast majority of these police officers suffer from completely stressed out every time they pull someone over could be the end of their life. They might not go home to their families. They really don't know.
And I think there's also bunch of them that are emotionally and psychologically unqualified for the job to begin with and then here we are with these calls in America at least a defund the police which I think is even more ridiculous. I think if anything they need more funding and more training and a more stringent process of elimination of removing people that aren't qualified for that job because I believe very few people actually are qualified. I think there's great police officers out there. I really
Do and I think most of them most of the interactions that people have with police officers aren't horrible. But there's enough of those horrible ones that are captured on video that we have this bias towards these negative results that we see over and over again and we don't take into account the full data set. We're not taking into account all the interactions that people have with police officers because those aren't documented what we're getting in front of our face day in day out are the terrible interactions and I don't see nor do
Here a real workable way of improving this you get people that are either calling to defund the police or you're calling for people to support police officers. That's all you here. And I from a few people like Jocko willing QC really great suggestions that they should be treated the same way. They treat Navy Seals where you're spending literally 20 percent of your time training and you're going through psychological training you're going through
To actual real-world situations where you're going over what's the correct protocol and how to handle certain situations and I think it's a giant problem in our society today. And I think that's an understatement that every time someone gets shot that shouldn't have gotten shot particularly. If it's a person of color it becomes a gigantic Flashpoint for our society.
Well, let me challenge you on that a little bit because I mean
We can we can have civil disagreement in the way. You know, that's that's why we have discussion. I think there are things that we can do that don't require, you know, the idea of shutting down every two police department. I think that's sort of far beyond what people talk about when we they talk about defunding the police. I think the most common sense measure that is being discussed and it's not being discussed as broadly in terms of like the mainstream news to it.
Should be is ending police unions right now. Why do we talk about that? This gets back to the same thing that we talked about earlier with the court cases in the government, you know, they get caught doing something wrong, but there's no consequence right and people learn from that each generation learns from the cases prior writing. It's in training people learn the rules things like that. The reason a lot of police violence occurs even is not all its
Again, there's there's no magic wand we waived it saves the world is to lack of accountability. We know there are cops and even cops say this right. There are cops out there who aren't good people. They're cops out there who have been abused their Authority. There are you know, a really tragic cases where a cop has done something straight up Criminal
And they have faced no meaningful consequences of result. Maybe they lost their job. Right? But if it was anybody else they would have gone to prison and so there's a question of how do we remediate this in a way that
Preserves the legitimate interest of you know police officers as a class.
But it also preserves the rights of the people who are being policed in by your own admission. At least some cases people who are abusing their authorities. And again, I'm not saying all cops are bad or anything like that. But if we recognize there are abuses and this is a class that is invested as you said with the power over life and death we have to be willing as a society and the people occupying this position have to be willing to assume
A higher standard of accountability than ordinary people right and if we can agree on that everything else follows from it. I think we don't want to have a gun-toting immunized class walking Among Us and I think even you know police officers among themselves at least would recognize this but it is rational for them to resist this from the interests of their class. They're in a privileged position.
Ian, why would they give that up the same way our spies are in a privileged position? Why would they give that up? But as a society we exist to ask more and you've raised valid points, right? There's cops out there go up to a dark car in the middle of the night. They're afraid they're not going to make it home to their family that's reasonable can and legitimate right? But being a police officer is a dangerous position that people have signed up to we give our police officers every advantage that could be given to them today.
I can tell you from having lived all around the world. There's no cops in the world that are kitted out like cops in America are like deep, you know, these guys look like, you know something from a sci-fi movie and if there is a cop some of them
do some of them do go into riots
and look there's good cops out there. I have a lot of interactions with cops as a young man that were nothing but positive it's not that police as an eye.
Dear are the enemy it is the system that is rotten and I think even honest cops recognize that the system is finally been mentally broken. The question is not or the question from their side should not be can we stop reform? Because if they are if that's their position and I think they're doing the public a disservice and I think to themselves they know they're doing a disservice. It's how do we handle this appropriately and how do we handle this in the right way and if there's cops out there who legitimately
Family have served. You know, they've been out there for years. They've been exposing themselves to danger to keep people safe at night. They've done a good job and they don't want to walk the beat anymore. That should certainly be an option that's available to them and from my perspective as not a cop, but I think when you look at the the state of law enforcement the United States that very much is an option, you know, do they want to work on dispatch that they want to work on Investigation. They want to be cross training forensics.
There are ways that we can end issues or at least mitigate some of the issues that we see with policing today without saying cops are the worst people in the world and without saying, you know, these guys should be above the
law.
Well, I don't think anybody's saying they should be above the law but
factually today so you're feeling are excuse me. I said factually today like as a matter of fact, whether we like to or not you got to admit in most cases cops are
bulletproof.
Well, I don't know. I don't think I agree with that. I mean if you look at what happened to George Floyd case, obviously, they were caught on camera. So we're fortunate we got not fortunate but we got to see what happened and they reacted accordingly your what you were saying before you started this though was that we need to stop police unions, right and that but do you think police unions aren't only around to protect people from the
Is of terrible policing there also to provide health insurance and reasonable amounts. This
sounds great argument for everybody to have health
insurance.
Oh for sure. Yeah. No, I agree. I think health insurance is a I think it's a fundamental right of being a human being in a in a civilized society. I think it should be treated the same way. We treat the fire department. I think it should be something that we all agree we should pay into because it benefits all of us. I mean, I just think if we are a community and that's what really country is supposed to be we're supposed to be a large community when we want to protect the most vulnerable members of that.
Community that if you have a small knit family and something happens to someone in the family everybody chips in to help that person, you know, the that's what I think health insurance should be I think it should be an important part of a culture of a community of a group of human beings that decide they're all on the same team. We have to take care of the most vulnerable people. I mean, I think that across the
board. I mean, that's really the argument that I'm making for how we want our police to be when I see you.
No, cops are bulletproof. I don't mean in the literal sense. There are a lot of cops who have given their lives to stop very bad people and we should honor them. We should provide for their families. But the way that we do that is providing a better Society. That's more fair to police by being more fair to everyone right as long agreed as long as we got any occupation that has its really the simple as long as we have an occupation that is invested with exceptional Authority. They must be investigated.
Invested with a extraordinary standard of accountability. It's that simple for my perspective. Like it doesn't have to be a terrible thing. It doesn't have to be aggressive attack. But it's this basic principle today in the world of business and world government in the world of policing anywhere. You look right. It's a common issue. What we have is a disproportionate allocation of influence a disproportionate allocation of economic resources and text disproportion.
Economic or a disproportionate allocation of authority without an equal allocation of
responsibility.
Well, I think we both agree on that and I think we also both agree that it's not a shock that a disproportionate amount of criminal activity exists in a place where there's a disproportional amount of poverty sure and it disproportionate. Yeah. I mean this is and and very few economic opportunities. I mean, I think one thing people don't that is our real
problem is MM but you're exactly right. I mean when you talk about us where terrorist movements arise from when you talk about where Criminal
Really Thrive, it's where there is poverty poverty. Beyond breeds desperation desperation breeds anger and resentment and I sadly due to the nature of our species that in many cases inevitably tends toward violence. If we want to solve the symptoms which are criminality right? Because people forget that terrorism is a crime. It's very grave Prime, but it's still a
crime we have to go to the court
causes.
Yeah, and you know we were talking about this previous on a different show in regards to the way people reacted to the pandemic in terms of economic support to businesses and trillions of dollars that were allocated to all these various businesses to try to stimulate them and keep them active and and and alive and keep people working and my thought was like imagine if that same attention to detail. I had been to impoverished neighborhoods if they had decided like listen, there's obviously a disproportionate amount of crime and poverty.
And these neighborhoods we've got to figure out a way to lessen that burden and strengthen those neighborhoods and in a real simplistic way of putting it the way I've always said if you want to make America great you want less losers, right? What's the best way to have less losers have more people with an opportunity to succeed more people who grow up in an area where it's actually safe where there's economic possibilities where
You're given more access to education more access to healthcare more access to counseling more access to community centers any kind of support you can possibly give people that gives them more of an opportunity to get by in life. And that this is something that we've conveniently ignored this this this need to strengthen these core and significant areas of our culture. But yet we do when something comes along like a pandemic that might
Close down business and already thriving economic businesses. I think we should have put I think a long time ago. We should have put similar resources and attention into these impoverished neighborhoods that have been impoverished for decades and a lot of it because of slavery and a lot of it because of redlining laws and Jim Crow laws and all the things that happen after slavery. There's so many areas of our country that just don't get better and we don't do anything about it and we just assume that these these crime-ridden
Areas will remain that way forever and they send cops there and then the you see the videos of the interactions the cops have with people and it just creates more and more anger and more and more frustration without any real. So some sort of socially responsible action by the government and some some sort of a program where it's explained to people explain to the general public how this is going to benefit everyone.
We will have less crime that we will have more opportunity. We will have more people that are that are educated and empowered entering into the workforce will have more competition will strengthen the country as a whole it'll be better literally for every one of us and that this is something that they didn't pursue and they haven't pursued in this country forever.
Well, I mean this is this gets back to that via question that I was asking earlier. It's one that I ask myself, you know, when you look at all the problems of today and
you know for somebody who's focused on privacy and surveillance issues. It's easy to be reminded every day of how deep in the hole we are where did these things really you talked earlier about like a Gris still where where did the incline increase where did things start to really go wrong? Because they've always been going wrong and some area again. That's our burden. We've got to make things better because they're never going to be good enough where we
But in recent decades things are gone bad. I think it goes back to Patriot Act. And you asked about economy you talk about poverty you talk about opportunity. How do we fix this? Everybody is rehabilitating him now is this see, you know, nice little old guy painting his feet in the bathtub, but the Patriot Act George Bush and the Iraq War and the policy of endless war that is continuing sadly today. It's a bipartisan thing.
It under Obama continued under Trump.
We have spent trillions of dollars trillions of dollars killing far away people who literally going by the statistics are more likely to be non-combatants than combatants. I think collateral damage is a real thing. And even if every one of those people was someone we didn't like was the level of effort was the level of resources that we invested in it.
Was the cost to our national soul with worth whatever it is. We can be said to have gained and I think the answer is that we have been generationally diminished.
Not by that President alone, but by the policies that that Administration popularized that have been embraced and continued by the administration since on until we learned that lesson we you me everyone else will have an obligation to try and change things to return us to a better path.
I agree with you and I also think there's a real good argument that there's certain aspects of technology that have been implemented in terms of like Warfare and how we deal with terrorism that you could say short-term. Perhaps might have eliminated some targets, but I would argue long term probably encourage more people towards radical fundamentalism particularly drones when I tell people the efficacy of drone attacks and how many
Who are killed by drone attacks? What I've gone into with people that really haven't focused on it the amount of people that are innocent they are killed by drones and the vast majority of that being the case that when you're dealing with a hundred drone deaths it might be like 84 of them are innocent like imagine that being anything else. Imagine if the police did that if they know they prevented crime by killing 84% completely innocent people. You would say that
it's insane like we have to stop that immediately. But because it's done with a robot that flies through the sky remotely from Nevada by some guy with an Xbox controller and he's launching missiles into some sort of a car Convoy that we've accepted this and I think there's a real argument that that is it's being accepted because of the remote aspect of it because we don't we don't see it. We don't feel it. It seems distant and even see
Distant from the person that's holding the remote control. They're saying that the people that are doing that that are responsible for operating these drones are experiencing a new level of PTSD and a very severe form of it many of them. They're just they're haunted by the idea of what they've done in the fact that even though their own hands have done it. They weren't there to see it. It's some sort of bizarre disconnect and that they're murdering literally.
Who knows what percentage but it's a very high percentage of innocent people.
This gets us back to what I was talking about in calling for the pardon of these different whistleblowers is the core issue of Daniel Hale. Daniel Hale is an American who I believe is still on trial they have yet to be convicted but the government is going to bury this man if they get the chance for revealing abuses in the Drone program and the failures of the Drone program and this also gets the you know, you talked about this question of efficacy.
And percentages we talk about Mass surveillance. Just last week. This was covered. Nowhere in media that I've seen so far in a prominent way. I think the Washington Post wrote an article but it you know is buried it wasn't like a front page A1 sort of top of the fold Splash on the fisa court. A lot of people have heard about the fisa court because the relationship to the Trump thing. I hope one of you guys will work some production can pull out, you know, a headline.
Or front page or the the Twitter thread from Elizabeth koi teen. I think it's at Luton lies ago 18 who went through this it was published and Declassified version of the fisa reauthorization for last year where the court goes through every year and the FBI submits this request for basically a blanket surveillance warrant that they can use on all these different people for all these different.
Sort of categories Behavior, but they want to monitor.
And the fisa court reauthorizes this annually and in this annual review they look at is the system functioning is effective were the rules broken and one of these experts. I think she worked at the Brenner Brennan Center for justice can correct me of an edit me out if I'm wrong here, but there were thousands of cases in the last year thousands of cases where the FBI.
Looked people up under the Aegis of a fisa warrant. Right? And this is like a mass warrant that's used for multiple people instead of one for everyone else. We know how bad these fisa warrants going to be and over the course of thousands of cases the court found that they had been unjustified in looking up these people's background and all but seven cases. I think it was seven cases out of thousands and this is where it's at. We have created a
a procedural state of bureaucratic State and automated system
For policing and I mean the brawl them don't just mean you know guys and Indian shiny shoes on the ground with a pistol on their waist I'm talking about is it platform behavior and speech on Twitter I'm talking about. Is it surveillance Behavior with domestically against American citizens and brought around the world. We are trying to create a system.
That observes everyone and judges everyone in a way that we already know is not fair. It is not used properly. It is not used appropriately does not used effectively and I believe does more harm than good. And why are we trying to create a system that sees everything we do in judges us which is effectively trying to invent God.
When we know that it is a dark and vengeful one. We need to think about the kind of technologies that we were putting in place that rule us, but we do not effectively control.
Well, I think there has to be repercussions when you're talking about that. We're all in this case either one of them. The
court said oh, yes, the FBI broke the rules routinely they did it all the time. So we're going to go ahead and reauthorize this for next year. Here's your rubber stamp come back and you know 12 months
exactly. But what I'm saying is I think we as a society need to demand repercussions for these overreaches because it's it is a violation of Law and if it's a violation of law.
No consequences, then it's not then they're we're not talking about law anymore. We're talking about nonsense. We're talking about things you could just get away with it really is. It's a king class. It's someone can you just get away with things? What's a long doesn't make any
sense or law. There's only enforced against the powerless but not against the powerful
right particularly if you or me or Jamie had done the same thing we would for sure be in jail for a violation of privacy for invading someone's privacy for
or doing something that is against the law. If we were tried we would be convicted we would wind up doing time or pay some extraordinary fine. We would be in real trouble is my point but they're not in any trouble at all that you cannot have that we can't have that in a society because if you have that ability to completely bypass and any liability and any responsibility for a violation of law, then we've created two classes of human beings.
Created human beings that are the governed and then we've created human beings that are the governors and the governors are exempt and that's not that's not government anymore. Now, you're into some you're in a monarchy the roots and craziness. Yeah, you're yes your rulers and the ruled and you can't have that we can't have that because of what you said earlier absolute power corrupts. Absolutely that is absolute power if there's no repercussions whatsoever for violating laws that can greatly
Impact people's lives in a negative way that's crazy can't have that we can't have that and we need to agree as human beings particularly now because of the age that we live in and the access to information that we enjoy we're aware of this acutely. It's obvious. It's right in front of our faces and it's one of the many reasons why I think you should be exonerated or I should I think you should be pardoned. I mean you you have exposed this and you've opened people's eyes to this the
The exponential increase in people's understanding and appreciation for that based on your work and what the guardian put out and and and how you exposed all that. It's changed the conversation. It's chanted and it needs to be changed and the repercussions needs to be changed as
well.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I guess there's not much more to say than that. But I hope one day I will be able to come back
if I want to see you in real life man. I'll give you I'll come on the show and be in the same room for once. Yeah, well hopefully covid will be gone that while test you first. We'll test each other for yeah, but listen, I said it before I really do believe this. I think I think you're a hero and I think that what you've done.
Three will be kind to you. You know, they will look back on what has been done to you. And I think our government is on the wrong side of History. I really do believe that and I think if people really did know the facts particularly the way you explained it earlier about how the information was distributed and and the way it was handled. Ethically and morally you did the best you possibly could have done with that situation and I think it's a
It's an incredibly bold move that you've done and and I feel like the time has come I really do and I hope I hope I hope Trump listens to this. I really do. I hope you listen to this and I hope he understands also what a political piece it would be. I mean, this is a massive if he pardoned you I think you would be a massively positive move for his own the way the you know, the United States citizens view
him.
Well, I hope what we see under this Administration or any other but certainly we don't have to wait much longer for is ending the war on whistleblowers because as much as I would like to come home as much as I would like to see recognition from the system that there are times when the only thing you can do is tell the truth and that should not be a crime. It's not about me it's about what happens to all of us. It was what happens to the system.
It's how we restore. We're rather realize the ideal of a country that we were always told we had but in reality we have never been as good as what we dreamed, but we're getting closer and the way we do that is by admitting where we were wrong and doing better. Thanks so much for having me on again. I really
appreciate your being on man those words and that mentality are what make you a hero and your actions.
Appreciate you very much ben. Thanks so much. Stay free rather you to my friend. Take care. Bye thank you friends for tuning into the show and thank you to CBD MD and their Superior CBD oil products. I love their shit. I use it all the time. I can't say enough good things about CBD MD and they're awesome products and to make it even easier for you to try them. They're going to hook JRE listeners up with 25 percent off your next.
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