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Glenn Greenwald: As Bulk NSA Spying Expires, Scare Tactics Can’t Stop "Sea Change" on Surveillance
Glenn Greenwald: As Bulk NSA Spying Expires, Scare Tactics Can’t Stop "Sea Change" on SurveillanceThe government’s authority to sweep up millions of Americans’ phone records has expired. The practice exposed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden could now face limited reforms as the Senate weighs the USA FREEDOM Act, which would require the government to ask phone companies for a user’s data rather than vacuuming up all the records at once. We get reaction from Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who first reported on Snowden’s revelations.
Published on Jun 1, 2015
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TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS YOU TUBE for THOSE WITH LOW BANDWIDTH:
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/1/glenn_greenwald_as_bulk_nsa_spying
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Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. government’s authority to sweep up millions of Americans’ phone records expired at 12:01 this morning, after the Senate failed to renew the practice exposed by National Security Agency whistleblower Ed Snowden. The move comes after Republican senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked an extension of three controversial measures in the PATRIOT Act during a special Sunday session of the Senate.
SEN. RAND PAUL: Let us be clear: We are here tonight because the president continues to conduct an illegal program. We are not collecting the information of spies. We are not collecting the information of terrorists. We are collecting all American citizens’ records all of the time. This is what we fought the revolution over.
Now, people say, "Well, they’re not looking at it. They’re not listening to it." It’s the tip of the iceberg, what we’re talking about here. And realize that they were dishonest about the program until we caught them. They kept saying over and over again, "We’re not doing this. We’re not collecting your records." And they were. The head of the intelligence agency lied to the American people, and he still works here. We should be upset. We should be marching in the streets and saying he’s got to go.
People say, "How will we protect ourselves without these programs?" What about using the Constitution? What about using judicial warrants? The Tsarnaev boy, the Boston bomber? They say, "How will we look at his phone records?" Get a warrant! Put his name on it!
AMY GOODMAN: The three parts of the PATRIOT Act that have now expired include Section 215, which authorizes the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, a lone wolf provision giving intelligence agencies the authority to follow suspected terrorists who may not be affiliated with a terrorist group and so-called roving wiretaps that allow the government to monitor someone who may use different phone lines to escape detection. In the hours ahead of Sunday’s failed vote to renew the measures, CIA Director John Brennan appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with outgoing host Bob Schieffer.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think that terrorist elements will take advantage of this?
JOHN BRENNAN: I think terrorist elements have watched very carefully what has happened here in the United States. Whether or not it’s disclosures of classified information or whether it’s changes in the law and policies, they’re looking for the seams to operate within. And this is something that we can’t afford to do right now, because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence that’s being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe.
AMY GOODMAN: After the Senate debate Sunday, the Senate voted to 77 to 17 to now consider the measure known as the USA FREEDOM Act, which calls for reforming the bulk collection of telephone records by requiring the NSA to make specific requests to phone companies for a user’s data rather than vacuuming up all the records at once. The measure passed the House but failed in the Senate by three votes last week, leading to Sunday’s showdown. The vote can come no earlier than 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday.
Well, for more, we go to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who first exposed Edward Snowden’s revelations around mass surveillance. Glenn’s recent piece for The Intercept is headlined "Anonymous Fearmongering About the PATRIOT Act from the White House and New York Times."
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Glenn. Why don’t you start off by talking about the significance of these key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act sunsetting, ending, expiring early this morning?
GLENN GREENWALD: I think the greatest significance of the most recent event is more symbolic than anything else, but it’s still actually quite significant. It’s really worth comparing the debate that we’re now having to what passed for a debate both in 2005 and 2011 over whether to renew the PATRIOT Act. Remember, even after 9/11, in the weeks after 9/11 when the country was willing to give the government essentially anything that it asked for, the PATRIOT Act was regarded as this extremely radical piece of legislation, a very fundamental departure from how we always understood what the government could and couldn’t do when spying on us. And even in the wake of 9/11, it was regarded that way. And that’s the reason why, when it was enacted, embedded into some of these provisions was the idea that, look, this is only supposed to be a temporary measure; it will automatically go away, sunset, lapse every five—unless Congress every five years reauthorizes it. And in 2005, the Bush administration demanded its renewal with no reforms. And in 2010, the Obama administration did exactly the same thing: demanded renewal of the PATRIOT Act with no reforms. And there was almost no opposition in either house of Congress, either political party, just some token opposition from some libertarians, and Congress easily and overwhelmingly renewed the PATRIOT Act.
The fact that we’re now having this very contentious debate, where the PATRIOT Act actually has lapsed, at least for a few days, and that we’re going to have some kind of change in the law that we’re calling reform underscores how significantly public opinion has changed and the climate of the country has changed, the views of the tech community have changed, when it comes to how much surveillance we’re willing to allow our government to engage in against us in the name of terrorism. I think that’s really the greatest significance, is the sea change that this represents.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Florida governor and likely Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush has been calling for the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. He spoke to Face the Nation on Sunday.
JEB BUSH: There’s no evidence, not a shred of evidence, that the metadata program has violated anybody’s civil liberties. The first duty of our national government is to protect the homeland. And this has been an effective tool, along with many others. And the PATRIOT Act ought to be reauthorized, as is.
AMY GOODMAN: During his weekly address, President Obama spoke about the FREEDOM Act. This is part of what he said.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The USA FREEDOM Act also accomplishes something I called for a year and a half ago: It ends the bulk metadata program, the bulk collection of phone records, as it currently exists and puts in place new reforms. The government will no longer hold these records; telephone providers will. The act also includes other changes to our surveillance laws, including more transparency, to help build confidence among the American people that your privacy and civil liberties are being protected.
AMY GOODMAN: So that’s President Obama on the FREEDOM Act, that could be voted on very shortly in the Senate, and before that, Jeb Bush. Interesting, Glenn Greenwald, the lines are breaking down between Democrat and Republican. Of course, President Obama very much against the expiring of the USA PATRIOT Act. Can you talk about what is happening right now in the Senate with, well, the Republican, Rand Paul, up against the Senate majority—the Senate speaker, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell; Ron Wyden taking Rand Paul’s side? Talk more about what the lines are now.
GLENN GREENWALD: I think it’s fascinating that Jeb Bush has sort of become the Republican spokesman for demanding a renewal of the PATRIOT Act, a position that he shares with President Obama, because it really is the kind of classic Bush-Cheney mentality that’s behind not just that position, but the arguments being invoked in its favor. If you listen to what Obama administration officials have been saying for the last month, they essentially sound exactly like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and that whole crew sounded in 2004 and 2005 every time they wanted to coerce something that they wanted, which was: "We’re in danger. The terrorist threat is mounting. And unless you submit to what it is that we want, which is a renewal of the PATRIOT Act, you’re putting lives in danger. If you’re an opponent of the PATRIOT Act or a critic of the PATRIOT Act," have said Obama officials, "you’re endangering American lives." They actually went anonymously to The New York Times, and The New York Times gave them anonymity, to say that anybody standing in the way of PATRIOT Act renewal is playing, quote, "national security Russian roulette," something that Karl Rove is probably jealous that he never thought of himself as a phrase for scaremongering. So you see the Republican and the Democratic establishments very much aligned on this question. In fact, Mitt Romney last night tweeted in opposition to Rand Paul and said, "The PATRIOT Act keeps us safe, and we need its renewal," exactly what Obama officials have been saying for the last several weeks.
And then, on the other side of the debate, you have not only Rand Paul but huge numbers of liberals. There were 86 people in the House who voted against the USA FREEDOM Act, not on the grounds that it restricted the NSA too much, but that it didn’t restrict the NSA enough. And you had leaders in the House like tea party conservative Justin Amash standing side by side with civil rights hero John Lewis and John Conyers and others, saying that we need even more restraints on what the NSA is doing. And so, there is no Democrat-versus-Republican or even left-versus-right split on this issue, nationally or in the Congress. Actually, what you have is the establishments of both political parties, that want to keep American empire strong, that want to maintain the weapons of militarism and the surveillance state and the profit that it generates and the power that it generates completely intact—they’re working in unison together to demand PATRIOT Act renewal. And then you have these kind of outsiders on both the left and the right, a coalition that we saw in opposition to the Wall Street bailout and now we’re seeing again, saying, "No, we don’t actually need or want our government to be able to monitor the communications of hundreds of millions of citizens who have done absolutely nothing wrong. Mass surveillance is intrinsically dangerous, and it’s something that the Constitution forbids."
And so, I think it’s really exciting to see the breakdown of the standard partisan divisions, and it leaves Democrats, in particular, with a lot of cognitive dissonance, because during the Bush years they were trained to think of the PATRIOT Act as this evil thing that Dick Cheney did, and they were trained to think that it was terrible if you stand up and say, "If you oppose our policies, you’re helping the terrorists," and now you have the leader of the Democratic Party, President Obama, and the leaders of the Democratic Party in the Congress leading the way demanding the renewal of the PATRIOT Act and sounding exactly like Dick Cheney. And you have a tea party Republican, Rand Paul, being the nominal leader of the effort to undo the PATRIOT Act. So it really sends Democrats into this sort of spasm of cognitive dissonance over why it is that their party is now defending the law that for so many years they were told they should hate.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His piece in The Intercept is headlined "Anonymous Fearmongering About the PATRIOT Act from the White House and The New York Times." I also want to talk to you about the media’s role. And after we finish speaking with Glenn, we’re going to Colorado. You’ll hear the full graduation speech that a valedictorian in Longmont, Colorado, did not get to give because his principal learned he would be coming out as gay in the speech. We’ll speak with 18-year-old Evan Young himself after you hear his address. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Speaking to Face the Nation on Sunday, CIA Director John Brennan called for the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, arguing it has been integral to preventing terrorist attacks in the U.S.
JOHN BRENNAN: The tools that the government has used over the last dozen years to keep this country safe are integral to making sure that we’re able to stop terrorists in their tracks. The tools that we had under the PATRIOT Act, those ways that we are able to monitor their activities, really have helped stop attacks. These tools are all part of a package of safeguards that has been put in place, and so the president, the attorney general, the director of the FBI, director of national intelligence, the heads of NSA and CIA all are very supportive of an extension of those capabilities and those authorities. And, unfortunately, I think that there’s been a little bit too much political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes that have really skewed the debate on this issue. But these tools are important to American lives.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s CIA Director John Brennan calling for reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. The key provisions were expired at 12:01 this morning, Monday morning. The Senate will be taking up the USA FREEDOM Act in the next few days. Glenn Greenwald, can you respond to what Brennan has said?
GLENN GREENWALD: First of all, it’s, I mean, truly hilarious to listen to the director of the CIA accuse other people of having ideological causes in the policies that they support, but even more amazing is the fact that he’s sitting there telling the American public something that he knows to be completely false, which is that these tools have been critical in keeping the country safe. For one thing, how has the country been kept safe? There have been multiple terror plots aimed at the United States, some of which have succeeded, including an attack on Fort Hood and one on the Boston Marathon, and others that were thwarted by very traditional law enforcement means having nothing to do with the PATRIOT Act, like the attempted bombing of Times Square or a detonated bomb on an airline jet over Detroit on Christmas Day by the so-called underwear bomber. But there have been multiple commissions since Edward Snowden came forward, including one convened by the Obama White House itself, that gave that commission access to all of the classified data, and they issued a report saying that this domestic metadata program has never, ever been successful in stopping even a single terrorist plot. The federal court, which in 2013—2014 said that the program was unconstitutional, said there was no evidence that the NSA or the Justice Department could point to that this program has ever stopped a terrorist plot. And Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, who have access to all of the classified information, have all said the same thing, that there’s no role that these programs play in stopping terror plots. So, for John Brennan to go on television—unchallenged, of course, as always, by Bob Schieffer, who we’re all supposed to think is such a great journalist—and to be able to say something that even the administration’s own evidence completely negates, which is that this program is helpful in stopping terrorism, is extraordinary. These programs have had no role in stopping terrorism at all. And if anything, it’s because the government is collecting information on everybody that it’s incapable of knowing when somebody is plotting an attack like the one at the Boston Marathon.
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/1/glenn_greenwald_as_bulk_nsa_spying
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