Transcript for 5/10/24: NOWHERE TO HIDE – THEY ARE NOW HERE

For the many years that I have been doing Ground Zero, I have stated that even though we see what we think are our well-organized grassroots protests -- they are not what they appear to be. While some of the participators are surely thinking that they are making a difference-- those who are in the background financing these insurgent mobs are doing so for the benefit of the police state.

They are doing it for the benefit of those who wish to eliminate rights and freedoms because there is big money in creating chaos and then replacing it with draconian controls.

They use everything from spies, lies, and algorithms to get the people to move towards an approximated objective.

We are facing some definite threats to our American way of life. We are standing idly by watching our constitution be destroyed little by little.

The other night we brought up how the First Amendment is under attack with the proposal of The "Antisemitism Awareness Act" to silence criticism of Jews and Israel as hate speech and empower the federal government to crack down on anti-Israel protests on college campuses.

Antisemitism is wrong-- of course, it is, but the Antisemitism Awareness Act takes a hammer after the 1st amendment.

Last month we reported that President Biden rushed to sign a two-year renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The renewal of the law made Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer note, “Democrats and Republicans came together and did the right thing for our country’s safety.” 

FISA allows the federal government and its intelligence agencies to spy on, collect, and monitor the data, phone calls, text messages, and emails of foreign nationals outside of the United States without a warrant. 

The law was originally passed in 1978, but its most controversial amendment came in 2008 with the addition of Section 702 which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect and monitor electronic communications. 

It also allows those agencies to coerce tech giants like Google and AT&T to hand over information. The amendment was passed during the United States’ so-called War on Terror, claiming it would help prevent and stop terrorism in the U.S. and abroad. Since 2008, the law has been continually abused by the NSA, CIA, and FBI in order to spy on U.S. citizens. 

Because the law allows these agencies to spy on foreign citizens without a warrant and many U.S. citizens communicate with people abroad, it gives these agencies a backdoor into the cell phones, internet history, and data of any U.S. citizen. Apparently, from 2020 to 2021, the FBI used Section 702 improperly almost 300,000 times against people like Black Lives Matter protestors, January 6th rioters, and journalists, among others. In fact, it was found the FBI did inquiries on 3.4 million Americans in 2021 alone. The chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, noted that the law could be used to spy on U.S. citizens who oppose the genocide in Gaza.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations also pushed Congress earlier this month to pass the controversial FISA law to spy on Americans to "protect Israel."

The Jewish advocacy groups told Congress the spying law was needed first and foremost for " the safety and security of Israel; and the need to protect Jews in the U.S. -- indeed, all Americans -- from terrorist threats."

The bill is supposed to work in concert with the Biden administration's "National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism" which called on "all online platforms" to ban "extremist websites," ban "hate speech" and institute "zero tolerance" policies to protect Jews from antisemitism.

Although the law has been renewed, a few amendments and alterations have been made, including shortening the renewal period to two years. But it also includes an amendment by Representatives Mike Turner and Jim Himes that extends the definition of electronic communications service providers to include any provider “who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.” 

This amendment would extend these agencies’ ability to force businesses like coffee shops, landlords, or any business or place on whose network a targeted electronic device was used to hand over their data. This will expand the network of businesses and organizations that will be forced to help the government spy on people at home and abroad.

This law and the Turner-Himes amendment is a clear violation of U.S. citizens’ 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant but it’s important to see this issue goes beyond U.S. citizens. This law allows the United States government to spy on any person around the world and access all of their private information by claiming this is to protect the world.

How is it that we tolerate these lies, and why isn't there a bipartisan rebellion against the moves to not only end freedom of speech -- but freedom from being searched or spied upon by any government entity?

I guess people do not believe that this is happening, or believe that none of these draconian measures will be enforced.

Take Canada as an example.

The Trudeau regime has introduced an Orwellian new law called the Online Harms Bill C-63, which will give police the power to retroactively search the Internet for ‘hate speech’ violations and arrest offenders, even if the offense occurred before the law existed.

This new bill is aimed at safeguarding the masses from so-called “hate speech.”

Revolver. news reports: The real shocker in this bill is the alarming retroactive aspect. Essentially, whatever you’ve said in the past can now be weaponized against you by today’s draconian standards.

It is retroactive, which goes against all our Western legal tradition, according to which you can be punished only if you infringed a law that was valid at the time when you committed a crime: And it isn’t just stuff you’ve posted after the new law comes into force you can get into trouble for – oh, no – but anything you’ve posted, ever, dating back to the dawn of the internet. 

In other words, it’s a blank check to offense archaeologists to do their worst, with the prospect of a $20,000 reward if they hit paydirt. 

The only way to protect yourself is to go through all your social media accounts and painstakingly delete anything remotely controversial you’ve ever said.

Furthermore, it's alarming that the bill enables individuals to anonymously file complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against those they deem to be posting hate speech. If found guilty, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal can impose fines of up to $70,000 and issue takedown orders for the content in question. 

Additionally, the tribunal is granted the authority to shield the identities of complainants and prohibit defendants from disclosing this information if uncovered. In essence, accusers of hate speech will have their identities safeguarded, while those accused face significant financial penalties.

This is insane -- I am sure that many will say it is unbelievable but it is a reality and whatever happens in Canada or Europe, seems to spill over to us .

Even though we have a constitution that is supposed to guarantee our freedoms. 

As we are learning our constitution is only valid if it’s not ignored --and it appears that no one wishes to rebel for fear of offending the iron-handed political party in power here in the United States.

The United States government and the wealthy ruling elite it represents have no interest in protecting anyone but themselves. They want to spy on, attack, and neutralize any group that wishes to stir up dissent -- and this does not just apply to those who decide to block traffic and burn down police stations.

This is another tool at their disposal to enforce the status quo of the exploitation and oppression of billions around the world for the enrichment of the few at the top.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, and what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

We have discussed before that no matter how you feel about TikTok -- the new anti-TikTok legislation is yet again an attempt by the Deep State to take advantage of anti-China sentiment to transfer TikTok’s surveillance apparatus from China’s evil surveillance state to the U.S. government’s evil surveillance state.

HR 7521, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, is a recent development in American politics. It takes advantage of the ignorance that does not understand the internet and scares them into thinking the government needs to step in and control internet expression.

TikTok has been in the news for the past few years, after the public became aware of its connections to China. The popular social media mobile app is currently owned by ByteDance Ltd, a Chinese company. 

China and the United States currently have a rocky relationship, leading to fears that the Chinese government could potentially use this app to spy on American citizens. Several states and counties voted to restrict the usage of the app in some ways, mostly disallowing government employees from using it on government-owned phones. Earlier this month, the United States Congress passed a piece of legislation that would restrict the app’s availability if certain requirements are not met by ByteDance.

It’s not that the U.S. government wants to protect you from spying data theft and manipulation. If only. 

No, the people behind the Russian collusion hoax, and the Kavanaugh hoax, and the natural origin COVID hoax, the illegal warrantless spying, and the forced training of your children— want to be the ones spying on you and stealing your data, and poisoning the minds of your children.

It is again an opportunity to send a message about what can and can't be put on the internet. Ironically we are doing the same thing China does when it does not approve of messages on certain sites undefined they black out or ban them. 

There’s no evidence anywhere that the U.S. Government has any interest in fighting off China’s attempts to cripple our country economically, militarily, or diplomatically.

But suddenly they want you to believe they are concerned about the so-called dangers of TikTok?

Putting aside the idea that politicians rarely have pure motives, this act has the potential to be just as dangerous as the Patriot Act. 

With a supposed goal of protecting American national security, the Patriot Act granted sweeping permissions to the federal government and the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, with far less due process. In addition to having the potential to violate privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment, this new act is a blatant attack on property rights. Mobile device manufacturers and owners have every right to install whatever software they would like, as it is their property. Any illusion of a right to national security is immediately contradicted as collective rights are positive in nature and thus not rights at all.

The act will ban the hosting of internet services that enable the use of apps the government approves, furthering the state’s control over the internet.

It restricts any entity from distributing, maintaining, or updating any application that is controlled by a foreign adversary. Meaning that they the government decides who the foreign adversary is -- even if they make it up -- which many times we have been misled by our government into thinking that certain countries have weapons of mass destruction or how about Americans who don't support lockdowns, or vaccines? Do they also get shut down as perceived adversaries?

How about Americans who understood the Constitution and spoke out or protested -- would they be seen as enemies of the state? The state has proven itself to be incapable of telling Americans who or what they should fear.

Setting aside any pretense of national security, this act will restrict competition in the American marketplace, if not incidentally. Companies such as Alphabet and Meta will benefit greatly from a huge decrease in competition in the social media marketplace. Additionally, foreign cooperation in the global marketplace serves to spread the values of capitalism and free expression. It is understood that free trade greatly reduces the risk of traditional warfare between states, resulting in greater global competition.

Further alienating states that are considered adversarial is shown to diminish peace.

The natural rights to free expression, property, and privacy are at further risk with legislation such as this.

One can point to how this will greatly support very large companies such as Alphabet and Meta in the American marketplace, companies that have spied on American citizens on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Additionally, already-estranged nations are less likely to come to any sort of reasonable agreement as they are continually backed into a corner by the global community.

Skeptical Americans who are knowledgeable of history should not trust the American national security regime to properly determine who their enemies are, or the best way to keep Americans safe.

This legislation will only give increased power to the expansive state, power that the state has proven itself unable to use judiciously.

Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug. Yet when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

To our detriment, we are fast approaching a world without the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is crumbling too, where the lines between private and public property are so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” Technology has further muddied the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what government officials do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals.

However, it appears a war has been declared and no one can even fathom the possibility that they have been deemed a threat by their own government.