Ep 384 | It's Time to Give Privacy Rights an Update | Guest: Naomi Brockwell

Summary

Kibbe on Liberty Ep 384: "It's Time to Give Privacy Rights an Update"
Guest: Naomi Brockwell
Release Date: May 6, 2026
Host: Matt Kibbe

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Matt Kibbe is joined by Naomi Brockwell, privacy advocate and founder of the Ludlow Institute, for a deep dive into the urgent need to update privacy protections for the digital age. Triggered by recent legislative efforts spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie and growing concerns over state and corporate surveillance, the conversation explores the history and failings of current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the inadequacy of relying on courts for modern privacy, and a new legislative push—the Surveillance Accountability Act—to re-establish meaningful privacy rights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The State of Privacy Rights in 2026

• Shifting Privacy Baselines: All existing privacy law precedents predate the internet, cloud storage, and modern interconnectedness, rendering them dangerously outdated (03:00).
• Presidential Contradictions: President Trump called for a "clean" reauthorization of FISA Section 702, despite personally decrying government surveillance—highlighting the disconnect between rhetoric and policy (01:20).

“It’s nice of the person who has ultimate power in the society to say he’s willing to give up his rights as an ordinary citizen…How very generous of him to be willing to give up all of our rights.” — Naomi Brockwell (02:34)

Legal History: How We Got Here

• The ‘Reasonable Expectation of Privacy’ Test: From the Supreme Court’s Katz decision: courts act as arbiters, deciding on a case-by-case basis what counts as a reasonable expectation of privacy.
  • Most people cannot meaningfully assess who can access their data—making the “reasonable expectation” doctrine fundamentally flawed (05:00).
• The Third Party Doctrine: If information is shared with a third party (bank, phone company), it is not constitutionally protected—an idea originating from 1970s cases like Smith and Miller and now wildly overbroad.

“If you give data to a third party, you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy... Fast forward to 2026... every single thing we do involves a third party.” — Naomi Brockwell (07:05)

• Digital Feudalism: The migration of life to digital domains means almost all personal information is now technically unprotected.

The Founders' Intent vs. Modern Digital Surveillance

• General Warrants & Revolutionary Roots: The Fourth Amendment was specifically written to stop general, wide-reaching searches and force specific, probable cause-based warrants (09:25).
• Modern Workarounds: Law enforcement today bypasses judicial oversight by purchasing commercial datasets, getting blanket subpoenas, or simply requesting data from companies—all without warrants.

“We have completely eliminated the judiciary in the digital age... they are searching [these troves of data] at will.” — Naomi Brockwell (11:00)

Why Courts Aren't the Answer

• Judicial Conservatism or Stagnation: Courts are bound by dated precedent and are incapable of keeping up with rapidly evolving technological surveillance tools (13:30).
• The Case for Property Rights in Data: Brockwell advocates conceptualizing digital data as property—a modern equivalent to physical possessions entrusted to a third party under bailment, where you still retain your rights (14:10).

“If I give my keys to the valet, I haven’t given up my right to the car... The same thing should apply with our data.” — Naomi Brockwell (15:00)

Where Government and Tech Companies Collide

• No Firewall Between State and Big Tech: Tech companies and the state are so intertwined that the distinction between corporate and government surveillance is all but gone (16:30).
• Empowered Surveillance State: Programs like PRISM, mass data broker purchases, and legal loopholes put intimate personal data in the hands of authorities—without the public’s knowledge or meaningful recourse (17:00).

The Surveillance Accountability Act

• Legislative Solution: Naomi, her institute, and others co-developed the Surveillance Accountability Act, soon to be introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (20:20).
  • Defining a “Search”: Redefines ‘search’ to mean “a meaningful investigation of a personal thing,” closing loopholes that currently allow vast data searches without a warrant.
  • Private Right of Action: Individuals can sue officials who violate warrant requirements.
  • Rooted in the Fourth Amendment: It's essentially restating the Constitution, adapted for 21st-century technology.

“The fact that we need [this bill] at all tells us how broken things are because it’s basically just restating what the Fourth Amendment already says.” — Naomi Brockwell (22:50)

• Legislative Momentum: There’s significant bipartisan support, bolstered by public frustration with FISA and the domestic use of foreign surveillance powers (24:19).
• Phase One: Public Awareness: Most Americans are unaware how deep surveillance goes, or how doctrine like the third party rule puts their entire digital existence at risk (26:30).

The Education and Advocacy Challenge

• Public Ignorance: People mistakenly believe privacy invasions aren’t their problem (“I have nothing to hide!”), not realizing the impact on opposition, protest, and democratic self-correction (29:53).
• The Need for Grassroots Pressure: Only mass public awareness can force Congressional reform and shift legal interpretations (29:53).

“If we allow [government] unfettered access to our lives, the balance of power tips so far away from the individual that we lose all of our rights. And it’s just a ticking time bomb.” — Naomi Brockwell (32:44)

Addressing the “Catch the Bad Guys” Argument

• Balancing Security and Liberty: The Act would not prevent law enforcement from doing their job—they’d just need to present probable cause and get a warrant, as has always been the standard (33:23).
• Risk of Unchecked Power: Removing warrant requirements means unchecked power, which history shows is prone to catastrophic abuse—sometimes from within (35:00, 36:25).

Technology: Tool for Liberation or Control?

• Tech Is Not the Enemy: Technology is neutral—it has been co-opted by surveillance interests, but reclaiming it for positive personal liberty is possible (50:31).
• The Real Urgency: AI and surveillance technology are advancing faster than public understanding or legislative adaptation; waiting years is not an option (43:30, 44:50).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the President's Willingness to Trade Rights:
  “How very generous of him to be willing to give up all of our rights.” — Naomi Brockwell (02:34)

• On Privacy Doctrine's Obsolescence:
  “The government has said, you no longer have any privacy in your life now that your life has migrated to the digital realm. This is unacceptable.” — Naomi Brockwell (08:30)

• On Bailment and Data Property:
  “When I give my keys to the valet, I haven’t given up my right to my car... The same thing should apply with our data.” — Naomi Brockwell (15:00)

• On Mass Surveillance:
  “They are searching everything we do, and there’s no longer a safe space where we can, you know, have independent thoughts.” — Naomi Brockwell (17:54)

• On the Surveillance Accountability Act:
  “If you want to do a meaningful investigation of a personal thing, you need a warrant… If you didn't get a warrant...the individual has the right to sue you.” — Naomi Brockwell (21:40)

• On Technology’s Potential:
  “Tech isn’t something to be feared. Technology has lifted us out of poverty… We just need to reclaim the technology.” — Naomi Brockwell (50:31)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:20 – President Trump’s stance on FISA and privacy
• 05:00 – The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test and its flaws
• 07:05 – Third Party Doctrine and its consequences in the digital age
• 09:25 – Fourth Amendment origins and intent against general warrants
• 13:30 – The courts’ reluctance to modernize privacy precedent
• 15:00 – Framing digital data as property with a bailment analogy
• 16:30 – Disappearance of boundaries between tech companies and government surveillance
• 20:20 – Introduction of the Surveillance Accountability Act
• 22:50 – Need for legislation to restate Fourth Amendment rights
• 26:30 – Public ignorance and the need for education
• 29:53 – The importance of grassroots education and pressure
• 32:44 – The existential threat of unchecked surveillance
• 33:23 – Addressing objections based on law enforcement needs
• 43:30, 44:50 – The urgency to act before technology closes the window for privacy

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Resources & Further Action

• surveillanceaccountability.com: For Surveillance Accountability Act updates, infographics, and advocacy tools.
• Ludlow Institute (ludlowinstitute.org): Educational resources, explainer videos on the third party doctrine, warrants, and digital privacy advocacy.
• Free the People (freethepeople.org): Host Kibbe’s organization; home to further content on liberty and privacy.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode concludes with a rallying call for a new digital freedom revolution, revisiting foundational American principles for the interconnected era and echoing the spirit of John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyber Independence. Naomi Brockwell warns that without rapid, concerted action on privacy rights, the digital panopticon’s window of opportunity for reform is closing fast:

"If you lose privacy in society, if you allow government unfettered access to everything that you do, that's one of the most foundational pillars of a free society that you've eradicated." — Naomi Brockwell (44:20)

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For listeners and advocates: Stay informed, share educational materials, contact your representatives, and demand legislative action to defend the Fourth Amendment’s relevance in the digital age.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking to my friend Naomi Brockwell again, this time about important legislation that Thomas Massie is introducing to protect your Fourth Amendment to privacy in the digital age. The courts are not going to do this for us. We're going to have to create a grassroots movement that pushes this legislation and forces Congress to defend your constitutional rights. Check it out. Welcome to kibbe on liberty, Naomi. We're back together.

[B]

We're back.

[A]

Yes. The last time we spoke in Mexico City maybe six months ago, I don't know exactly when it was. You gave us kind of a primer on how to protect ourselves from both corporate and government surveillance in a. In a technological world that doesn't seem to care about our privacy. And so that was kind of a personal how to. Today, we're going to talk about what we could do legally or legislatively to ensure that the government isn't violating our Fourth Amendment rights. It seems like we shouldn't have to do that, but here we are. We got to, we got to remind everybody what that is. And I want to start with a reading from our president, sort of related. About a week ago, I think it was, he was demanding a clean authorization of FISA section 702, which is a complete 180 for where President Trump has been, who claims that the Deep state violated his privacy rights and surveilled him and all that stuff. But he said this. I'm asking Republicans to unify and vote together to bring a clean bill to the floor. I am willing to risk the giving up of my rights and privileges as a citizen for our great military and country.

[B]

It's nice of the person who has ultimate power in the society to say he's willing to give up his rights as an ordinary citizen who happens to have a personal security detail and the entire military just industrial complex in his back pocket. How nice of him. How very generous of him to be willing to give up all of our rights.

[A]

So let's proceed on the assumption that the rest of us do not concede to the president deciding for us that we give up our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. And I just read a really great substack that you wrote, sort of breaking down the judicial history of this, and I want you to get into that. But let's just say that all of the rules that govern our privacy today were contrived before there was an Internet and before there was social media and before there were cell phones and before there were data centers and before there was Obamacare that has centralized our medical Records supposedly protecting us and our privacy. But we never believed that in the first place. Give us a history of these two fundamental legal concepts that fundamentally sort of undermine the fourth Amendment's protection of our lives, effects and property.

[B]

Absolutely. And feel free to interrupt me, because once you get me going, I'm just going to rant for a really long time. But when you started off, you said that we talked about practical tools. There are three ways that we can fight for privacy. There is technology where we could just reclaim it our ourselves, which I love. There is no litigation. We can litigate these issues. And then the courts kind of decide, do you have a fourth Amendment protection? And then there's legislature where you can make rules. Now, the way that we have historically been deciding whether we have fourth amendment protections is the courts, they have been saying, okay, does this constitute a fourth amendment violation? Do you have fourth Amendment protections? And they came to this test called the reasonable expectation of privacy test. This came about in a case called Katz. And in that case, essentially, it was an interesting case because it essentially set this, you know, precedent of like, reasonable expectation of privacy test up that has now carried forth into the present day. And it was a case where the government put. They wiretapped like the outside of a phone booth. They like bugged it. And, and the person said, you know, I have a reasonable expectation of privacy because I'm in a glass box. And I presume that that is a private. The courts agreed with him and said that even though this was a public space, there was a reasonable expectation of privacy. And it kind of set this idea of like, okay, well, now the courts are deciding what is a reasonable expectation of privacy, which is a really bad way to do things. It's a two pronged test that first of all says, okay, did this person expect to have privacy in the thing? And second, does society agree with him that he has a reasonable expectation of privacy? Like, first of all, the average person is not thinking about their privacy when they're picking up their cell phone. They don't do an analysis of saying, okay, how many third parties are getting access to this. This goes to Verizon, it goes to the cell provider infrastructure. It's being wiretapped by the nsa. We've got, you know, salt typhoon. CCP is in our critical infrastructure. We've got all the data brokers that are harvesting this. We've got the rogue cell towers that might intercept this call and then log where I am. You know, like, we're not. The rational person is just making a call. And so this actually considering privacy in our day to day when we're just trying to live our lives and pay our bills and pick up kids from school and go to work is silly. This is not something that is on the forefront of people's minds as they're just going about the day today activities. Second, society doesn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. They're not thinking about this either. There is no fully formed understanding of what privacy we're getting because first of all, people don't understand how technology works. They don't actually understand the pervasive surveillance that is embedded in our everyday. And so like this, this whole idea of reasonable expectation of privacy doesn't really make much sense from the get go. And it's diminishing because if you are setting up a precedent that says, hey, do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy? Well, as you know, surveillance gets more and more pervasive. It becomes less reasonable for the average person to expect privacy. And so it is like a self facing test that we've set up. It just spirals and our fourth Amendment prot protections go with it. So this is one of the things that we established now the way that the courts have determined how to answer this question, how do we answer whether their expectation of privacy is reasonable? One of the answers is the third party doctrine. They've essentially decided that if you give data to a third party, you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In this. This came about in two different court cases. There was Smith and there was Miller. And in both cases the government already suspected the criminal. I don't know why they couldn't have just gotten a warrant, but maybe it was too much work or whatever. But in both cases they went to either a bank to get bank records or they went to a cell phone provider to install a pen registry. And, and they did this without a warrant. They just went directly to the company. And the courts unfortunately sided with the government in these cases and said, well no, you know, you can't expect the numbers you dial to be private because you know the phone company has access to them and that's the PH records. Therefore you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy anyway. These precedents were set up in the 70s. There were really narrow records. They involved, you're a very slim portion of someone's life. Fast forward to 2026. We're in the Internet digital era and every single thing we do involves a third party. Everything we do is now a data point that is transferred to the cloud that countless third parties get Access to, and that data is traveling between all kinds of servers along infrastructure that is all owned by third parties. So essential, essentially, the government has said, you no longer have any privacy in your life now that your life has migrated to the digital realm. This is. This is unacceptable. Because the fourth amendment was set up to avoid something called a general warrant or a writ of assistance. These were absolutely atrocious, overbearing permission slips that the king's men would write to themselves so that if someone criticized the crown, if they embarrassed the crown, if they, you know, wanted to protest or anything, anything like that, the king's men gave themselves a permission slip that could just go into their homes, go through all of their things, and try to find any seditious material. Now, we understand that if you have, you know, unfettered access to everything in someone's life, you can obviously piece together fragments to build whatever narrative you want. And that's exactly what the king's men were doing. They were just piecing together all these fragments and saying, see, we got him. You know, this person is dangerous, therefore we can lock him up forever. And this is how they quelled protest, protest movements and dissent and entrench their power. When America was formed, it was largely in response to these writs of assistance, these general warrants. That was a big part of the reason why we had a revolution. And so when the founders wrote the Constitution, when they created the Bill of Rights, they created the fourth Amendment, where they said, okay, no more. The government is no longer allowed to do unreasonable searches and seizures. And if they get a warrant, it has to be specific. No more general warrants. You have to name the person, you have to say what you expect to find, where you expect to find it. You have to give probable cause. And then we're going to bring in a second branch of government to actually make sure that we agree we have to have some oversight. We can't just have law enforcement setting their own limits and deciding themselves how much they're allowed to invade people's lives. That has never worked. So let's bring in a second branch of government. Let's have the courts decide, and let's have law enforcement make their case to a judge. And if the judge agrees that you have probable cause, only then is your intrusion into someone's life warranted. We have completely eliminated the judiciary in the digital age. We have law enforcement buying data sets from data brokers. They have giant troves of data about intimate details of our lives, you know, our entire social graph. Everywhere we're going, our Purchase history, everything we do. And they are searching it at will. They're just not calling a search, and they're pretending that the Fourth amendment doesn't apply. So this is why now legislation is needed to come in, because the courts are trying to litigate this by looking at every individual piece of technology as it comes up. Oh, let's look at a wiretap on a phone booth, and let's decide if that's a reasonable expectation. Privacy. Oh, okay, it is. Let's look at, you know, geolocation from cell towers specifically. Okay. You need a warrant for that. Okay, but what about Flock cameras that are also tracking us? What about gps? What about the data from the apps in our phone? What about this really rapid expansion of tech that we're seeing? And the courts just can't possibly keep up with every new piece of technology?

[A]

Thank you for joining me today on Kibbe on Liberty and for being part

[C]

of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now let's get back to it.

[A]

Before we get into legislation, I want to go back and sort of dig a little bit deeper in how the courts function and so much hesitance that they have to overturn precedent and decisions that were made. And I made a joke at the beginning of this about all of these cases that were determining what constitutes privacy in the digital age are all pre. Digital age. Why can't the courts say, you know what? This is a whole new ballgame. We need to fundamentally reconsider it. Are they. Are they. Is it. Is it just that they're too conservative? Are they. Are they legally trapped by precedent and that it's. It's too. Too much to. To. To rethink it?

[B]

Well, I think that it is good for a society to have expectations of, like, what the law is. So you don't want a court that is going, like, well outside of Preston. You want people to be able to live life with the expectation of, okay, well, if I do these things, these are within the bounds of what society allows, and I'll be okay. But you're absolutely right that this digital age, it, like, we haven't really looked into this at all, and we're trying to shoehorn things into existing precedents that don't make much Sense. Now there was a case called Carpenter and, and it kind of created this like piecemeal carve out of technology that we're seeing. And one of the judges in the case, Gorsuch actually dissented. And no, it wasn't part of the dissent, but I don't recall. But Gorsuch actually said of that case, know it was poorly argued and they actually should have argued for property rights, which I agree with. I think that all of this comes down to the fact that we haven't translated digital, you know, artifacts into property yet. And they should be so a way that we could, you know, the courts instead could be thinking about this instead of like this kind of like does it is a. With a third party. Okay, you've given up your rights. I mean, that's ridiculous. When I give my dog to the kennel, that's a third party. I haven't given up my right to the dog. Instead we use a thing called bailment. Bailment is where someone else can have custody of my belongings, but they're still mine. You know, when I give my keys to the valet, I haven't given up my right to my car. It is expected that the valet will give my car back and it belongs to me. I'm just entrusting them with that. The same thing should apply with our data. If I give my data to Google under a certain confined contract that says you will store these in your cloud and then you'll give them back to me, I haven't given up my right to that, that data. And especially in an age where we could have contracts and privacy policies, if I were to sign a contract with a business that says, hey, I'm giving you access to this slim amount of private of data and you're going to agree to keep that private and not share that with anyone and you're going to sign the contract and I'm going to sign the contract. Even if we have that, the government does not recognize that contract as valid when it comes to fourth amendment protections, which is insane. They say we do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Even though I have a contract with a company saying I should reasonably be able to expect privacy. So the whole situation is just, just crazy. And we need to get to a stage where we acknowledge that our data is property. If I give my personal family photos to a cloud provider, I don't just give up the rights to that. They are mine. If I am as a company store my files with a cloud provider, I don't just give up the right to that Data. It's understood that that data belongs to the company. So we just need to translate this to the digital age.

[A]

And we talked about this last time in our minds perhaps when we sign on to these terms of service and promises of privacy. With all of these big tech companies, we're assuming that they mean that. But there is no bright line anymore between big tech and the surveillance state because they either have direct contracts with the government, they're certainly selling them data and there is no firewall anymore. So it's not like government agencies have to go to Apple and say we want your stuff because they already have it.

[B]

Yeah, the analogy would be like if in the 70s, instead of having like a brick and mortar Blockbuster Video that was this separate entity and a Walmart that was a separate entity and if the government wanted your data, they had to go there. What if there was just one central building that was run by the government and all of these businesses had to be inside that right. That would be, have been a disaster for privacy. And if, you know, there were just, you know, government officials stationed at all of these stores, that's essentially what the situation is in the digital age. They are buying data from data brokers, they're using things like the PRISM program to get data directly from these companies servers. They are doing all this with blanket subpoenas or simply by asking nicely. And, and they are arguing that individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. And the government is allowed to do all of this without any warrant because they don't see individual as owning that data. They're not recognizing this, our digital files, things that we're storing with companies as ours. And they're not respecting our privacy rights with those things. So it's, it's complete unfettered access right now the fourth Amendment, like the whole point of it was that intrusion into someone's life is dangerous. And governments can quell protest movements in advance, they can go after, you know, opposition party members, they can entrench their interests. Like that is a recipe for tyranny. And founder said, okay, well we can't allow that. How do we like stop that? Okay, we have to stop the government actually getting access to our lives. Unless there is a good reason people should feel, you know, comfortable and safe living their lives and pursuing freedom and happiness without government intrusion. But today government is intruding in every single thing that we're doing. We are no longer feeling safe to do what we want. We tread on eggshells, we self censor. And companies are handing over our most innermost Thoughts throughout chat, GPT prompts, through our. You Google searches, through our email history, through our text messages. They are searching everything we do, and there's no longer a safe space where we can, you know, have. Have independent thoughts.

[A]

And by the way, they're just getting started. I don't. I assume you saw this very creepy list slash manifesto that Palantir posted on X that included, you know, the. The thing that I think libertarians were most focused on was basically an endorsement of a draft. But the whole thing is a roadmap to at very least a Chinese social credit system. But when I'm reading this, I'm thinking of the Terminator, the Matrix, our worst dystopian nightmares. So that's where big tech is going. And the question is what? What can we do to stop it? And the courts, you argue, are insufficient or unwilling to sort of take that on. Maybe if we had more Neil Gorsuchs, we'd be in better shape. But you're proposing legislative solutions and so that the legislature sends a clear message to the courts that the Fourth Amendment matters and that the property right in your data is a fundamental thing.

[B]

Thing. Yeah. And I would actually even say it's not even big tech. It's every single piece of tech in your lives. It could be like the tiniest side project. It doesn't matter. All that data is up for grabs and governments will just subpoena it, or they will just get an NSL and a gag order, and you won't even know that that data is being collected. So everything in our life is digital. Everything in our life is tech. These days, it's all up for grabs. And the government says that they can have access to it without a warrant. So how do we stop this? Well, well, I. So I worked with a lot of different institutes, and, and my institute helped craft a piece of legislation called the Surveillance Accountability Act. And, and we worked closely with Massey's office to really, you know, put this legislation together to try to figure out how to solve this problem. And we landed on this idea of, okay, let's not have the courts have to play philosopher kings, because the Fourth Amendment very clearly says, you know, no unreasonable searches or seizures. And the word search, church, it's not magic. You know, it means the same thing today that it meant when the Constitution was written, when the Bill of Rights was written. So let's actually put a definition down if people are being vague about it, because right now law enforcement is carving out all kinds of areas, like they will buy data, they will query databases and then they will call that not a search. And so if they're going to be redefining search, let's just put in the legal code what search means. It wasn't ambiguous before, but law enforcement has made it ambiguous. So let's define it. It's a meaningful investigation of a personal thing. If you want to do a meaningful investigation of a personal thing, you need a warrant. And so that would stop governments just, you know, going directly to companies and saying, hey Google, do a search of your own database and then tell us everything you find on this person, give us all of their emails, etc. No, you need a warrant for that. You need to have a judge sign off and say that that is a justified intrusion into that person, person's private things before you can do that search. So this, this bill is super simple and the fact that we need it at all tells us how broken things are because it's basically just restating what the fourth Amendment already says. If you want to do a search on someone, and here's the actual definition of a search, you need a warrant. I think the most interesting part of this is probably the third section, which is the private right of action. Because one of the things that Massey's office pointed to is how egregiously government just will flagrantly ignore the laws that are already in existence and there's no accountability, there's all kinds of immunity protecting them. And what this bill would do is say, okay, if you didn't get a warrant and you did a search, the individual has the right to sue you. You know, if you are a law enforcement agent, if you're a government official, if you're someone who is doing this and behalf government, you can be sued if you do not abide by the law. I, I think that's pretty reasonable. It's, you know, if you break the law, you can be held accountable even if you are a, a person who is, is working with the government. So that's, that's it in a nutshell. It, it, we need to get back to what the fourth Amendment actually says, why it was actually created, and how dangerous society can be if we lose the, that fundamental protection. And having government intrusion into our lives is not something that we should be okay with. Unfettered access to everything we do is an absolute recipe for dystopia, as you said. And so just, you know, helping on the legislative front to re establish what the norm is, instead of letting it drift further and further towards dystopia through the court system, the legislative route is absolutely called for at this stage.

[A]

Yeah. And, and so by the time people watch this, they will, your legislation will have been introduced by Thomas Massie. Are there other original co sponsors you can mention?

[B]

So Massey is the main sponsor of this. We have been talking with a lot of different office offices and we've also been talking with the people in the Senate about this bill. There's a lot of support right now for this kind of an effort. So we have had an overwhelmingly positive response to this bill. I think because there is a bipartisan agreement right now with the FISA pushback that enough is enough. We have warrantless mass surveillance programs focused internally on citizens of America and we shouldn't have. Our like super powered surveillance infrastructure was only meant to be allowed to be set up if it was focused outward on foreign nations and foreign threats. And it was never meant to be turned inwards on its own citizens. And the fact that now the FBI is doing hundreds of thousands of queries of this hyper powered surveillance system about everyday Americans is a sign that this system is broken and we're headed to something, you know, really dangerous. That's a ticking time bomb right there. You know, and, and so a lot of people have been very enthusiastic about this bill. We think that, that this is the very beginning of the fight. This is a multi year effort. You know, we plan to just keep pushing this, keep reintroducing this, keep getting the message out. Because the biggest issue right now I think is awareness. It's educating the public. Most people have never heard of the third party doctrine. Most people have no idea that yes, their photos are up for grabs by the government because the government claims that due to the third party doctrine, you don't have any fourth amendment protection over it. All of this stuff is up for grabs without a warrant. And on. Not only that, the, the, the average person has no idea about all of the shell companies and contractors that the government is currently in partnership with to just harvest location data from your apps, your contacts list from your apps. You know, your, your, your what you're doing, what you're reading, you know that what's going on in your, your camera, for example, from your apps. Government is buying so much more access to your life than you realize. And they're just demanding subpoenas or national security letters with gag orders. The average person has no idea. So this is an educational campaign to make people understand how far from the fourth Amendment we have drifted and from there we can actually have to have a conversation about this. I hope that this bill will help to get that conversation ignited. You know, this isn't just about Pfizer. This isn't just about like one statute and one small amount of programs. This is about the erosion of the fourth Amendment in our society and how the government is bypassing the checks and balances that were meant to be in place. We need to make sure people are aware that this is going on first. So baby steps and, and just trying to get the word out at this

[C]

stage, if you've made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Key Beyond Liberty is just one of the amazing products we created. Free the People. We tell emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty. Independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance. After the show, check out our [e-mail] and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show.

[A]

So this gets a little complicated for my small brain and for viewers, but right after I finish the interview with you, I'm going to interview Thomas Massie about the legislative fight on FISA reauthorization and we're going to run that one first. But I haven't talked to him yet. But I'm going to speculate that he's going to tell me that despite the initial success of Massie and Lauren Boebert and was it Tim Burchett I believe was the third guy. But anyway, he put together a handful of Republicans that were able to stop the clean authorization that President Trump demanded and Mike Johnson is trying to ram through and I'm sure the Senate leader would like to do that as well. But I bet you that Thomas is going to predict that they're going to find something, they're going to find sweeteners, they're going to make promises, they're going to do Lucy and the football like they do on all of these poison pill legislation that honest small government Republicans should never support. And they're going to find a way to get it through. Which means that what you're talking about is more fundamentally important and not at all unrelated to the short term battle on FISA reauthorization because it ultimately has to be public education translated into public pressure translated into co sponsorships and of course the courts very much pay attention to congressional intent and it's a long term battle. But this is not sort of a vanity piece of legislation that Thomas is just going to drop in the hopper and say, okay, I proved my point, or I made my point. We have to transform the conversation and the mindset of Congress and, and ultimately the Supreme Court.

[B]

Yeah, and you're absolutely right. This comes from public pressure. There is no way that these politicians would be able to take these deals if people actually knew what was going on through all of the work that I've done in this space. And you know, we've been focused mainly on privacy for years and years. And, and I used to think people didn't care about privacy because no one's talking about it, but it turns out that no one knows what is going on. So we have all kinds of different audiences. I, I'm in such a bubble, you know, I'm dealing with the kind of cutting edge of like where all of the surveillance is going on, finding those cracks in the system. The average person has no idea of the most basic surveillance that is going on of them. They don't know that their Gmail is being spied on. You know, like, and, and so I think that the battle for education and awareness is so much more important than people understand. And if we can, can get people understanding how much their lives have been infiltrated and get them to actually push back, then we can get these politicians to understand, okay, the people actually do want the fourth Amendment. You know, this wasn't just a hangover from like 100, 250 years ago and we no longer care about it. No, this is a fundamental pillar of society and showing people what happens when this disappears is so important. The first pushback that I hear from people is like when you tell them about these things, it's almost like this reflexive justification because no one wants to feel stupid, like they've left their life up for grabs so they're trying to find a reason why this doesn't matter. And they say, okay, well I've got nothing to hide, you know, why should I care? And you know, I'm not important enough and this isn't going to affect me. And we need to bring the conversation back to 250 years ago. What situation were they fighting against? Well, they were in a situation where you couldn't have independent media, you couldn't have your opposition leaders, you couldn't have a protest movement, you couldn't have any of these self correcting mechanisms to society that keeps us free. So if we're at a place where we start to be complacent about just eradicating the fourth Amendment because we feel we have nothing to hide and it doesn't matter to us, we are creating a society where we will no longer ever be able to push back against entrenched power ever again. Our children will no longer be able to push back. We are just paving the road, road towards tyranny. And people need to actually understand what is going on there. You know, privacy is fundamental. It's not just privacy. Privacy suggests we all be hermits and live in a cave. No, it's government intrusion into our lives. If we allow them to just keep overstepping, crushing the fourth Amendment, ignoring it, going directly to companies and getting access to every single thing we do. If we allow them that unfettered access to our lives, the balance of power tips so far away from the individual that we lose all of our rights. And it's just a ticking time bomb.

[A]

Of course, in times of war, which is not a war, but it seems to be a war, it's always a time of war. Yeah, I feel like we're always at war. And certainly for purposes of those who will argue against your position, they're going to argue that it's for our own good. That law enforcement has the tools to catch potential terrorists. Is. Is usually the thing they throw back in our face. How do you respond to that?

[B]

I absolutely want the government to be able to catch bad guys, and this bill would not stop them doing that. You can catch the worst people in society. You can catch the terrorists and the, you know, child predators and all of that. You can absolutely do that. You just need a warrant. You know, that's all we're asking. Just abide by the. The Constitution, which says that you need a warrant to do that. And it has been fine up until the digital age. Government has worked completely fine getting a warrant when they wanted to do a search on someone. Suddenly they're pretending like warrants are like the worst thing in the world for protecting people. And we should abolish that. All that does is make the. The wolf inside the gates. Right. If we're just thinking of law enforcement as the people who are, you know, keeping us safe from all of the bad people, what you're essentially saying if you get rid of warrants is you're going to allow the bad people within that system to have absolute free reign and do whatever they want, we don't want that in society. We understand that power can be abused, and sometimes it's not even by bad people. You know, Lauren Falsified has their own agenda. They are wanting to close the loop. They're wanting to solve the case, catch the culprit. And the judiciary initially was brought into this because the judiciary actually understood that they have their own agenda. Right. You have even courts I think, from like 1940s that have said they've referred to law enforcement as this, this competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime, which I think is a good way to frame it. And they specifically said that's why you want a neutral and detached magistrate being involved with this. Because they're not so intimately involved. Law enforcement is always going to find a justification for wanting to intrude. It's up to the judiciary to decide whether that's warranted. They're not, they're, you know, meant to be detached from this. They're meant to be neutral and they're meant to take a step back and not look just at this case. They're meant to say, okay, what about the Constitution? What about rights of society? What about freedom? And does what this law enforcement, if this law, law enforcement were allowed to do this all the time, would that present a danger to society? That's the role of the judiciary here and we've just eradicated that. Which means we're not even thinking about long term rights of people. We're just focused on that compet of enterprise of ferreting out crime with no detached and neutral magistrate present. That's really dangerous. You know, I, I often remind people that you sometimes are so busy focused on external threats that sometimes you forget that some of the worst threats are inside the gates. Some of the worst atrocities in history have been perpetrated by a country's own government against their citizens. That is what the Constitution was there to protect against. So that that could not the United States of America. And if we get rid of those checks and balances, we may think that we're helping because we're protecting people. But that system can always be infiltrated. It can always be abused. And the more power we get it, the more likely it's going to be abused. And it's just a terribly naive and shortsighted view. To want to boost that power as much as possible. We have to ask at what cost?

[A]

Yeah, people that watch this show have heard me say this a thousand times. And it's important to have some basic principles that you would apply to really complex policy issues. And one of them you just laid out perfectly. Power corrupts. And the first question you have to ask if you're supporting a government policy is do you trust the individuals with that much power? I think obviously everybody reading this show knows what the answer to that question is, but there seems to be plenty of evidence of intelligence agencies and law enforcement abusing those powers. And in a lot of ways, we're spoiled into assuming that because we live in a relatively free country, that it couldn't happen here. But of course it could happen here. But I'm thinking of Rand Paul was probably the OG Senator to take office on this portfolio of issues defending the fourth Amendment. And well over a decade ago, when he was pushing the issue, he also made an argument that I'll call the Hayekian argument, that you don't know nearly as much as you think you do when you're designing these grand systems to ferret out bad guys. And the very idea that we're doing mass surveillance, that we're scooping, scooping up everybody's data that we're targeting everybody, creates an infinite sea of data points that make it easier for bad guys to hide. And the only way around that, as you say, is to go through the rigor of having to go before a judge and getting a warrant because you've done your due diligence and you've found the needle in the haystack. Hopefully that it's somewhat someone that, that doesn't need to, in fact, need to be targeted. At least they're not overwhelmed by so much information that they have no knowledge.

[B]

Yeah. And the argument that law enforcement is giving is just not backed up by any sort of reality that I can see. First of all, they claim that they're going dark and they start talking about how we can't possibly take this stuff out of their reach. They need to access all of these data broker records and everything, and if you take them away, they're going dark. They have never had such granular insight into the lives of citizens ever before in history. This is an unprecedented surveillance panopticon that we've created in the digital age. And they have unfettered access to all of this. So it's insane that they're talking about, you know, the dangers of taking any of this stuff away from them. First of all, it's not taking it away from them. They just need a warrant. They just need to actually have probable cause and to have done their homework before they intrude on people's lives. Otherwise, the danger of just being able to intrude on anyone at any time because of, you know, whatever reason you put forward. You don't even need a reason to get a blanket subpoena. You know, mild curiosity is a, is a good enough reason for them to get a subpoena to access our data as just not good enough you know, if we trust people with ultimate power in society, and there's a debate about whether we should do that, but we are doing that right now. We need to at least have some checks on that power and to actually make sure that we don't allow it to get abused.

[A]

Yeah, totally. So at some point when this legislation has a bill number, and I'll make sure that people have a whip list as well, but at least resources for people that are telling us as we get co sponsors, I think people will be interested in talking to their members of Congress and making sure that they're pushing it as well. Is there anyone in the Senate that's considering dropping the companion legislation? Translation?

[B]

So we have talked to people, and obviously you already mentioned the number one candidate who would be interested in that. So Rand Paul actually already has his own bills in the works. We have talked with his office. We have talked about maybe incorporating some of our language into something that he is planning on dropping in, like, the coming weeks. We would love to have someone in the Senate, you know, you know, create a companion bill and, and, and support that. I think that this is an initial step that especially like it's a. There are pros and cons to releasing this around Pfizer. First of all, if you care about Pfizer and don't want to clean reauthorization, you're already on board with other amendments that are being pushed. You're already on board with some other, you know, privacy bills that are being pushed. So that is the downside of getting supposed to support for this specific bill. The upside of doing it around this time is that in two weeks, no one's going to care about mass surveillance anymore. They're not going to care about it again for years until the next reauthorization comes up, and we need to talk about it as a society. So this is the perfect point to establish this as a talking point and then keep reintroducing it. You know, people will already be familiar with it. We'll start to explain these concepts to them and we will just, you know, flood them with this educational material that makes them aware of actually the gravity of the situation. So I think it's a perfect time to launch this initiative, but I do think that we're not going to probably get companion bills and more sponsors until the next time it is reintroduced. I think right now, just showing politicians that there is bipartisan support and bipartisan appetite for pushing back on the surveillance state is a really great first step. And, and I think there are a lot of people behind scenes working towards that.

[A]

Yeah, if you don't do this, you're never going to get momentum going and that is the legislative process. So for people that want to become armed with the facts and the history of this, you guys produce a lot of content and tools that people can use. Tell us where we can get that stuff.

[B]

For this specific bill, there is a website called surveillance accountability.com so if you want to, to get updated with how the bill is doing, you know, when it gets reintroduced, when you know, there's media about it, we also have infographics and things like that. If you wanted to kind of get bite sized nuggets that you can share to try to get other people on board, you can go to surveillance accountability.com My institute, Ludlow Institute has a lot of resources. We just put out a video about warrants, the importance of them. We put out a video about the third party doctrine. Both of those videos mention this bill. But it's a broader issue. It's about, you know, you know, warrantless mass surveillance in general. So if you want to get educated about, you know, the consequences of eradicating the fourth Amendment, you can take a look at that. That's Ludlow Institute.org and yeah, just, just keep an eye on, on both of those places. We're going to be just vociferously updating and, and trying like this. This is our issue. I think that if you lose privacy in society, if you allow government unfettered access to everything that you do do, that's one of the most foundational pillars of a free society that you've, you've eradicated. And so in the digital age, this is supercharged. This is moving so fast. People would not believe, and especially with the advent of AI. AI technology is basically just like supercharged compute. But the problem is that it's been mainly hijacked for surveillance purposes. You know, we have yet to see a huge push where people are building privacy tools out of this tech. So right now it's a complete asymmetric, you know, initiative and the balance like it's so far in favor of the surveillance state and all this technology to go through and automatically transcribe and flag, you know, content and you know, just using apps to log keywords and again use AI to just pass that data like it's, it's incredible how fast this is moving and how much more invasive, invasive things are getting day by day as models get better and better. This is not a battle we can actually afford to wait on anymore. We can't afford to say, okay, well, in five years, maybe we'll spend five years building a coalition and, you know, try to move things forward. It's like, no, we need to do this now. This is the first step. This needs to steamroll, and we kind of need to pass things real quickly because if we don't, tech is going to be so advanced that we won't even have a shot at being able to carve out private spaces, out of government reach anymore. It won't even be possible. And once we're there, it's game over for, for rights across the board.

[A]

And we certainly can't let Edward Snowden, who is looking over your shoulder right

[B]

now, I like him looking over my shoulder. It makes me feel safe.

[A]

Yeah, we, we can't, we can't let him down because he, he gave up a lot so that we could fight this fight.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. As it says there, thank you for your service. It's. It's incredible how rare it is to find people who are willing to speak up about this. I, I'm currently reading a book about financial surveillance and the choke points that happen when you have centralized handling of finances. And the number of people in this book who really wanted to blow the whistle on how invasive all this financial surveillance is, but couldn't go on the record because they were too scared because understood the repercussions. It's crazy. You know, I just read another book about, you know, an organization's lit litigation that they've been doing to fight for privacy rights. Again, the number of people from companies who want to step forward and who off the record wanted to talk generally about the surveillance that's going on, you know, about the, the, the government back doors that are being planted in everyday tools that we're using but couldn't go on the record because again, they're scared. Said it's, it's really bad. That's why we have such lack of awareness. You know, companies don't want to tell us what's going on. Governments don't want to tell us what's going on. The people who know are too scared to tell us what's going on. And so people are left in the dark and they think everything's rosy. Well, everything is not rosy. And the imbalance of power is terrifying and we need to act on it and tell people about this. So I wish we had more people who are willing to, to be brave and step forward because we're at a stage right now where we need it, you know, window of opportunity and is, is really quickly closing and, and I do worry what's going to happen if, if it closes completely.

[A]

Well, it seems like on our 250th birthday, it'd be a good time to start a new digital freedom revolution.

[B]

Let's do it. Have you ever read John Perry Barlow's Declaration of Cyber Dependent? So good. So absolutely. I, I definitely want to see us. I mean, here, here's the, the thing. I've been looking at that Declaration with this 250th anniversary coming up, and what was interesting, and this overlap between the two of them, the Declaration of Independence, really was a group of people who were suffering under such authoritarian rule who just kind of came together and said, you know what, we're just deciding that you're not welcome here. We are not acknowledging your power. We are not acknowledging your moral authority. We are going to govern ourselves. Ourselves. And if we want someone to govern us, they're going to work for us, not the other way around. And we're just going to do things. That's, that's it. We decided people could do things and we're just going to do it. And then the Cyber Declaration of Cyber Independence did the same thing. It just said, listen, you're not welcome here. You can't come in and just claim to have authority over individuals connecting peer to peer, using the digital world. You can't just come in and assert your authority. We don't recognize it. You're not welcome here. I just love that. I definitely think we've lost a lot of that attitude. We become maybe whether it's complicit or maybe it's complacent, or maybe it's just we're scared because we are somewhat aware of this panopticon, that we don't want to necessarily step out of line because we understand what's at stake and the entrenched power that could be wielded over us. But you're absolutely right. And maybe if enough people got together together, both, you know, the, the 250 years ago, it showed that even in the face of what at the time was incomprehensible, you know, power, if you get enough people to join forces and say, actually we're just going to join forces and say, enough is enough, maybe you can make a difference. So maybe at the 250th, it's a great time for people to join forces and say, you know what? Enough is enough. We're just not going to recognize your authority over this anymore. We actually believe we have these rights and we're willing to fight for them. Maybe that's just what we need to do.

[A]

I like it. I'd love to see what you do with a rethinking of John Perry Barlow's Declaration of Independence on the Internet. Is that what it was called? Something like that?

[B]

I think it was. Cyber independence, I think is the name.

[A]

Humble brag. I'm old enough that I used to go to these tech conferences and I got to meet John Perry Barlow. And at the time I was more excited about the fact that he was one of the lyricists for the Grateful Dead, my beloved Grateful Dead. And I got to have kind of a beer soaked conversation argument with him and I discovered that he really was influenced by Friedrich Hayek. So like all of my worlds collided into this beautiful thing. But I quote John Perry Barlow quite a bit. And I think his utopian vision for what technology could be, be, should, should be our guide.

[B]

It absolutely should be our guide. And I get a lot of people, like some people will come to my channel because they don't like tech, because they're scared of tech. I think that's, that's sad to see. Tech isn't something to be feared. Technology has lifted us out of poverty. Technology has given us, you know, abundance. And at the end of the day, tech itself is new, neutral. I think what's sad is that tech has been so overwhelmingly hijacked for bad purposes and control and surveillance and censorship and all those kinds of things that people have started to equate it with those things and, and mistake it as like, tech is the actual bad thing. No, we just need to reclaim the technology. We just need to use it for the things that make our world better. The tech is neutral and it's all how we use it. And we're absolutely empowered, powered to channel our usage into things that write the future we want to see instead of just accepting the dystopia that people have hijacked it for. Right. So I agree with you. Like this idea of a world where we can actually use, harness the power of, of cutting edge technology for the betterment of individuals and their rights. That's absolutely possible and we need to fight for that. You know, we're not going to win by stepping out of the game and being Luddites and saying, okay, well, we're not going to engage with them. This, there's no way for you to disengage. You can throw out your devices as much as you want, but when you need to, you know, pay your bills or whatever, they're going to ask for an electronic payment method. You're going to be forced into the digital realm. When you're driving your car, they're using your tire pressure sensors to track everywhere you go. They're using flock cameras to track your movements. They're using AI to track your face and to. To map that, and. And so you cannot actually escape. And it's naive to think that throwing out your devices will allow you to do that. The only way we win is to lean. To lean into the cutting edge privacy technology that exists and to develop more of it and to protect the people who are actually building stuff for good. If we don't protect those people, if we allow privacy developers to be demonized and jailed, which is what's going on right now, then we will lose the only hope that we actually have of winning back our freedoms in the digital age.

[A]

Okay, Naomi, I think. I think we'll connect at the Hill press conference in a couple days.

[B]

Sounds great. I am very excited about it.

[A]

Thank you for doing this, and I'll see you soon.

[B]

All right, see you soon.

[C]

Bye. Thanks for watching.

[A]

If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications.

[C]

And if you want to know more about free the people, go to freethepeople.org.

[B]

Sam.