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A
If the world were like a Sleep Number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Your coffee would never get cold, your flight would always be on time, and your mattress would always respond to you and your unique sleep needs. Sleep number mattresses are designed to respond to your body and shift with your changing life, helping you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a Sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com Sleep number to a good life, sleep well.
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B
Is George Orwell's 1984 coming true? With more and more Americans being debanked, flocking cameras everywhere, people being shut down online simply for their speech, what is happening to the surveillance state in the United States of America? Is it already too far gone for us to do anything about it? Well, someone who knows about this deeply was the man who tried to warn all of us about the warrantless wiretapping of Americans before Edward Snowden was the story. Thomas Drake was the story, a decorated veteran of the United States Air Force, United States Navy, and an NSA whistleblower who went through the proper channels to try to stop what was happening to the American people and exposed the government's illegal spying on Americans. And so we wanted to have a deep dive conversation today about what is happening in the United States of America and to the American people and is it too far gone? Thomas, thank you so much for joining us here on the show. Welcome back.
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C
Thanks for having me back.
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B
So before we get into maybe the current state of affairs where things are going in the United States with flocking cameras and debanking, I think people don't even know the level of the debanking that's happening in the US Right now. But maybe you could maybe walk people through your story. And you know, people have heard about Edward Snowden, of course, and what happened to him. You, though, tried to go through the proper channels to try to warn the powers that be about this warrantless wiretapping and maybe kind of start at the beginning and how you got involved with this.
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C
Well, it's quite a story. It goes back now several decades in terms of its origins, because I grew up in the 1970s as a very young teenager during a period in which a lot of scandals came out, a lot of investigations, church pipe committee hearings revealing just how far the government had gone in violating the rights of Americans in secret. And there was a number of laws that were put into effect after that, reform laws to sort of stem the tide of what I will sort of was the early, early days of the surveillance state as it began to emerge and you know, that was the analog era of, of information. But the government had gone quite far and anybody can, you know, do, do you know, Daniel Ellsberg, you know, in terms of the bright and shining light of Vietnam, a president resign your office because in fact he was engaging in criminal, criminal acts. He was even using the intelligence agencies to go after his, you know, enemies. And so I became very sensitized. I mean, I have to admit that was my civic awakening. And I never forgot that. You know, little did I imagine that, you know, some, some barely three decades later that I would be faced with distinct prospect that my government was going to go off the rails and just say, hey, the Constitution's in the way for a lot of some justifiable reasons, but in many of them were just simply the excuse of not having to follow the law or exercise options that were in fact lawful. So to say it, you know, just to sort of summarize. And I went in the military. So one of the things in the military, because I was in the reconnaissance, the signals intelligence collection and analysis business, flying as an air crew member, as a crypto linguist, voice processing specialist, listening in on adversaries of the United States and other areas of interest around the world, we were absolutely forbidden, with very narrowly scoped exceptions. We could not listen in on what was called US Person. So a US Person would be someone born in America or a legal resident of America. And that could be whether it was domestic or overseas, by the way. And interestingly enough, US Corporations, there was very specific restrictions with criminal penalties. And this was all under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And that was updated since it went into effect under the Carter administration, 78, five times just to keep up with the times in terms of technology. It wasn't the case, as was later when they tried to justify violating the FIS in the fourth Amendment. It was out of date and couldn't keep up. That is not true at all. However, let's move forward. So I ended up, long story short, I ended up becoming a senior executive at the NSA. And my first day in the job was 9 11. Still a rather dramatic event, not just in my life, but people that were at least, you know, old enough to remember there's sort of life before 911 and then there's life after 9 11. That certainly is a date when I was 44 years of age at the time. It's hard to believe it's 25 years ago almost. And very quickly after 9 11, the government decided that it just needed to start because of the failure to keep 3,000 people, almost 3,000 people who were murdered that day, despite all the warnings, despite all the intelligence, and that's a whole story in itself, and despite the fact that there was means by which you could have both, you did not have to sacrifice liberty for security. Didn't have to sacrifice security for liberty. Something that Benjamin Franklin had something to say about that some years ago. Because you might lose both, right? If you try to sacrifice either, you can actually have both. It's not an either or case. It's not one of those cases where you have to draw a line. But what happened after 911 really became the foundation for my whistleblowing at NSA because what happened is they decided in the deepest of secrecy and we're talking about one of the deepest deep state secrets of all time. It was even deeper than the. The torture program, enhanced interrogation techniques, haha euphemism again, Orwellian language. They decided to engage in what they refer to as bulk collection. That's their euphemism, Orwellian language. Rather than call it mass surveillance, because that has a different name, it has a much starker meaning. Decided to start collecting massive amounts of data without any warrants on Americans. And I was confronted within just weeks of 9 11. It was my moment of truth. I remember confronting my supervisor, who's the number three person, and I say at the time, I remember going to the general counsel's office saying, what are we doing? We're violating the Constitution. And you just basically being told, you don't understand, Mr. Drake, we just need the data. And I'm saying, well, we're in violation. If you're saying that the laws cannot keep up with the times in terms of the threat, go to Congress and change law, modify the law. That's the mechanism in a constitutional republic by which you do that. They said, well, if we do that, they're going to say no. And that's when the hair like stood up on the back of my neck. And I said, we're going way, you know, we're blasting right through the guardrails. And so I knew I could not remain silent. I knew that if I did not say anything that, you know, I would be basically supporting the subversion of the Constitution. And you have to remember I had taken an oath a number of times during my government military career. Three times in the military, once at CIA and now fifth time I'm taking the oath sport and fend the Constitution. And I would not violate my oath. I was going to maintain absolute fidelity to that oath. The law of the land. Literally the law of the land. And that no one, no agency, no person, no president was ever above the law. And here, in secret, we're going to violate it. Because of a national security exemption. This massive exemption is being applied. So the vast power of NSA was quickly turned to spy on America. And what it began doing was sweeping up, or in partnership with certain telecommunication concerns and others, sweeping up vast volumes of American phone calls, text messages, emails. And it just grew by leaps and bounds from there. Of course, Congress, I mean, this is history. But Congress realizing, you know, wait a minute, this whole intelligence apparatus that had been put into place, you know, in the years after World War II is supposed to keep us from, from any electronic surprise, right? The Allah. Pearl Harbor. And here it utterly failed, despite all the indications, despite all the warnings. So I began to blow the whistle. And I also became a material witness for several investigations, two congressional 911 investigations, and also a dodge Inspector General investigation. And I recognize, you know, going back, because these are all the channels that are available to one as a whistleblower, if, you know, if you see, see something, say something, you have to use that phrase in a different context. I'm seeing my own government. The problem is that the, the whistleblower channels are monitored and controlled by, you know, secret power, are influenced by secret power. And the last thing you're going to do, especially when the decision to turn NSA's enormous power on it on its own country, there's no way you're going to be able to blow the whistle and, you know, not get blowback. And I certainly began to receive significant retaliation retribution for even having cooperated with these investigations, even though, like, with Congress, it was under, you know, I was subpoenaed. You know, know I was, you know, I, I remember going down to, to this was during the joint inquiry where I went down to a nondescript building that they had turned into a skiff, and there I am, you know, saying, I'm gonna, you know, say, speak nothing but the truth. Right.
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B
So you were subpoenaed by Congress.
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C
I was subpoenaed. There was a.
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B
You should have had whistleblower protection and secrecy.
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C
Yeah, but if there's a right. Yeah, I had rights as a whistleblower, but there's no remedy. If they decide to violate that, then what is it? It's a paper tiger. So I was at great risk early on. I mean, we're talking right after 9 11, I was already marked as someone they couldn't control. In fact, during the time I was Cooperating the, the initial 911 investigation out of Congress. It was one of the subcommittees for the House Permanent Select Committee Intelligence, which turned into the joint inquiry a much larger investigation. Again, this is prior to the nine, which again, President Bush and Vice President Cheney severely objected to. They really did not want, you know, any kind of commission looking into why we had failed to protect the nation, which was. That's the job. Right? I mean that's one of the two primary responsibilities of government. If you go back to the preamble and I keep, you know, keep referencing the Constitution, that's, you know, that's the thing supposed to make us. Even though it has its own faults and its own foibles and a lot of things were, you know, cans were kicked down the road in terms of sort of the sins of the nation, original sins. It is the law of the land. And it was an attempt to govern differently based on sort of the human, the base human condition as I call it. And remember the first Constitution didn't even have any Bill of Rights or an amendment. That came a couple of years later because you know, how we as the people. We the people. Right. So they're in the preamble, it talks about, you know, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare. Well, yeah, the gender welfare and the common defense are the two primary responsibilities. So the failure to provide for the common defense led to these investigations. So yes, I was subpoenaed and I am providing material evidence regarding what NSA knew, should have known, could have known. And also, and this is the thing that was even worse, sort of like under, again, throwback to the, to what happened during the Nixon administration. The COVID up became worse than the crime. And put that crime in quotes, there was a massive cover up about what NSA actually knew or should have known regarding 9 11, especially NSA. There was a systemic failure, that's clear and that's a whole story in itself that unfold over a number of years. But even George Tenet at the time the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the CIA, he knew the system was blinking red. He had sent out a memo three years prior to 911 with that exact phrase. I remember reading the memo when I was a contractor in a say, but it was all like blown off. No one really. It's like, who cares?
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B
So did you show them on the wiretapping what you were seeing? How did you describe it to Congress? How did you describe it in your testimony?
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C
In very stark terms. That equipment was being placed on US networks for the purpose of blanket surveillance by the nsa, by the nsa and in partnership and cooperation with telecommunication concerns, but incredibly compartmented level secret. So, you know, we're talking, you know, in terms of classification levels with, with some of the key phone companies and others in the United States. And that just kept growing over the years. I also. So there was the actual evidence of them placing or instrumenting US Networks for the purpose of blanket surveillance. No warrants.
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We'll get back to the show in a second, but first I have a little bit of a quiz for you. It's really short, but it could change your life. You've heard us report on this show, of course, that the US Dollar is losing value daily. Our national debt is out of control, and you can bet no one in Washington or Wall street cares at all about your financial freedom and how you could maybe build passive income in your life. They don't care. They're not going to make money off of it. That's the policy. That's why you and only you need to become financially independent. It's time to break free from the system. And when I learned this years ago, I mean, I was a victim of this, or I shouldn't say a victim, but I was really stupid with money. Really stupid. And went massively into debt. I didn't understand how the system worked. And it wasn't until I really got smart and figured things out financially that I was able to break free of this cycle. And it can happen very quickly if you understand how the system works. So if you're wondering if there is a method, it's been proven time and time again, and it's through real estate. Real estate has created more millionaires than any other investment type in history. And it's exactly how Natalie and I were able to break free of this cycle. Heck, I was working at Fox News at the time and I literally couldn't pay my mortgage. Like I wasn't bringing in enough money to cover my mortgage. And the two kids that I had at the time, it was really difficult. So I had to break this cycle, had to be become independent on a boss and the stock market or whatever nonsense like Washington sends your way. So I figured out that I could do that and I broke free. And you can do the same thing. Honestly, you can do it. If a guy's dumb as me can do it, you can certainly do it. Your path will probably look different from ours. And figuring out your next steps can actually be pretty tricky, especially if you're just getting started. But that's okay. So we built a 60, 60 second quiz it's that short 60 seconds that shows you exactly where you are and where you stand as an investor. Maybe you're really advanced. Great. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're middle of the road. But it gives you a clear, simple next step for moving forward. So right now, stop wishing you had a portfolio of performing assets. Take action. Start building one today. Right now. All you need to do is go to our website redacted.inc quiz and you can take it while you're watching the show.
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C
The show.
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B
Right now, it's redacted.inc quiz. And today's show is brought to you by our friends at masa Chips. Hopefully by by now, all of you have heard about masa chips. These are the incredible chips that only have three ingredients. They have salt, they have corn, and they are made with beef tallow. Yes. They're not filled with any garbage. Masa chips make you feel satisfied. They're light, they're energetic with no crash, no blow, floating. I love their tortilla chips because afterwards, you don't feel like you just ate something you shouldn't have. It's the kind of thing that once you try it, you wonder why you ever ate anything else. And because these chips are made with real food, they're far more satiating. So you won't find yourself uncontrollably binging on a bag and still feeling hungry afterwards. Like the other night, we had taco night. I cracked open a bottle, a bottle, a bag of the white ones. I love the white ones. Those are my favorite. And I only had like a handful. And I was like, good, I'm full. I'm good. Otherwise, you eat, like, all those seed oil chips and the garbage stuff, and you eat a whole bag and you feel like, wow, I don't feel satiated at all. And then you feel like garbage. So masa chips, totally different. I'm a big fan of them. So right now, if you're ready to give masa chips a try, I want you to go out there and check them out. You get 25% off your first order by going to masachips.com redactednews and use the code redacted news. Ready to give them a try. I want you to go and use that code. 25% off your first order. And one thing to know, because masa uses real ingredients and makes everything in small batches, certain flavors go out of stock, like, kind of naturally. So I just finally got my hands on some of the churro ones. They were out of stock. On those. My son loves the churro ones. They're delicious. They were sold out for weeks. Again, that's masachips.com redacted news. Use the code redacted news for 20 25% off or click the link in the video description or scan the QR code right there on your screen. Can I just ask a stupid question? I mean we drive by these cell phone towers in 2026, 2027. How exactly was this happening? Were, was the NSA sort of going out all across the United States, working in tandem with AT&T and Verizon etc. And they knew, and they knew this and they were going up to a cell tower. Maybe you could just talk me through that.
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C
They were. Well, this program began primarily, I mentioned earlier, with phone calls, text messages, emails and then Internet, you know, basic Internet usage, but on a vast level. And the, the intent was wherever the data was. This became the mantra. We just need to get the data, we just need to collect it. That became the obsession, I'll say it was an obsessive compulsive collection disorder. We just need the data. See because 911 happened, it was a failure. We missed it, Missed it. So therefore, in order to ensure we don't miss it again because there were still concerns about possible follow up attacks or future attacks, then we just need all the data so we can go back and look at it for patterns. Now part of that's legit, there's no question about that. If you're talking foreign intelligence, NSA always had blanket authority to collect just about anything overseas as long as it didn't involve US persons. Here, this is the difference. You're now accessing vast amounts of American U.S. citizen, legal resident, U.S. corporate data. But you're also doing it in partnership with the corporations. So if they like, I'll give you a couple of examples. If you're talking a telephone company, there's what they call the CDRs. These are basically the data records, the call data records for when you make a phone call. They had vast access to all of that. And these were special secret orders that were renewed earlier in the early days, every 45 days or so, completely bypassing the Fortitude Intelligence Surveillance act without any warrant. And what was happening is these companies would just turn over the data, literally provide the data directly to nsa. In other cases, NSA was instrumenting international like where the hubs, where the, where the, you know, talking both wired and wireless, but primarily wired at the time, where they would actually put this came out later with an AT&T whistleblower who he passed away here recently out in San Francisco, where they were actually optic. They were using an optical splitter. And so what was happening is this is fiber optics. They actually had a separate fiber optic that would, when it came in from overseas, it would split off so they could collect it later. And it didn't matter that it was the fact that here's a US end to the communications. We're just going to take it all because, you know, again, we just need it all. That was again, the mantra was just take it all. That's just a couple of examples. Cell towers, which obviously could sell cell technology, was becoming increasingly. Well, yeah, all those cell towers have records of calls being made being, you know, transferred back and forth. Because in order for a cell phone to make a call, unless they're using satellite, which, you know, another version of that, you can, if you have access through the, through the owner of the cell tower, in this case, the, the provider of record, which would be a telephone company, they just turn over the records. And so you began this, just that. And it became easy. Remember, it's the digital age, so it became very easy to just simply collect the data.
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B
And then what could they actually do with all of that data?
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C
Well, that's the real bugaboo, as I well know. I remember. And this gets back to my technical background because I, I was again, you know, I was a crypto linguist, but I was also an intelligence analyst. So it's one thing to collect data, it's one thing to listen in on it. It's another thing to store. It's a whole nother thing to make sense of it. Here you're getting vast amounts of data and the problem was what they call it the haystack. How do you find the needle in the haystack? The choice, instead of using the best of American ingenuity and inventiveness. And I became well aware of that technology. I was even part of further developing it and being fourth Amendment FISA compliant, by the way, but all rejected by nsa, they didn't want any restrictions, any inhibitions. So what was I saying? Sorry, I just lost my train of
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B
thought about actually trying to go through all of this data. I mean, I imagine now, see, that became the problem.
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C
Yeah, well, AI that actually made. It's actually made the problem some ways worse and easier because now AI is being touted as the answer to skip ahead a few years as the answer to the what does it all mean Problem. Right. We have all this data. How do we make sense of it? What I was finding is that analysts, and here again I'm putting my old analyst hat, but here I am as a senior executive and I'm making on going around NSA's campus and they're getting incredibly frustrated because they're put, they're searching across vast amounts of data and it's taking extremely long amounts of time because of the way they had set it up. Okay, there's just haystacks of data and now you're asking an analyst to go, go find the needle in that haystack. The bigger the haystack, the harder it is to find the needle. But here's the kicker. And this was really the central problem that NSA faced. And they knew this, they actually knew this as their challenge problem. In the 90s there was actually studies that said yes, but that meant NSA was going to have to change its approach. Analog era, post World War II, 50s 60s 70s technology, even early 80s, you know, you, you could get a lot of information from a much smaller set of sources because they were largely analog based systems and they were basically what they called hard targets. These are targets that you were most interested in. But now you've got Internet and there's just this extraordinary amounts of data being broadcast all over the place. So the problem was the bigger the haystack, the harder it is to find the needle. But here's the kicker. This is really, this is really the punchline in all of this is what if you're regarding every straw in the haystack as a potential needle, how can you tell the difference?
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B
Every American, every thread is now possible connection.
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C
That's right. And you're mixing it all up. You're not even. This was again the very best. You know, necessity is the mother of invention. It's sort of this, the, the heart and core of sort of of America. You know, we have a problem, let's solve it. We have a problem, solve it. Why would we want to not solve it? That problem was actually solved at NSA in the late 90s, early aughts, comprehensively. I mean I was part of the program called Thin Thread, but it was shut down prior to 9 11. It was ready to go well prior to 9 11. But they shut it down because why? They wanted to spend tons and tons of money on another program just to spend a whole lot of money. Now you're getting in the military industrial complex. Reminds me of the movie. Thin Thread was this breakthrough program, one of several, by the way. It wasn't the only one that they parse through vast amounts of data without violating the fisa, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act that was Fourth Amendment compliant, it would actually encrypt any message of any type. It didn't matter what it was. Right. That was actual or probable U.S. person information or data if it was determined later. And there was even a hot pursuit option where you could actually go after a target. Right. Let's say a U.S. person that was engaged in some kind of foreign surveillance activity or providing material support. That was the purpose of fisa, by the way. It wasn't a case of restricting NSA in terms of just foreign intelligence. It had to do with what happens if it involves a US person. This is another distinction is often lost in all the conversations even over the last 25 years in this. It was never about restricting NSA's ability. I was part of that. I was on the front lines. We used to collect all kinds of stuff in terms of foreign intelligence. But if it involved a US person, there was all these restrictions. So thin thread actually provided the means by which you could still parse through. Now the difference was it didn't also just bring everything back. It didn't just, just suck the ocean dry, as it were. Or as I've used, what's another, like a metaphor, a way to, or an example to sort of illustrate, maybe that's a word, illustrate better. You don't have to take all the sand off the beach, spend massive amounts of money with special dump trucks and front end bucket loaders, send it to some filtration system where at the bottom you figure out what you finally have. The problem is you've disturbed the sand, you removed it from its source. You don't know where it came from, what was washed up where. Thin thread just left the sand in place. It only observed and kept track of the differences. So something foreign showed up or was a potential threat and it involved a U.S. person. You flagged it, tagged it, encrypted it. You would then unencrypt or decrypt through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court because it involved a U.S. person. That was the law of the land. It was all bypassed. But what you unleashed was the perverse incentive just to keep collecting it all. Now you have this staggering amount of data and you don't have the burden anymore of whether or not it's a U.S. person. And you're even arguing, well, it's not a true search at all because all we did was collect it. Until we actually look at it, we don't have to worry about whether or not we're violating anybody's rights.
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B
What happened to you after you blew the whistle personally, what happened to you after you tried to call attention to this through the proper channels?
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C
So it's quite a story in itself. It unfolds over a number of years. So I, I went through every whistleblower channel that existed. I even my final act of whistleblowing NSA interestingly enough, was actually with the, with the then NSA director Keith Alexander. He was the follow on to the previous director, Michael V. Hayden who had come on in 99. So Alexander shows up in late summer of 2005 and it was massive blowback. I ended up losing my job. I was basically what they call laterally arabesque in the bureaucracy. The message was clearly, the handwriting was on the wall as it were. And I made a fateful decision though in late February of 2006 after having exhausted every whistleblower channel that existed. I exercised my First Amendment rights, redress or grievances against my own government even though they're restricted in the government because again, you know, because of the agency that I worked in which, you know, highly classified, involving a lot of secrets. But it does not prevent you, you don't, you, you still can go to the press. I went to, but in this case I went to the press with unclassified information. But I knew there was a risk, just like what happened at Ellsberg. But in this case it was unclassified. I actually did go to the press with what I knew regarding not just the warrantless surveillance program, but also just the fact that there was an alternative program called Thin Thread. The fact that there was nine, 11 intelligence failures and a massive cover up and then just billions and billions in waste, fraud and abuse. And so in December, and here's the short version, okay, in December of 2005, because you're now wondering, well, okay, December 2005, there's this above the fold traditional print newspaper above the fold article revealing publicly for the first time and it was just the tip of the iceberg, the existence of the so called warrantless wiretapping program. That was an article written by James Risen and Eric Liplow. I knew when that article came out that I would be no doubt tagged, targeted as a person of interest. There was even a show for a few years called Person of Interest.
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B
As a Source.
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C
I knew the story as a source. I knew that. I remember I had not gone to the press yet, contrary what the government said later. They actually framed me to make it look like I had gone to the New York Times, interestingly enough, prior to that article because they needed to have a Certain narrative, their own narrative to show that I had actually done that, but I didn't. So I hadn't gotten to the press yet. I knew though when that article came out that I was going to be targeted and a few others because very few people remember this is over four years since the secret surveillance program which was originally called Stellar Wind. Remember it was under the President surveillance program signed in secret by Bush. NSA became the executive agent for the program. That's the one that again unleashed the full power of NSA in cooperation with all the telecommunication concerns and other companies as well as to turn over vast, vast amounts of data. And for NSA through various other programs or like that was just the umbrella program through other various sub programs to access all kinds of other data that clearly was going to suck up massive amounts of US person data as well. So I knew because two weeks later, guess what happened. So it's late December, they announced this massive multimillion dollar national security leak investigation. I was tipped off in the spring of 2006. This is after I made anonymous contact with, with a reporter because I knew I was going to be targeted. That was a given. But in April 2006 one of one of the other whistleblowers, NSA whistleblowers, who's actually was the Republican staffer on the HIPC inform myself and my former NSA colleagues. This is like Bill Binney, Kirkwebe and Loomis that she was a target because the original leak investigation figured the leak and this is sort of a classic knee jerk response by the executive branch of the government if there's a leak, even though it's executive branch, it's usually the biggest leaker of all. Historically very self serving by the way. It's not a leak. You know, it's only. It's not a leak if we're leaking, but it's if it's not us leaking that it's an unauthorized leak. They assumed initially that the leak had come from Congress. Very few leaks actually come from Congress interestingly enough. But that's again that's another part of the thread here. So I knew that my time was limited, my time was short. So I maintained anonymous contact with the reporter for about a year. But as they were closing in, right, because I knew what they were capable. I mean my. It's again it's a very interesting. How far will the government go to spy on its own citizen if it suspects that it's, you know, revealing state secrets that it doesn't want revealed? Especially if they involve the violation of the Constitution of all Things and violating the rights of Americans, especially the fourth Amendment and even the First Amendment. Remember, I'd gone to the press. They consider that a criminal act to accelerate that forward. They were. They, Diane Rourke and the other three, my former NSA colleagues were raided by the FBI about 15 months later. So in July, late July of 2007, uncertainly visited by the FBI. And then, and I believe I'm the last one that was actually visited, which means they usually reserve who they consider to be the ringleader. And they had actually decided that I was the ringleader. I was engaged in a conspiracy with the others against the United States of America. It's just bizarre for me, even say it that way. All we were doing is upholding the, the highest and best of America, including the law of the land. And the fact that it was all unnecessary, right? The best of America was never ever put into the fight and in fact was suppressed from being put into the fight. So I was visited by the FBI in February, sorry, late November of 2007, a day I'll always remember for the rest of my life. I mean, this is a man's house, is his castle. It's sort of the final defense against government intrusion. They did show up with a warrant, although I had to, I actually had to persist in showing them. They had to show me the warrant before they proceeded to actually engage in a full search and seizure of whatever they wanted to find as evidence in my house. And that began the nightmare. There was multiple attempts to get me to plead out to many, many years in prison. I had a criminal defense attorney. I spent many tens and tens of thousands of dollars in my defense. But then it all came to a head. In April of 2010, April 2010, I was unceremoniously indicted under the Espionage Act. Five counts obstruction of justice count, as well as four counts of making false statements to the FBI, which were actually false themselves. I was facing 35 years in prison. So just imagine. And it became very public. You can go back, look what the DOJ said, what the FBI said and others, you know, I was considered an enemy of the state. They clearly had flagged and tagged me as the ringleader and they were going to punish me and punish me good. And here I am facing the prospect that pretty much for the rest of my natural life I could end up, end up in prison. And it took quite, it was quite a battle facing 35 years in prison to face it down over a 14 month period. And on the, literally on the eve of trial, I was able to plead out in my Terms they dropped all the 10 counts and I pled out to a minor misdemeanor. For what? For exceeding authorized use of a government computer under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act involving no classified information at all.
- [39:31]
B
Have they left you alone since?
- [39:37]
C
Yes. I mean I went through a probation period. 1 year probation. 240 hours of community service. Interesting enough that community service involved. The judge didn't know it at the time. He just sent me to the Army Community Service Director out of Fort Detrick Frederick, Maryland. And I ended up interviewing about three and a half dozen veterans from War two to the present day, including Ellsberg, by the way. Extraordinary interviews with military veterans up to and including Afghanistan, Iraq, Battle of the Bulge, Vietnam, Korea, Suez Canal period. We were sending troops because we thought World War three was going to break out then possibly just extraordinary Persian Gulf. It's all out there at the Veterans History Project. Some extraordinary interviews. It's all oral, they're primarily oral, but I videotape them and some of them go on for hours. Some are shorter, some are longer. And yeah, they left me alone. Remember. I remember I paid a huge price. Remember my career was completely upended. I, I gave up to say at this couple million dollars in retirement benefits, you know, I had spent, you know, I had over 15 at this point going on 20 plus years of total service. I only need a few more years, about five to eight years or so to get a full retirement from the government. I gave all that up. I lost it all. There's no pension at all. I have a very small annuity just because of the time I had served as a senior executive. So yeah, I paid extraordinarily heavy price and I don't even, I didn't even talk about the personal cost or the health challenges I went through later because extraordinary pressure. I mean we got the full weight of the government on top of you and they're hell bent to put you in prison. I, I don't, you know, it's k. I don't know what else, how else to, I mean it's, it's quite an ordeal. At a very personal level, your, your profession, you, you know, you blow up your career. I was, you know, the height of my career, earning potential and all that. Gave all that up for what? Because I would not break, break fidelity with the oath I had taken. Member. That oath is an oath to the Constitution. It's to support. Defend the Constitution. Against who? All enemies, foreign and domestic. And here I am finding myself defending the law of the land, the Constitution against my own Government because the government's decided to violate it on purpose. Willfully. Edward, you know, acts.
- [42:34]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean Edward Snowden famously said there would be no Edward Snowden without Thomas Drake. That you had gone through all of the proper channels, brought it to the ig, brought it to Congress. And of course rather than protecting you against retaliation, as he said, they retaliated against you in the most public and aggressive way possible. And he has said that without you there would be no Edward Snowden. So he saw your example of going through the proper channels to try to get this out to the American people and that failed and so he went a different way. I'm curious, that relationship and when you heard about what Edward Snowden had done, where was that in your timeline?
- [43:24]
C
Well, I was actually coming back from a conference in New York City when the news broke in June of 2013 that it was Edward Snowden. And I was not surprised. I did not know him. Some people thought I knew him because he had been at nsa. I didn't. But I was not surprised. I had always hoped that someone at great risk would come along later. Remember I was at the epigenesis of the mass surveillance regime post 9 11.
- [43:52]
B
Yeah, you were there as it was
- [43:54]
C
beginning really in earnest, the foundation of it. But it quickly expanded. But by the time we get to Snowden and this is even, you know, several years after I was indicted, you're talking now three years after I was indicted, ostensibly because I had revealed the secret surveillance program to the New York Times. That was the original basis. If you go back to the, the affidavit which I was not able to get during the course of my pre trial proceedings, interestingly enough the government covered that up even though they had been ordered by the court to, to release it to in the public interest. They, they realized that they, it was going to expose how they had framed me. So they did, they did all kinds of shenanigans not to give it to my own public defenders. So almost three, this is three years later, we have now the Snow disclosures. I had always hoped someone like Snow would come along. Why to reveal, but obviously a great risk, the full metastasization of the mass surveillance regime that had been put into place post 9 11.
- [44:57]
B
One of the ways that I've been able to transform how I invest is by buying precious metals. And of course we are facing right now which could be a major gold reevaluation. Again I spoke to Brian Solarchuk who's a mining legend, a gold mining legend a few weeks ago here on the show. And he told me he believes gold is heading to $10,000 an ounce. Now, the gold that's currently sitting in Fort Knox, if it's there at all, is currently valued at about $40. Like, that's how the government values the gold that's on hand inside the government stockpiles, which is crazy. So the Trump administration has been toying with the idea of revaluations of gold to the current market standards or even higher. So if gold right now is trading over $4,000 an ounce, what do you think is going to happen? If so suddenly the federal government says, yes, the gold we have on hand is actually worth $7,000 an ounce. It completely changes everything. All that to say there is a real demand for physical precious metals, silver and gold right now. Real assets. Real assets. Heck, the bank of International Settlements, when it was dealing with the Nazi government during World War II, they didn't want paper currency, all that fake Reichsmart and paper currency that was worthless. As the US Dollar continues to become more and more worthless, what do they want? They wanted gold. That's how they were able to settle transactions, through gold. So that's why it's a huge part of our portfolio in addition to real estate. And I want you to work with our friends at Lear Capital. They're fantastic. They're an American company, and they will help you from soup to nuts, learn the situation. You know, if you're totally new to the process of working, buying precious metals, they will get on the phone with you and have a great conversation with you and take you through the entire process. So what I want you to do is just go to learedacted.com that's the website. Or even better, just get on the phone with them, have a conversation with them. They can help you figure out where you are in your investing journey right now. And their phone number is 800-613-3557-180061-33557. Or once again, go to learredacted.com to learn more. We can. You know, it's just remarkable to think about that time in American history. You've Talked about the pre 911 life that we lived, the post 911 life that we lived. And of course, flash forward to today and where we are. Do you think humanity is sleepwalking into a future? Or are we currently here where privacy disappears before people even understand what privacy even meant? Like children growing up to know or have an idea of what you labeled earlier. Benjamin Franklin's discussions about freedom and surveillance. Do you think that we've just totally sleepwalked into a total surveillance state?
- [47:50]
C
Yes. Some call it soft tyranny, that the mechanism by which you have turnkey tyranny as others have shared or, or sort of something, you know, inverted democracy where see, this is all gets, this gets into sort of the heart and core of, of power and control. Henry Kissinger actually had something to say about that. He said power was the greatest aphrodisiac and probably said more about Kissinger than anything else, but also had something to say about power. It's incredibly seductive to hold power of any kind, direct or indirect, over another human being. And we have too many examples in terms of the sad litany of human history across the millennia, example after example after example. And so, yeah, are you really, truly free? Are you see, this is now what I call privacy, meaning what's happened. And this is the perversion really is the data commoditization as I call it. And it's something I confronted and I was, I was a technologist for a number of years. I did a lot of consulting in Silicon Valley. But after I went free, or I should say stayed free, right. I was at a conference. It was a Web 2.0 summit out in the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco. This is the fall of 2011. And I actually held up the mirror to the, then the Twitters of the world, the Microsofts of the world. I held up a mirror to all of them. I said what are you doing? You know, you're, you're enticing people and it's true with terms and conditions, free services, but then you get to take all that data and commoditize it and then sell it back to your subscribers. And what, what do you give up? Remember this is you get into third party doctrine is sort of the heart of all this is it's, you don't own that. It's. You're, you're consenting to any and all data that you provide share. It's not yours, it's someone else's. You're already seeing that. By the way. You've seen it like with electronic books where they can literally turn off your, you know, just because you bought it, even if you bought it. There is, if you really look at the terms and conditions they can revoke though, is any, most of them can be revoked at any time.
- [50:14]
B
Yeah, the same with all social media. It's all, yes, you're buying a license.
- [50:19]
C
Buying a license or buying a subscription, right? Yeah.
- [50:22]
B
You don't actually have the material that's correct.
- [50:25]
C
And this is the hook. This is the hook. But beyond all that, let's like what is possible when you have the flock cameras, which you know are now being increasingly showing up in all kinds of neighborhoods? A lot of pushback, by the way.
- [50:44]
B
Tens of thousands of cameras now all over the United States. People think, oh, that's just happening in the UK or London. There's a new website that just emerged over the past few days, I think, I don't know if it's called like dflock.org we'll put it in the description box and we have the correct URL. But it shows all of the cameras across the United States and there are many. I think there might be 46 cities now that are banning these flocking cameras, but it's not enough. I mean, there's 10,000 of them and growing at a rapid pace. What are these flocking cameras doing?
- [51:20]
C
Keeping track of us based on our signatures. The kicker with some of the newer flock, I don't know if you've been reading about. I've been trying to keep up as much as I can. It's very challenging even for me to keep up, even as a farm former technologist in this space, just how far surveillance has gone where not only is it just a mirror, you have traffic cameras, right? Well, this goes way beyond that. It's actually picking up the signatures of any electronic devices linked to you vehicle, your devices, Bluetooth, by the way, by the way, broadcast all kinds, broadcast sort of a constant signal. It's very easy then to start correlating who you are not just based on the car's license plate, but the car's signature. And a lot of these cars, as I well know, they actually have a module inside the car that transmits data pretty much all the time unless you turn it off. What about all that data that's being collected?
- [52:21]
B
Who's gathering this data? So when they're tracking phone or tracking your car as you drive through this one street, it's, it's, it's, it's grabbing that information about you or me, who's who, where does it go?
- [52:35]
C
It goes in these massive databases. And this is the back door. I'm going to go, I got to go right to the point here. In terms of government access, it's one thing for a private corporation to have it, that's one thing. But how do they make money? I've got. How do they make money off of that? Yeah, they sell this to like municipalities and others and just, you know, set them on Telephone poles and, you know, other prominent locations or less prominent locations. Right. Some are actually masked. The government, this is the third party doctrine because it's not considered to be your data. So they get broad access through various means, some through secret programs, backdoor, some through. Now if they're actually going after somebody through national security letters or the equivalent, this is something way less than a warrant because it's considered to be third party doctrine data, which means it's not yours. So you have no reasonable expectation of protection, let alone privacy of that data because it's quote unquote owned by someone else. In this case, you're not even consenting. I mean, this is even, even in like, I have an ev, by the way, I can, which I do right now. I have, I actually have in my car. I turn off, I have it turned off right now, the communications module that's nearly inconstant through the cloud with, with, with the manufacturer and their cloud in their cloud service. So but just because I have that turned off, I drive down the road, I don't have to go too far. Even where I live in the United States, where a flock camera or another version of it easily can pick up my license plate. Well, the license plate is in the open now, isn't it? Guess what? They can link to the license plate. Now add on top of that all of the surveillance equipment that picks up any and all signals coming from the car, including phones. Because a phone is by definition a tracking device unless you have it completely turned off or removed the battery. And like, you can't remove the battery anymore. They track that as well through its cell tower network. So you're just correlating massive amounts of data. It only takes, I was going to
- [54:58]
B
say, I mean, I just, you know, you can turn off that transponder. You can try to turn off Bluetooth on your phone. You can, of course, then your phone can't really communicate with your car. And that's Right, you can't unlock your EV without your, you know, your Bluetooth. And then, then you're driving through a Flock camera or a transponder for the toll booth.
- [55:18]
C
Yeah. So, so what if they don't like you? I'm going to, I'm going to cut right to the chase.
- [55:24]
B
Right. That's a great point. So, yeah, everyone. This has all happened to everyone, but now they want to come after Thomas Drake.
- [55:31]
C
Yeah, it makes it a lot easier, doesn't it?
- [55:32]
B
Yeah.
- [55:33]
C
And they can even pattern, they can map out if you happen to be associated. You had to be near Somebody that they, that they don't like or you might be like again, guilty by association. Even if it's the metadata, guess what, you make a social media post they don't like, they show up at your house. That's actually happening now. So you're talking about extraordinary ability to begin to start suppressing First Amendment protected speech. Freedom of movement, and I'm just going to say it, autonomy. What happens to your autonomy in all of this?
- [56:16]
B
Right, you took the words right out of my mouth because I was about to ask you, at what point does surveillance stop being about watching behavior?
- [56:23]
C
Yes.
- [56:24]
B
And start becoming a system for shaping that behavior.
- [56:28]
C
Well, think about this thing that they're trying to push through Congress right now, the so called Kitty Act. This is sort of a pattern on what's been going on in the UK and others, but particularly the uk under the guise of protecting children. You have to prove your identity when
- [56:46]
B
you're signing on the Internet. Exactly. It's all about safety of children. Right?
- [56:50]
C
Yeah. Now is that's legit? Safe to children? That's. That's legit. It is. But guess what? It also provides. Now, you know, it has identified. What about what happens if your source for a journalist reporting something hypersensitive regarding, you know, a government corruption? Hmm. What about what happens in anonymity if you're a source? Do you have to go back to the Watergate days to meet in a garage? The problem is the underground garage has surveillance cameras, right?
- [57:28]
B
Yeah.
- [57:29]
C
You have facial recognition as well.
- [57:32]
B
Leave a potted plant out on your. Like, I want to talk to you. So let's leave a potted plant on your stoop and then I'll come and we'll meet in a dark garage in the middle of the night.
- [57:45]
C
But if you're tracking. Yeah, but see the even. But see, you can now track the actual person based on their signature. Where do you go?
- [57:56]
B
I mean, is the signature because of your Bluetooth? Is it because of your phone? Or is it even because of what, what President Trump talked about with the 6G technology? It's even your physical body being tracked.
- [58:10]
C
Yes. They've already demonstrated. I'm aware of this from previous work I did. This is early on where WI fi actually creates patterns that allow for detection of movement from point A to point B within buildings.
- [58:27]
B
But far more powerful.
- [58:28]
C
Is way more powerful in terms of accuracy. Yes. I mean, it's just you're. Now see, part of this is the accuracy. Remember, even cell phone technology, older style. Right. By itself can get you depending on where you Are right, maybe a third of a mile, quarter of a mile at best. You know, that's pretty close, isn't it? Right? You get you within a couple of neighborhoods, but then you start triangulating with other things and now you just put it right there on top of you within a few feet. I mean, this is. And if they don't like you, remember you got drone technology. You've got, you know, these micro, basically assassination bots, right, built in that they can just, based on a signature, can send the drone right to you. What, how do you protect yourself against that? There's, it gets, it brings in. So what happens? See what's the effect on people? People begin to censor themselves. This is probably one of the biggest things that I'm concerned about that started to happen. People will just be reluctant to speak out about anything because of the fear that it might be controversial, that it might. You already see on social media. I don't like what you said. I'm going to find out a way some cases disable your account.
- [59:56]
B
Oh, we're seeing this now.
- [59:57]
C
Throw AI on top of that. AI is amoral, aethical.
- [60:02]
B
We're seeing these people who say, I managed to get these accounts banned for speaking out against me, you know, and they, or they go to YouTube, whatever they do, they go to YouTube, they go to X. I saw somebody the other day saying I managed to get these accounts taken down and banned because they said something critical of me. Like, that's where we're at.
- [60:21]
C
That's what this is, the environment, this incredibly chilling atmosphere that we're now entering into on a far greater scale. I mean, this reminds me of George Orwell. I mean, we're going back as his last book, right, A few months before he passed away, as he finished writing it. I mean, Winston, I just remember him sitting in the corner because it was the only place where the surveillance cameras couldn't see him. But that meant they knew where he was.
- [60:55]
B
So maybe you can talk about what's happening on the debanking side as well. So you hear it from some high profile individuals, maybe commentators on television, on the Internet who've been debanked. I was sitting next to a journalist one day in Europe who was covering the truth about the Ukraine war. And I was in the middle of an interview with him and he looked down and he got an alert that his bank had shut him down for his coverage of the Ukraine war. Great reporter, by the way, Great journalist. So we hear about it from journalism, but what about debanking of average Americans just based on behavior. Yeah.
- [61:43]
C
Yep. You come to the attention of somebody and that's increasingly can be just about anybody and they decide they want to censor you. And if they want to make it more permanent, especially in today's world, if you basically turn off your, your bank account, what does that do? Just think about. I mean, I went electronic many, many years ago. I, you know, it's only recent. You know, last time I wrote a check, I mean, I actually had to write a couple of checks recently. It was kind of weird writing the check. I realize even that's electronic. What happens if they decide to prevent you from engaging in commerce as a private citizen or even as a commercial concern or as a company because someone doesn't like you, your speech, your product or your presence on social media, they can literally extinguish you. And then what, what, what is your recourse? I'm, I'm aware of, I'm aware of some, some stories out there regarding how difficult it is to re. Establish yourself because that also follows you. Or if you make certain. A number of electronic transfers, you know, monetary transfers that come close to or exceed a certain limit, and that's in the United States. It's usually the $10,000 that can automatically flag you, even though it could completely innocent, legitimate, but it's automatically. See, this is where everything becomes suspicious or everything can be made suspicious. And then on top of that, the government can purchase. I mean, this is where you get into the autonomy gap. What's the effect on personal agency and your individual rights? Governments can purchase location history of Alan Warren. They can query your private communications without judicial oversight. They can scan your face in public places without your knowledge. They can pick up any and all electronic signatures. So your practical ability going forward, even when you're exercising your right to move, your right to speak, your right to associate and dissent, structurally becomes increasingly diminished because even those acts of agency are tracked and mapped and patterns are established, even if there's never an arrest made and it's kept permanently. That's one reason why, by the way, Snowden, if you read his book Permanent Record, that's really the basis for. Some people wonder why did you call Permanent Record? Because none of this goes away. I mean, I remember the almost $2 billion that were spent by NSA to build a Utah data center out at Fort Williams in Utah. Massive complex with the ability to expand. And people are saying, why would they build such a huge facility? This is like, you could say this is the OG of data centers. Mm, yeah. To store everything it's not just metadata, it's everything. Everything. Because you never know. I mean, it's, I reminded us, remembers the Minority Report, Right. You never know when you might need it.
- [65:06]
B
Well, and it's also this idea, like in Batman, you know, the Dark Knight Rises, when Anne Hathaway's Catwoman character is trying to get the clean slate, right? So she's trying to make a deal so she can have a clean slate. And these guys are going to wipe her from the Internet, from her past crimes, et cetera. And they laugh at it.
- [65:26]
C
You want to get another example? Yeah. Well, past crimes. Remember what Stalin said, show me the man, I'll show you the crime. Or just because. Yeah, you
- [65:38]
B
will manufacture something.
- [65:40]
C
Well, manufacturer. I remember a technologist who ended up on a watch list. He ended up on a watch list. Why? Because there was a mistake that was made in terms of his name and he showed. This was years ago. This is early on, post 9 11. And it's just in the years right after 9 11. And it came up. It was at a technology conference when I was still on the circuit, as it were. And it came up and he was flagged and put aside for additional screening because it was assumed that he was a terrorist. He actually, he was actually on one of the early terrorist watch lists. How do you get off of it? You know, the machinations he went through just to get off the watch list? Because he's once on the watch list.
- [66:32]
B
How would you know? I mean, you have people like Tulsi Gabbard who were on these watch lists. You had people like, remember, Senator Ted Kennedy was on the watch list, Senator of the United States on a watch list. How do you. And they're lucky enough to find out about it. But how many Americans are on these lists that don't even know about it?
- [66:49]
C
You don't. That's part of it. And they're obviously controlled. How do you know? You don't. You just never know. I mean, people. I mean, this is where now it's like. But think about the chilling effect for
- [67:07]
B
a lot of Americans. They don't know that they're, I guess, going to be debanked or they're going to be shadow banned. Right. So you have these terms emerging over the past few years. Shadow banning, where someone feels like they're suddenly marginalized, they're pushed to the side, you know, and it almost sounds like, oh, you're just being cynical, you're just being paranoid. No,
- [67:30]
C
not at all.
- [67:32]
B
You talk about that.
- [67:35]
C
No, because part of the problem here and this is where the fear factor comes in. Fear in itself is a control mechanism. So I can sort of summarize, maybe I would just say summarize it. There are secret lists, secret rules, no recourse. So that's kind of the fundamental challenge. If you're, if you're the person, person, how do you challenge that? Because once the information enters into government hands by hooker, by crook, it's retained indefinitely. The rules governing its use can be changed in secret without any kind of public notice. And here's the kicker. If you're on a, if there's a watch list, like inclusion on the watch list, there's no meaningful notice that you're even on this list. No stated reason. And there's no, there is no, as I mentioned earlier, there's no effective way you can even challenge it
- [68:37]
B
when, if the government.
- [68:39]
C
National security. And then you put this huge umbrella over it. National security. We're providing public safety or protecting.
- [68:50]
B
Yeah, if they want to always spin it as safety. Of course, if the government can know nearly everything about the people, but the people know less and less about the government. Is democracy still real?
- [69:06]
C
No name only. This is where to me democracy is being basically deemed or deemed de. Democratizing. You want to say it that way. I don't think I've ever used that phrase before. De. Democratizing our own country because it's a threat. Democracy in itself becomes a threat to power. That's incredibly chilling.
- [69:30]
B
Do you think we're at a period now or do you think maybe future generations will look back on this period right now, maybe the post 911 period, the period that you went through and the period we're currently in and say this, this is when humanity gave away its inner life, its inner privacy.
- [69:51]
C
See, now you're sort of at the heart of what it means to be a human. What does it mean to associate? What does it mean to relate to one another? What does it mean to live? What does it mean to be in a relationship with others, both close, intimate, as well as extended family and friends and your social connections? What does that mean? You increasingly are seeing a fragmented society. And then I think psychologically that causes its own long term effects on sort of the health and well being of society at large. And then you have those with massive amounts of money, just staggering amounts, who don't really care about the general welfare of anybody else, only about themselves, and are increasingly isolating even themselves from society because they can. And so I do, I do. I mean this is where. And then if you look like you're out of line for any reason. This is what some call algorithmic discrimination that's occurring. Predictive surveillance. This is that. This is where you get back to the Minority Report. This becomes in essence, you increasingly create a pre crime society. Everybody can, can commit a crime just. And who's going to define it? Right. Whoever is in power. And now it's like rule of law. It's not rule of law anymore, it's just rule. And I get to decide what the rules are and I can make them up and change them on the fly because I'm in power.
- [71:19]
B
Right. And I can tell you that you can't post online. I can come to your house under the darkness of night. Because of your social media posts, you're debanked. You no longer have the ability to participate in society. No way really to live functionally without this new digital id, this new. Or being able to make any sort of payments. Because I've deemed it. You're a risk in some way.
- [71:47]
C
That means you effectively become excommunicated from society and then you're living on the margins at best.
- [71:57]
B
Do you think privacy, when you think about privacy, is it a legal right or is it a.
- [72:04]
C
Well, it's more than legal legal. See actually to me it's a fundamental inalienable right. I go back to the Declaration of Independence.
- [72:14]
A
Right.
- [72:14]
B
I mean, is it a sacred space?
- [72:16]
C
Yes.
- [72:17]
B
Do you think the founders saw it as a sacred space where our conscience. And that's of course I've spoken to CIA whistleblowers who've told me the ultimate goal from the CIA is to have that connection to our consciousness, to know exactly what we're doing. Not just our physical movement in a physical space. Flocking cameras, but to have control of our consciousness. And that's really the ultimate goal of the CIA through all of their mechanisms and tools. That's really at the heart of it. And why they're so enamored with this idea of merging AI with our persons so that we don't have that sacred space anymore. We don't have the ability to dissent. We don't really have creativity because now we've outsourced that as well. And then I would say then we don't have a soul. Because if you've invaded our sacred space, you've invaded our consciousness.
- [73:17]
C
You're striking at the heart of something that I'm increasingly focused on is what does this mean for humanity long term when you put into sort of the control regime in place. That's really what it is. It's a Control regime. What does that do to people long term? Because to me, ultimately it's anti life and anti human. That's what we're giving up. And for the as long as I'm alive, I'm going to continue to defend and support life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness because that's central to what it means to even be a human being. It's the being part of human being. That's really what we're losing.
- [74:01]
B
How do we fight back?
- [74:05]
C
Well, I could be somewhat flippant and say we have to keep being a human being, we just have to keep being so. But that does mean there are risks. There's risk to be yourself, you know, and still continue to express yourself despite all the attempts to control it and, and privacy it, to say it that way. But that's what's at risk. The course, the core, the heart and core of what it means to be a human being is really what is at stake here. And see, that's what I keep. Even in my more formal presentations, one of the core questions I will ultimately come to in some, in various ways, depending on the fora and the audience, is what future do we want to keep? It's a fundamental question. And because in all of this it comes back to who we are as we the people. And that even extends globally because democracy is in retreat right now. There's no question. And there's been some, you know, some pushback. And Hungary is a good example of that, I have to say that, where people are just so fed up, right, that they decided, you know what, we've got to reclaim at least some part of our own agency. So they were able to do that. It's very difficult in the end, especially when you're really, really squeezed, you have nothing left to give. When you basically have no Fs to give, what do you do, right? What do you do? So if you have nothing to lose, because I've been asked that myself, I said, well, it wasn't just for me, it was for everybody else. What happens if we lose? Lose. If we don't take a stand here, then when, if not me, then who? I mean, this is where it's sort of the fundamental questions, you know, it's, it's at the core of our, of our personhood, right? It's the core of our identity. How dare anybody sit there and define what that is or define what I can or can't do based on a definition that the state imposes. That was one of the main reasons, even though it was a Protective, you say, a protected class, but extended to everybody. Everybody. Although it had restrictions when we declared independence from the crown 250 years ago with the Declaration of Independence. To me, it's one of the most extraordinary documents in human history.
- [76:40]
B
And I'm worried that if we were to do it all again, I've said this publicly, I mean, Bill of Rights rights, there. There wouldn't be a First Amendment. I mean, there would not be freedom of speech. That would be actively trying to remove that. That would be probably any future Constitution. If it were to tear it all down and restart it, which a lot of people have been calling for revolution, there wouldn't be freedom of speech. I just. I find it very difficult to believe that those in power would allow that to happen again.
- [77:08]
C
Or.
- [77:08]
B
And maybe the Fourth Amendment as well, I think, you know, I would argue.
- [77:14]
C
I would ARGUE the first 10amendments, which, remember, two came two years later. And by the way, anything that was not delineated in the Constitution that, you know, goes. Goes to this, you know, the, to the states and to the. Then to the people. So it's those 10, those first 10. And I could argue, though, that what's the foundation of all of that is the First Amendment. But if you don't have the Fourth Amendment, then what does that mean? Because the Fourth Amendment, some ways that I experienced directly was violating that, because it was weaponized against me, was to. Was to punish me for speech, was to punish me from association. It was a punishment. From speaking out. It was to punish me as a whistleblower. It was a punishment. How dare you hold up a mirror to power. In this case, the abuse of power. How dare you? So you're going to pay the price because you're exposing the abuse of power. But we're in power. This is sort of the Joseph Heller in the Catch 20. You know, the Catch 22 novel.
- [78:26]
B
Yeah.
- [78:27]
C
Where the Colonel is, Colonel Cathcart is like, who's going to stop us now? We have the power. And that's in part where power, you know, is it a permanent condition? No, I don't think it actually is. I don't think it can. It's. But it can cause huge wreckage on many, many lives before, you know, it disappears. And there is this tendency just. I mean, again, look at, look at the dustbins of history and all the mechanisms for the millennia that have been used to impose control on other human beings out of. For the. For the sake of power. And if you decide to go up against power, we can and, you know, up to. And including extinguishing you, getting rid of you. But see, now you're, you're going full circle back to the, the, the surveillance state. We don't actually have to get rid of you in sort of the classic way, old school, go out and shoot you, we'll debank you, we'll de. Socialize you, we'll cut you off from all, from your connections. And then what? You're, you're basically rendered powerless. Because if you don't have a voice, guess what?
- [79:49]
B
Yeah, you're in.
- [79:49]
C
But only power has a voice.
- [79:53]
B
Yeah, you're impotent. And then move everyone to a universal basic income and have everyone under constant surveillance. Know your consciousness, know your movements, know everything that you do. And that's really the ultimate goal. And they've been very public about it and it's, it's deeply troubling.
- [80:15]
C
Well, it's. Yeah, well, deeply troubling. It's all, it's wide open. There's no pretense here anymore. It's wide open. You're also this data, by the way, just very, I find it just incredibly dystopian. The data broker loophole. Remember I mentioned the third party doctrine, but the data broker loophole, federal agencies, ice, FBI, they routinely purchase all this data, by the way, or have these special arrangements. Remember, these companies aren't doing it for free. They're not. It's actually a business decision for them. They get to make a lot of money from the central government by turning over the subscriber records. And courts have not yet adjudicated fully this practice. It's an untested, it still is a largely untested legal gray area. You did see the recent case with the geofencing. The Supreme Court is a fairly narrow decision, but it does in fact, to their credit, in terms of the majority opinion, does, does acknowledge that it's a search. So that's, you know, that at least getting back to some semblance, at least with respect to geofencing.
- [81:30]
B
Well, there's a bright light before I let you go, Thomas. I mean have you.
- [81:34]
C
Oh sure.
- [81:35]
B
Have you talked to Edward Snowden in the recent few years? Have you had communications with him? And have you ever commiserated about where you see things going?
- [81:48]
C
Last time I spoke to him was actually when we went directly. Last time I spoke to him directly was. There's been social media posts, but those are, that's indirect obviously because it's public and he hasn't been on social media for quite a while now, going back about a year and a Half last time I actually spoke to him was face to face, interestingly enough, directly. There's been other places where he came in remotely. Right. And where I was in the audience. But in the last time I spoke to him directly was when he went to Moscow to present him with the Sam Adams Award for integrity and intelligence. And so it was several of us, as whistleblowers, went there as activists, and included myself, Colleen Rowley, Ray McGovern, Justin Radak. Daniel Ellsberg was going to be on that trip as well, by the way, but he was having some health challenges at the time, so the doctor was very reluctant to have him travel that far. So we spent a number of hours with him. Surreal when I think about it. That was my back. There was a time during the Cold War, the last place you would find yourself was Moscow.
- [83:16]
B
Moscow, Two NSA whistleblowers.
- [83:21]
C
Yeah, it was quite remarkable. And there's been some accounts who are written of that meeting, but it was. It was. It was sort of a meeting of history, as it were. You know, there I was the. At the epigenesis. And there. There he was, 2013, you know, under circumstances that he did not want to live. He didn't. He never wanted to live in Russia. You know, he was on his way to Ecuador. And of course, the United States saw fit to revoke his passport, which, as I well know, my passport was revoked. I had to actually file. I had to go back to the court to actually have them return my passport, because when I was arraigned, the government said I was a flight risk. In fact, they wanted to put a. They wanted to put an ankle bracelet on me. But they also moved to revoke my passport. So I couldn't go outside the country, and I had to have special permission to travel. Talk about restrictions. I had to have special permission to even travel within the United States outside the local area.
- [84:29]
B
Jeez.
- [84:30]
C
Yeah, I know what it's a like. See, we mentioned all of this in terms of what does it mean to live in a surveillance. I've already lived that. I know what it's like to be electronic surveillance. I know what it's like to be physically tracked, physically observed for years. I don't want anybody else will live that way. I mean, we're getting to the point now that we don't just. We don't trust anybody. I don't dare stick my head out the window. I mean, you are getting to the point where people are. Don't even, like. Aren't even willing to open their door. Yeah, because you just don't know. And I understand there. There is. You know, there are really people that show up that have other intentions in mind.
- [85:11]
B
But it's always been that way. I mean, go back to the 1980s, you know, but. Yeah, but we had a revolving door in our front of our house and kids in and out, running through the neighborhood and all of that. And I feel like we've lost that innocence in a way, and it's incredibly regrettable.
- [85:30]
C
I remember as a kid, I'm a little older. I mean, I'm pushing 70. I look back growing up as a kid in Texas, Vermont, and you take your bike out or your roller skates, and, you know, it was. It was a level of freedom that I'm only now beginning to fully appreciate what that meant. We weren't latchkey kids.
- [85:51]
B
Yeah.
- [85:52]
C
The biggest trouble I got in was climbing the fence. And it turns out that the neighbor had these prize. Rose. Rose.
- [86:00]
B
Oh, no.
- [86:01]
C
Flower. And I picked a bud to bring back to my mom because, you know, a little kid, it was this pretty flower. Next thing I know, the neighbor, they're knocking on the door. What happened? You know?
- [86:11]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [86:11]
C
That was my introduction to, like, you know, private property, which it was.
- [86:17]
B
Oh, the sanctity of all of that. Seems like it's a bygone era. Well, Thomas, I just want to thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. And when we had you on before, I said, you know, I really want to hear your story and what you see for the United States of America right now under the surveillance state. So I hope this is a cautionary tale for people, and I hope that people wake up. And at the heart of it, as you said, just be human. And if we continue to be human, that's a fight enough. And hopefully we can all stand up and say, enough is enough. I hope that's the case. I hope that's the case. Thomas, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
- [86:58]
C
You're welcome. Thanks for having me back.