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The Daily Beans
Beans Talk | DHS is Watching You
00:15:16
Did you know that Beans Talk has its own podcast feed?" https://beans-talk.simplecast.com/ BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING FISA HYPOCRISY REPUBLICANS: DON’T TREAD ON ME. TREAD ON THEM! CAN’T PUT A PRICE ON VOTING
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Frances Collier. And I'm Angela V. Shelton. And we're Frangela. You know what you mean in your life. The Final Word podcast. Yes, you do.
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B
That's right.
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A
It is the final word on all things political and pop cultural, where we make real news, real funny, where we inspire you so you can resist. Subscribe and get a new episode of the Final Word podcast each week. It's the news we think you need to hear.
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B
That's right. We think you need to hear it. Okay.
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A
Yeah. It's what we say. So.
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B
That's right.
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A
And because all we do is give. Every Thursday, you can listen to our hysterical podcast, Idiot of the Week. We round up the stupid. Because you know what? Somebody has to.
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B
Okay?
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A
All we do is give. Hey, Everybody. It's Monday, February 16th, 2026. I'm Alison Gill.
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B
And I'm Dana Goldberg. And you're watching Beans Talk Foreign.
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A
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another week in the life of the regime.
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B
Jesus. I don't know what else to say either.
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A
This is the Big Brother surveillance state. I don't know how the Republicans lost the plot on spying on people, but they have.
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B
Yeah, everyone seems to be fine with it on the other side.
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A
Yeah, but something pretty amazing happened this week. And you know, Bad Bunny's super bowl halftime show was amazing, but something else happened during the super bowl that had a massive impact due to political backlash. And it's because of us that this happened. First, watch this video from. We raked dogs.
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C
We all love a good, wholesome dog commercial. And over the years, numerous companies have utilized dogs in super bowl ads to advertise all kinds of products. But Ring's super bowl ad this year uses our love of dogs to do something else, which is unfortunately, manufactured consent for mass surveillance. The commercial opens with an adorable puppy and a Sad statistic that 10 million dogs go missing every year. It then explains how Ring's new AI search party feature can locate lost pets, giving the ad a happy ending. But neither Ring's products nor business model are built around finding lost pets, but rather creating a lucrative mass surveillance network by turning private homes into surveillance outposts and well meaning neighbors into informants for ICE and other government agencies. Agencies. Ring has stated that it does not have a partnership with ice. They do, however, have a partnership with Flock Safety, a private surveillance firm and license plate tracking system that provides data, including Ring footage, to law enforcement agencies through a warrantless and anonymous community request service, which is then turned over to ICE, the FBI, and even the Navy. Documents obtained by 404 Media regarding service requests for Flock surveillance data shows thousands of national and statewide searches done by local law enforcement with the reason for the search listed as ice, Homeland Security, or simply immigration. Another report found that a police department in Texas did a warrantless nationwide search of over 83,000 flock cameras, with the reason for the search logged as had an abortion search for female. In its ad, Ring claims that the search party feature finds one dog a day. This would equate to roughly 0.03% of the over 1 million lost or found pet reports hosted to the Ring app annually. This service is very obviously not about finding your lost dog. If you are genuinely concerned about keeping your pets safe and maximizing your chances of finding them if they're lost, get them microchipped. You can do this at any vet and even some shelters. Just make sure you register it with up to date info. I've also learned through running this account that local Facebook groups and Nextdoor are scarily efficient at reuniting lost pets.
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B
So that was. Can I say how informative that was. That whole video. I was. I love when I learned things. I mean, creating this show with you, but I was watching this whole thing and I knew Ring was doing this. I did not know to what extent.
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A
Yeah, it's pretty scary when you start to think about it. But then on Saturday, the Times reported, quote, the Amazon owned Ring home security company created a Super bowl commercial around the tale of a lost dog being reunited with his family through information harvested from a web of doorbell cameras. Days later, after critics warned that the commercial felt more invasive than heartwarming, Ring said it's ending a recent partnership with a surveillance and technology firm. Ring announced on Thursday it would no longer work with the firm Flock Safety, which deploys camera systems and license plate readers for use by law enforcement, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection. So, wow, they spent millions of dollars on a Super bowl ad trying to sell the idea of a surveillance state by using it to find dogs?
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B
Uh huh.
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A
And the people watching said, absolutely not. That's a little weird, by the way, because considering Kristi Noem's history with dogs. But yeah, the people watching were like, fuck, no. Excuse me.
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B
Yeah, also by the way, in the video, like it said it. Dog a day. That's not a very good average, by the way, for this. And I think that's why people were like, wait a minute, what else are we using this for? I mean, I don't trust. Listen, I, I'm going to say that I still don't trust this whole thing. It's an Amazon owned company. You know, whether it's this, you know, surveillance company or another one, I'm, I'm. I just don't trust them to do the right thing.
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A
No, me neither. And, and can I see the, the ending of the thing? Can I see maybe something that bars Flock and other surveillance people who hand over information to ICE and Customs and Border Protection, like a bunch of fucking snitches are barred from doing that? Can I see a document that bars that from happening? Or are you just sort of stepping away and saying, we don't have an official contract anymore? Like, I want to. I want to see the deets. And I think there are some journalists out there that might get to the bottom of that. But, like, I just don't get when Republicans went from talking about spying every five minutes and how, you know, we need to get rid of fisa. I'll get into this in a minute. But like, they went from that. They went from Don't Tread on me to the nanny state they've been decrying for the last, what, three decades, as far as I can remember, in my political life.
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B
Yeah, Google and Meta seem to be cool with it. They're not helping the situation and which is a little bit scary for me as someone who speaks out against this administration. And I know that you post things as well, but apparently DHS subpoenaed the names. Okay, everyone listen to this. I just want you to be aware of it. The names, the email addresses, the telephone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize ice. I know I put up videos. I'm not saying you should take them down. I'm just saying this is what's happening. And Google actually complied with a subpoena from ice, so we know that for sure. Demanding a student journalist bank and credit card information.
- [07:12]
A
Yeah, and that student journalist was reporting on Free Palestine demonstration. Peaceful demonstrations.
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B
Which they have a right to do.
- [07:22]
A
Absolutely. And you know, we have to go through all of this due process. Like Rumesa Ozturk, who had written an op ed and was eventually allowed to not be targeted and deported for having exercising her First Amendment rights, which apply to everyone here in the country, not just U.S. citizens. Right.
- [07:41]
B
You step onto this land, you should be protected under our Constitution.
- [07:45]
A
Yeah, and there's a reason for that, Dana. I learned this recently from when I was talking to former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe, who I co host another podcast with called Unjustified. And he said, well, the reason we do that is because otherwise we create a System where we welcome people to come here from other countries, break the law and then just get a free ticket home.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Without, you know, just be deported right back to their home country without having to face you due process here in the United States.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So I think that that's a real interesting piece that I hadn't been thinking about before. Like, why do we do it that way? It's to deter people from just showing up and murdering somebody and then getting a free ride home to be released, you know, to from whence they came. Meanwhile, Trump's Justice Department is collecting search terms entered into their terminals by Democratic lawmakers who are trying to provide oversight over the Epstein files, which is totally illegal. It completely violates the speech or debate clause. The same thing that the Republicans won't shut up about when Jack Smith legally obtained the toll records against members of Congress that Trump called on January 6th. They also Republicans haven't shut up about the legally obtained FISA warrant against Carter Page.
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B
Yep.
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A
Trump has been crying for eight years about how Obama spied on his campaign. They spied on Carter Page because he was talking to baddies in Russia and it was after he quit the campaign. And then, you know, like I said, Josh Hawley and other Republicans haven't shut up about Jack Smith wiretapping their phones, which he didn't do. He got the toll records and not to mention Twitt Twitter refusing to hand over Trump's Twitter account details in the Jack Smith January 6th investigation. And that refusal, like Elon Musk's Twitter, was like, we demand that we get to tell Donald Trump what we're doing. And the judge decided no. It became unsealed later. But that whole litigation just to get Trump's Twitter account information added a four month delay to the January 6 probe. So these guys hate it when it's done to them legally, but just want to shit all over privacy when they want to trample on our rights and get our shit illegally.
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B
The hypocrisy is astounding. We've seen this over and over. I don't even just say that whole like, I don't know what they logo they have. It's like, don't shit on me with that snake. Is that what it is?
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A
Yeah. Don't feel like a bunch neck.
- [10:16]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's just ridiculous. I mean, we've seen this too. Like they're ceding ground with the Second Amendment. They're seeding ground with Don't Tread on Me. They're seeding ground with their First Amendment rights. They don't seem to understand that. They think it is hurting people they hate. They think it's hurting people that aren't like them. It is hurting them just as much as it's hurting the people they chose to vote for. This cruelty against. I wish that they would see that. They're going to see it. They're going to see it when they start losing their rights. Because if you think they just want to control Democrats and progressives, you are sorely mistaken.
- [10:48]
A
Yeah, and we saw that with the whole campaign against mail in voting when we were shut down from COVID which was mismanaged by the Trump administration in 2020. You know, they were, they wanted to stop mail in ballots and mail in voting. And Republican lawmakers who needed to get reelected again were like, dude, fucking knock it off. We rely on mail in ballots with the whole military votes by mail in ballot. Like, what the fuck are you doing? Shut up. And at the time, I called it the Longshanks plan. Remember in Braveheart when Longshanks was like archers. And the guy's like, but won't we hit our own men? He's like, yes, but we'll hit theirs too. Like, it's just the dumbest thing. And it's going to backfire against them too with this whole SAVE act. And, and you know, most. Because married women, you know, who change their name, that's more Republicans than Democrats. Yeah, like they just. And so like some lawmakers are raising alarm bells like they did in 2020 over mail in ballots. Like, you're gonna, you're gonna really suppress the vote of Republicans as well, you dumb shit.
- [11:56]
B
I mean, and I hate to say this, I, I mean, I think you'd agree with this. It has to do with education. It has to do with wanting to see different parts of the world. It has to do with not wanting to be so ethnocentric. It has to. A lot of, a lot of the people that vote for the other side, some of them have never left their hometown. I'm not saying all of them, but I'm just saying I think they're, they're, they're highly misinformed about the amount of people that don't have passports because they can't afford them that happen to vote Republican also. That affects Democrats as well, obviously. But I think in role, we're more educated people that want to go see the world and want to get, you know, different cultures and things like that. I think they're going to be very surprised if they pass the SAVE Act. And I hope that this does not happen. But how this one also comes to bite him them in the ass. I really think they're going to be surprised.
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A
Yeah. But for all of their don't spy on us and don't take our guns and don't shit all over our, you know, no illegal search and seizures. And now the DHS is like, we don't need a warrant to go into your house. It's totes cool.
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B
I would see the numbers though, Democrats and Republicans, who has passports and who doesn't? I just would love to see the numbers.
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A
Yeah, that's also a very good point. But yeah, it's. And which Republicans can afford to drop 150, $180 on a passport?
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B
That's exactly what I'm talking about. And it's, and we have seen this time and time again the education when it comes to secondary education and let's say the job, you know, the, the industries and things like that, high paying positions. I would love to see the statistics between who votes Republican, who votes Democrat, who can afford these things and who can't. And that's sort of beside the point. That beside the point is that in the Constitution it says that voting is free. It is a free thing that you have in our society. It is set up this way. And when you have to pay to get a new license, you have to pay to get a new birth certificate made, you have to pay to get a new passport, that is a cost to voting. It's against our Constitution.
- [13:54]
A
Yeah, poll tax. It's similar to, you know, when the Republicans were like, yeah, let's shut down the government and get rid of SNAP benefits. And then they all realize all of a sudden, or health care, Affordable Care act subsidies. And they realize all of a sudden that like half of their Republican red states are their voters who rely on these benefits. So. But they just name it something else. You know, they call it something besides the Affordable Care act subsidies or Medicare. They call it like Beaver Care or you know, whatever. So. But anyway, it's just, it's sort of bizarre. And I talked to Heather Cox Richardson about this. You can watch that full interview@militaryroad.com or listen to it. On today's episode of the Audio Daily Beans podcast, we talked about how did you ever in your life think you'd be defending police officers when you talk about January 6th or, you know, wanting to have longer sentences for criminals, especially, you know, the Trump crimes or things like, things that we generally haven't ever advocated for are now kind of our talking points and no longer Republican talking points. It's bizarre.
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B
It is bizarre. It feels like we're living in the upside down.
- [15:13]
A
We are in the upside down. All right, everybody, thank you so much for watching or listening to Beans Talk. You can now get this in its own audio feed if you don't want to watch us over on YouTube. Because, you know, to be fair, we don't pay the glam tax. It's cool. I know what I look like. It's fine. But we do appreciate, appreciate you listening however you consume the Beans Talk. And we'll be back tomorrow. Do you have any final thoughts today?
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B
Not today.
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A
Nope. All right, we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, I've been Alison Gill.
- [15:41]
B
I've been Dana Goldberg. And you've been watching Beans Talking.
- [16:04]
A
It's no surprise that newsmakers try to manipulate the audience. They want you to believe that they are the one holding the line, and they'll use any trick they can to get you there. But don't let them fool you. Get Unspun. I'm Amanda Sturgill. I've been a reporter, and today I teach future reporters to cut the spin and think critically about what newsmakers say. My podcast, Unspun, shows you how to.
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B
Know when you're being manipulated by the.
- [16:28]
A
News, learn to spot the tricks, and how to make up your own mind about what's true. So if you're tired of being fooled by the news, subscribe to Unspun today.
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B
Unspun because you deserve the truth.