On June 11, the US House voted down — on a bipartisan basis, with 19 Republicans joining most Democrats — the latest attempt to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Absent some kind of mid-June legislative miracle, Section 702 will expire on June 12.

Good! FISA itself is a terrible law, and Section 702 in particular legalizes insane levels of government spying — not just on foreigners, but on Americans. Here’s how it works:

First, FISA gives the government very broad surveillance permission where foreigners are concerned. While warrants are theoretically required, such warrants are secretly issued, by a secret court, and seemingly never denied.

Which is bad enough, but FISA also allows the government to spy on Americans who communicate with those foreigners … and to “chain” such surveillance at least two or three (some say six) “hops” out.

So if your spouse’s boss communicates with a foreigner who’s under surveillance, the US regime can collect data not just on the foreigner but also on your spouse’s boss,   on anyone your spouse’s boss communicates with (like, say, your spouse), and on anyone that second person communicates with (like, say, you).

All without going to a real, identifiable judge, from a non-secret court, to issue a warrant based on probable cause that anyone down that chain has committed any kind of crime.

FISA was always terrible, and section 702 always made it even worse. I’m glad it failed of re-passage. It needs to die in a fire, permanently.

But there’s nothing really to celebrate here, because we’ve known — since at least as far back as 2013 — how the US regime operates with regard to its surveillance powers.

If the US regime doesn’t like the law, it breaks the law.

If US regime figures are asked (under oath) about breaking the law, they deny (under oath) breaking the law.

If a whistleblower outs the evidence that the US regime is breaking the law, the US regime charges the whistleblower with espionage and chases him out of the country, while the perjurers continue their skulduggery without penalty or punishment.

If you’re unfamiliar with the 2013 case I’m talking about here, look up the name “Edward Snowden.” If you prefer your information in movie form, consider watching the documentary “Citizenfour,” or the dramatization “Snowden,” starring Joseph Goron-Levitt. Both films are available on popular streaming platforms.

Big Brother is indeed watching you, and he’s doing so in ways and to extents that Orwell never dreamed possible.

While I’m glad to see Congress resisting demands for renewal of Section 702, it’s all just a bunch of meaningless theatrics unless they actually prosecute the evildoers who spy on Americans, then lie about it, then persecute whistleblowers because they know they can get away with doing so.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” US president Donald Trump claimed the day after an armed would-be assassin attempted to charge through a security barricade at the Washington Hilton. “It cannot be built fast enough!”

US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) agreed: “America has a problem. That problem is, it is very difficult to have a bunch of important people in the same place unless it is really, really secure.”

I partly agreed with Trump, Graham, and other prominent Republicans at the time: By all means, I wrote, make the White House as secure as possible, and even build a ballroom and other amenities … so long as the other half of the deal is that the president enters the White House grounds immediately upon his or her inauguration and doesn’t leave them for the four years of his or her term in office.

I was sincere in that suggestion, but it turns out Trump was less worried about the whole “security” thing than he and his supporters pretended.

On June 8, less than two months after the Hilton incident, Trump traveled to New York City so that he could grab a nap. At Madison Square Garden. During game three of the National Basketball Association finals. In front of 20,000 screaming fans.

The fans weren’t just screaming for their favorite teams (the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs). They were screaming at — and communicating via hostile hand signals with — Trump himself.

Why all the negativity, b-ball aficionados?

Statistically, any New York crowd will likely lean “anti-Trump” on politics, policy, and personality grounds, but even MAGA diehards had good reason to rage over this particular event … and that reason had a lot to do with my ballroom proposal.

The Secret Service locked down Madison Square Garden, and the surrounding streets, hours before Trump’s arrival.

Public events scheduled for the area were canceled or moved.

People who had already paid outrageous prices to attend — tickets averaged nearly $5,000 each — had to arrive hours earlier than normal so they would have time to stand in line and get screened (read “harassed”) by Secret Service agents before the game.

They eventually got the event they paid to see, but probably didn’t enjoy the last-minute addition of a circus to the schedule.

Then the source of their annoyance fell asleep, right in front of them.

Anyone with the bad luck to have things to do when and where a president or other Very Special Important Politician decides to go (I’ve been through several such incidents myself), or even lives along a presidential motorcade route, knows what a hassle all of that is.

Thus my proposal that presidents spare America such inconveniences while in office through mandatory (if necessary) sequestration on the White House grounds for the durations of their terms.

Trump clearly didn’t believe his own claims concerning presidential security, or he wouldn’t have decided to catch 40 winks in front of thousands of angry basketball fans.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

US president Donald Trump, Reuters reports, is “looking into” a US government stake in leading artificial intelligence firms. “There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” Trump says.

This isn’t his first such initiative. Since beginning his second term, Trump has announced 15 such “equity stake” deals between the US government and various companies, at least ten of which have so far been formally consummated.

This time, though, his logic differs somewhat. He’s justified previous “equity stake” agreements on alleged national security concerns and on a supposed economic need to create jobs by “reshoring” industries which have moved production to other countries in recent decades.

This particular proposal feels more like the basis for some kind of “Universal Basic Income” scheme, or at least for funding increased welfare state entitlements, and doesn’t seem to differ markedly from a proposal by openly “socialist” US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) to seize equity in AI firms for a “Sovereign Wealth Fund.”

So, let’s talk about Trump and “socialism.”

“Socialism,” he said in a 2019 speech, “promises prosperity but delivers poverty. Socialism promises unity but delivers hate and division. Socialism promises a better future, but always returns to the darkest chapters of the past.”

“Socialism” suffers from too many, and too incompatible, definitions — ranging from direct worker ownership of businesses, to welfare statism financed through heavy taxation of those businesses, to the government ownership of  those business as a supposed proxy for those workers — but Trump’s points are fair ones with regard to, at least, the latter two types.

Yet Trump frequently argues those points with himself … and loses, agreeing that he was wrong in that speech. When it comes to actual policy, he’s arguably the most “socialist” American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, even exceeding FDR in some areas.

During COVID, he launched a socialist scheme to develop and deploy a vaccine. Early on, he temporarily invoked what the Russian Bolsheviks called “war communism,” using the Defense Production Act to temporarily nationalize several companies for production of ventilators (that ended when it turned out the market had solved the problem quickly and efficiently without such “help”). And of course we all remember the budget-busting  “stimulus” checks and “payroll protection” loans.

During both of his terms, he’s tried to cover up the devastating effects of his tariff schemes with handouts and bailouts for the worst victims of those effects, like farmers who saw world markets for their goods virtually disappear overnight.

By virtually any metric, Trump is devoted to central economic planning and government control of American industry.  To, that is, socialism.

What separates him from other, actually admitted, socialists like Sanders and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t that they’re any more or less committed to “socialism,” it’s the specific TYPE of socialism.

As “democratic socialists,” Sanders and Mamdani focus on a class warfare theory in which wealth needs to be redistributed from a capitalist “owner” class to an exploited “worker” class. It’s a dumb theory, with exactly the same effects as those described in Trump’s speech.

Trump, on the other hand, is a “national socialist” (you may have seen that term elsewhere; I won’t belabor the implication). His theory is less about internal economic class divisions than about a collectivist imagining of the “nation” as an indivisible unit. It’s not “the workers” who are exploited by “capitalists,” it’s “the nation” which is exploited by, and requires protection from, foreigners who make cheaper and/or better widgets of this or that kind.

Those seemingly different “socialisms” historically lead to the same results. Trump’s version is no exception.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY