(2014/04/20) Burn it to the ground (NSA Spying)
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2014
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Edition #818
Burn it to the ground
Today we attempt to watch the watchers and see if there's anything to be done about them.
Ch. 1: Intro - Theme: A Fond Farewell, Elliott Smith
Ch. 2: Act 1: Drones, metadata, and Dirty Wars - @allinwithchris Hayes - Air Date: 02-10-14
Ch. 3: Song 1: Little Talks - Of monsters and men
Ch. 4: Act 2: Is It Time for a New Church Committee? - @Thom_Hartmann - Air Date: 02-26-14
Ch. 5: Song 2: Bridge over troubled water - Simon & Garfunkel
Ch. 6: Act 3: No Escaping Dragnet Nation (Part 1) - @BillMoyersHQ - Air Date 3-14-14
Ch. 7: Song 3: Hide the truth - Chronicle
Ch. 8: Act 4: Significant NSA Change Proposed By Obama - @theyoungturks - Air Date: 03-26-14
Ch. 9: Song 4: Heroic fanfare - United States Army Band and Chorus
Ch. 10: Act 5: USA Freedom Act via @ACLU - Best of the Left Activism
Ch. 11: Song 5: Activism - Shihan
Ch. 12: Act 6: Senate vs. CIA - @majorityfm - Air Date: 03-12-14
Ch. 13: Song 6: Gone Too Far (feat. Jack Bruce;2012 - Remaster) - Robin Trower
Ch. 14: Act 7: NSA Out Of Control - @dccommonsense - Air Date 3-23-14
Voicemails:
Ch. 15: Latest trans episode was truly enlightening - Jim from Kentucky
Ch. 16: Realizing how badly he'd misrepresented himself originally - Matt in Negaunee, Mi
Ch. 17: "Queer" shouldn't be reclaimed by the LGBT community - Tory from Altlanta, GA
Ch. 28: Thoughts on respectability politics - Prof. Rambo from Georgia
Leave a message at 202-999-3991
Voicemail Music:
Loud Pipes - Ratatat
Ch. 19: Final comments on respectability politics
Closing Music:
Here We Are - Patrick Park
ACTIVISM:
USA Freedom Act via ACLU
USA Freedom Act via EFF
Sources/further reading:
Text of the USA Freedom Act via Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt)
"Lawmakers Need to Get Behind the USA Freedom Act” via FreePress.net
"Obama: US must 'win back the trust of ordinary citizens' over data collection” via The Guardian
"NSA critics express 'deep concern' over route change for House reform bill” via The Guardian
"What You Don't Know About The NSA Spying Program” Moment of Clarity video from Lee Camp
Written by BOTL social media/activism director Katie Klabusich
Produced by:
Jay! Tomlinson
Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it |
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| 0:09.1 | For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code left. |
| 0:13.8 | Now, welcome to the award-winning Best of the Left podcast with Cups today from all-in |
| 0:17.8 | with Chris Hayes, the Tom Harman program, Moyers and Company, the Young Turks, activism |
| 0:22.4 | from Best of the Left, the majority report and common sense with Dan Kyrlin. |
| 0:30.0 | So there's this word, a kind of technical word that has been at the center of the explosive |
| 0:34.3 | public debate over NSA spying, precipitated by the Edward Snowden revelations. |
| 0:40.8 | Right around when the first news leaked, a bulk call record collection, Kyrin Healy, a |
| 0:44.5 | political scientist, very cleverly showed just how powerful this sort of abstract sounding |
| 0:49.7 | word really was. |
| 0:51.4 | Using a few lists of different organizations and their membership at the time of the |
| 0:55.3 | Revolution, the American Revolution, Healy was able to produce a fairly simple map of |
| 0:59.6 | social relations that showed that a fella by the name of Paul Revere was more or less the |
| 1:05.0 | most influential rabble rouser in all of Massachusetts and likely to be up to something not quite |
| 1:10.8 | kosher from the English crown's perspective. |
| 1:13.3 | Now, for months, President and his allies have argued again, again, again, that metadata, |
| 1:18.6 | which is the word that were used to describe this kind of data, that metadata collection |
| 1:23.3 | isn't much of a privacy threat because the NSA isn't listening in on your calls. |
| 1:27.4 | They're just looking into who you talk to and how long your calls are and what's the |
| 1:32.2 | harm in that anyway. |
| 1:34.6 | When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. |
... |
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