This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 23rd, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

The hair on fire rhetoric that typically accompanies congressional renewal of surveillance

powers was largely swamped by a more immediate concern of the past few weeks, COVID-19.

And even though those surveillance authorities are being renewed, it's for a shorter period of time,

and members of Congress will for the first time be allowed to offer amendments

It's a startling turn of events Cato's Patrick Edington comments

We've had the Patriot Act since 2001. It was passed hastily after September 11th, 2001.

We've had knowledge of broad-based spying on Americans since at least 2013 and yet every time Congress

is set to reauthorize certain surveillance authorities.

They promise hearings, the hearings never happen, the expiration date gets close, and

members of Congress, leadership in Congress, as well we just have to

reauthorize this and we can revisit this at a later date.

Is that about right?

It is pretty much exactly right and of course this is one of the reasons why I chose the title of my book as I did that the triumph of fear is the one that I this monster that I continue to to grind away on here.

It's a very very familiar pattern, you know, and of course it actually starts

in December of 2005 when we get our first massive revelation about the

extent of illegal warrantless surveillance by the federal government courtesy

the New York Times in December 2005 when they revealed

the Stellar Wynne program.

And a revelation that should have led to the Patriot Act being repealed and everything else that had been

done examined and frankly people prosecuted instead led the Congress to

engage in a two-year process of making that illegal

...