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RUSH: So where are we? The individual — and this is reputed to be constitutional law, and statute law, by the way. The individual has no right in his phone number, he doesn’t own it. He doesn’t own the contents of the telephone calls that he makes. You don’t own that, the phone company does. You have no right to it. You have no expectation of privacy, in fact, because it’s not yours.

The phone company owns it, and they have — this is crucial — immunity granted by the government. They have immunity from prosecution for giving it up. See, this is what bugs me. If you call Verizon, “Look, I want the phone records of my neighbor, I don’t like what the guy –” they’d laugh you out of the office. The government calls, “Oh, fine and dandy, here you go, and we want immunity.” Fine, you’ve got it. The automatic assumption that government is entitled to everything, to run health care, to tell the oil companies how they can and can’t run, to regulate everything, just bugs me.

The individual is said to have no right in his phone number. The phone company is said to own the number, but the phone company can’t protect it from the government because the government gets whatever it wants. And so the courts are said to be the stopgap. That’s FISA. But FISA never turns any request down. But here’s where it all comes together. If there’s no expectation of privacy, is what we’re being told. What we’re being told is, “Look, you guys, you’re getting all exercised over nothing here. The NSA is collecting this data. It’s not yours. Your privacy is not being violated. You don’t own the number. You don’t own the data.”

Okay, so if there’s no expectation of privacy, if we’re wrong in expecting that, and if we don’t own it, if there’s no property right, and therefore nothing we can do, there’s no civil recourse to any of this, then how can there be any judicial oversight? In other words, if you and I have no rights, no claim to anything involving the use of our telephones, then what kind of judicial oversight can there be? If we’re not legally entitled to any of it, if we’re not entitled to expect privacy, then how can there be judicial oversight? There’s nothing to defend. There’s nothing to safeguard.

If there’s no expectation of privacy, and if we don’t own it, if there’s no property right, then there’s nothing we can do in the courts. So I don’t know what kind of judicial oversight there is. You can say all three branches signed off on it, but where’s the protection? And then you add to this that it’s all to be done in secret. So we have what appears to be a nearly 100% court record in authorizing every kind of request in this regard. Meaning whenever the government asks the FISA court or any other court for access to this data, it’s granted.

What has been the benefit? That is a question I have. What’s the benefit? What are we getting for this? Well, right here, in the UK Guardian: “NSA surveillance played little role in foiling terror plots, experts say. Obama administration says NSA data helped make arrests in two important cases.” But, in fact, in one of the cases, terrorists actually succeeded in a really horrendous attack, and the other one was pretty bogus.

Here are the two cases. When somebody says, “What’s the benefit for all this?” We don’t own the number, we don’t own the contents, we have no property right, therefore we have no expectation of privacy ’cause it isn’t ours in the first place. There’s no place we can go to seek redress if what we think is our privacy is violated. We’re told there’s judicial oversight because all of this has to be granted by a court. Well, it all is. Okay, so all of this data mining, what are we getting out of it, and they cite two cases where this collection of data has saved lives.

“Lawyers and intelligence experts with direct knowledge of two intercepted terrorist plots that the Obama administration says confirm the value of the NSA’s vast data-mining activities have questioned whether the surveillance sweeps played a significant role, if any, in foiling the attacks. The defense of the controversial data collection operations … has been led by Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, and her equivalent in the House, Mike Rogers.”

And they point to two cases in which the data sweep has been worthwhile. One was the New York subway bomber, last name Zazi in 2009. The other, David Headley, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. If you remember, that was a huge attack that succeeded, if you recall. The hotel that was hit there was blown to smithereens and they’re claiming, “Yeah, but we found the guy because of this program. Yeah, we did, we found the guy.”

“Court documents lodged in the US and UK, as well as interviews with involved parties, suggest that data-mining through Prism and other NSA programs played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots.” Look, I don’t want to go into any details, but the point is, the regime says, “Well, for all of this sweeping of data, we’ve stopped two things.” Well, one thing wasn’t stopped. Mumbai blew sky-high. “Well, yeah, that’s right, but we found the guy that did it.” Okay, cool. And the other was the New York subway thing.

Now, again, in trying to close the loop here, what are we getting for this? This massive data mining, massive sweep, this is taking a lot of time, it is costing a lot of money. It has to be diverting resources from real law enforcement, if you ask me. It has to be diverting attention to real national security issues. This kind of sweeping access to every citizen’s assumed private data would come under the category of a general warrant, for the back door in this case, but the Founding Fathers objected to this kind of sweeping government power when they were putting the Constitution together.

In fact, it was the states that demanded what became the Fourth Amendment, that you are safe in your person, in your home, against unreasonable searches. It was the states that demanded this, once they saw where this massive type of invasion of what most people would think is private. The states demanded what became the Fourth Amendment before they would ratify the Constitution. So there are a lot of people, and look, they’re good people, too.


I mean, John Bolton and a number of others are telling people like me to one extent or another, “Calm down. You’re overdoing this. This is not some giant government conspiracy. There’s really nothing to see. All three branches have approved of this. There’s nothing happening here that’s putting you at risk. There’s no attempt to dig up data on you for the government to use against you. This is perfectly fine. We need to do this kind of intel gathering to stop terror attacks.”

There are a lot of people that are appalled by this. This kind of massive ability, requests for this data up a thousand percent under Obama, and I don’t know how — maybe I’m being naive and maybe I just don’t know enough, but, as I’ve said before when you have the same people doing all of this data mining, who have used the IRS against people who are my friends, the Tea Party, to suppress their political participation, I don’t know how you overlook it and say it isn’t any big deal.

I have a story. I haven’t printed it out yet. It has been discovered that the IRS already has collected 60 million medical records of people from California alone. I don’t know under what authority. Probably Obamacare, you would think. I can’t imagine that when the country was founded, and the Constitution was being put together, that this kind of thing was considered, thought of, and approved. This is the kind of thing that this country was established in opposition to.

Now, I will allow the possibility that maybe I am seeing this in a tunnel vision way, because there are a lot of people I respect who say, “There’s nothing to see here, Rush. This isn’t any big deal. This is common, ordinary, and in most cases you ought to be glad it’s happening because it’s oriented toward security and safety and so forth.” And I, in a sense, understand that. But when I see who’s doing the collecting, and I see how they’re lying about it, Clapper and these guys —

Let me say at the outset here, and I think this is probably a lot of people’s attitude, which is what allows this to happen. “Well, hell, I haven’t done anything. I’m not afraid. They can find out whatever they want about me.” There’s nothing personal in my having red flags about this. I’m a small-government guy. This isn’t small government. This isn’t limited government. Just the exact opposite.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Barney in Tucson, Arizona. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. And it does matter who’s doing this. And I’d like to answer your question, why. What the left wants most is to stay in power, and this is a scheme to enable them to do just that. You mentioned yesterday that they know, for instance, if you called the Romney campaign. So they also can generate a political profile on you. This is the data they’re after. Because after they profile, if you’re their kind of voter and you’re not registered, their union buddies come to your door and have you fill out a registration form. They did something similar in Colorado a few years ago. It was the subject of the book Blueprint, and last year in Arizona they pulled off a few illegal maneuvers to influence elections here. And this is the scheme.

RUSH: Well, it’s an interesting look at it. So you think they’re profiling supporters and people who oppose them?

CALLER: They’ve been doing it all over the country. When we did redistricting in Arizona last year, we were supposed to hire an Arizona mapping company for a half million to help with the project. They hired at a cost of over a million, not a mapping company, but a microtargeting company, and it was the same one that Obama used to profile for his election, to target voters.

RUSH: Okay. Let me ask you a question here, Barney. What happens if the Democrats lose the White House?

CALLER: Well, the key here is, there’s this one organization called Strategic Telemetry. It’s the organization that is responsible for both projects. And if any of this data is transferred to them — and I can’t see these people who don’t care about the law not doing it — they have the material they need to do a profile on everybody with a telephone. And what they do is, it’s easy to profile, depending on who you call or what connections you make. And they know, hey, this guy is 80% likely to vote Democrat. And so they canvas. They go to the door if you’re not registered and say, “We want you to fill out a –“

RUSH: Barney, wait a second. They’re not going door-to-door all over the country.

CALLER: They are. They are.

RUSH: Well, they’ve not come to my door. They’ve not rung my buzzer. They’re not doing everybody. My question, what happens if they lose an election, what happens to all this?

CALLER: The data is still kept in the coffers of this company, which is used by a lot of Democrats running. What they’ve been doing is targeting key states. I’ll give you an example of what they were able to pull off in Arizona. A few years back we used to be seven to one Republican in Congress. But with this scam they pulled in redistricting last year, even though all 13 statewide races were won by Republicans, not a single Democrat, in Congress they managed to shift us to blue. We’re 5-4 Democrats in Congress due to this targeting they pulled off. And they did it a few years ago in Colorado. And I’m convinced that this is what they’re using this data for, ’cause this administration doesn’t seem to give a dang about national security. We know that from lots of different —

RUSH: Well, see that, now, rings a bell. Because the Boston bombing happened. And, by the way, they were sweeping before the Boston bombing. They just renewed it after the Boston bombing, the renewal for the sweep every three months. They didn’t start the day after the Boston bombing. It intensified. But I think what Barney is talking about — we played the sound bite, we went back, played this again for you. Cookie, find this in the archive. We played it earlier this week. You remember Maxine Waters — and I’ll tell you what Barney is talking about. Organizing for America, the campaign organization that Obama has established that’s being run now, which is part of the Limbaugh Theorem, Obama is doing three fundraisers today, folks. He’s at three fundraisers today. For what? He’s not running for election again. Why are you doing fundraising?

These are not Democrat Party things. These are Organizing for America. Now, Maxine Waters said that Obama had the most massive database ever collected in America. Information on everybody. It was unprecedented. Nobody had ever had any kind of a database like this. I think this is what Barney, in part, is referring to. Maxine Waters lets a lot of truth slip. She let it slip during a congressional hearing with some CEOs of some industry. (imitating Waters) “We want to nationalize. We want to take over your business.” It was the oil industry. And the rest of the Democrats on the committee kind of hung their heads, “Oh, jeez,” like she’s some sort of idiot.

But instead, what they were doing, “Oh, come on, Maxine, shut up, what are you giving up the game for?” Is what their reaction was. So we’ll find the Maxine Waters bite. Don’t discount it. She would know, and she would also be loose-lipped enough to mention it. She was proud of it, this massive, unprecedented database that Obama was collecting. That’s why we’ve raised the question, you go to the health exchange and you want to get a policy, “Did you vote Obama or not?” depends on where you end up in the line. People guess about that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here it is. This is Maxine Waters, originally broadcast on February 3rd of 2013. Remember this guy Roland Martin? He was an analyst, show up now and then kind of guy, was on CNN. And then he did something that got him fired, probably attracted an audience. But he has his own show on something called TV One, and it’s called Washington Watch with Roland Martin. And back in February, interviewed Maxine Waters, and they were talking about Obama’s second term. And Roland Martin said to her, “The reality is, like anything else, you’d better get what you can while he’s there, because, look, come 2016, Obama’s gone.” This is a program aimed at minorities and get what you can means, you know, score your phones and your benefits, whatever, while you can, because once Obama’s gone, who knows. This is what Maxine Waters said.

WATERS: Well, you know, I don’t know, and I think some people are missing something here. The president has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful. That database will have information about everything, on every individual, in ways that it’s never been done before.

RUSH: Now, it’s Maxine Waters. You hear this, and you think you’ve taken up residence in Kookville, and you reject it. But she lets the cat out of the bag on a lot of stuff the left is doing. “The president has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database no one has ever seen before in life.” Hello, PRISM. Hello, sweeping of every freaking phone call in America. “It’s going to be very, very powerful.” Every phone call in America, the data is swept by Obama’s NSA. “That database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.” And then she said whoever runs for president on the Democrat ticket will have it. It’s something Obama is leaving as a legacy to the Democrat Party. In addition, he’ll use it, I’m sure, as he and Michelle put together the Barack Obama presidential library for social justice, wherever they do it.


She said: “Whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that.”
Meaning, will have access to it. “They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

This is what Barney, our last caller, was talking about, and this is what’s going on. And this is why, I’m sorry, the fact that it’s just metadata and it happened under Bush and so forth, not to this extent. With Bush I felt pretty confident they were looking at foreign related phone calls, to or from. I never heard anybody in the Republican Party start bragging about this massive database Bush was putting together, start bragging about what kind of legacy the Republicans were gonna have with this.

It’s just like with the IRS. All of this data collection and all of this monitoring is in itself intimidating. It’s intimidating to any opponents of the regime. It could be intimidating to any opponent of a Democrat candidate. Look at what they did to Romney in the form of TV ads without even any data collection. They just up and out lied about Romney’s character. But, anyway, aside from the collection of data, look at the intimidation. When anybody smiles at you, and says, “You know, we know everything about you, and we’re finding out everything you do tomorrow,” that carries with it a degree of intimidation.

So now critics of Obama not only have to worry about the IRS, they gotta worry about the NSA. And the NSA then telling the IRS and the FBI, and then those people downloading information to ProPublica, which is left-wing journalists, and that’s how the data on you can end up in profiles in the media, as in the attacks on Romney donors. And all of that is intimidating. In that case, the intimidation was, if you’re gonna make sizeable donations to a Republican, this is what’s gonna happen to you. These people politicize everything. Government is the biggest prize in the world.

Folks, if I can personalize this. I want to speak to all of you as individuals here to try to make this point. I don’t care what it is; no judgmentalism here. What is the one thing in life you want more than anything? Whatever it is, imagine the passion you have about achieving it or acquiring it or succeeding at whatever the most desirous thing you have. And everybody has something like this, that you want more than anything. For some of us it’s always gonna be a fantasy because it’s unattainable, but regardless, think of the emotion attached to the desire, whatever the one thing in life you want more than anything.

Well, to these people, the one thing that they want more than anything is the total control of the biggest and most powerful institution in the world, the government of the United States of America. Their reason for being politically involved has nothing to do with the Constitution. It has nothing to do with preserving freedom or liberty or enhancing life and circumstances for citizens. It is the acquisition of personal power, and these people are also unified around something else that’s just as crucially important, and that is, they want to get rid of any substantive opposition, however they can do it. So if they achieve in acquiring this power, control over the government, then they’ll use that to make sure they never lose it.

That’s what Barney’s talking about in his call from Tucson, Arizona. That’s what Barney thinks is underway. That’s what Barney thinks Maxine Waters’ database is all about. A permanent, never ending control of all of the most powerful institutions in the world that are all here in the US government. That’s what they’re after.

Now, we, as conservatives, can’t even relate to that when it comes to government. We want to get government out of everybody’s life. That’s why there isn’t any commonality. That’s why there’s no chance here for compromise or bipartisan, especially not with this latest bunch of liberal Democrats. Now, most of their little low-information followers haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on. They don’t have the awareness. If you sat ’em down and told ’em this is what Obama’s doing and why, it would go in one ear and out the other, couldn’t comprehend it, wouldn’t even want to try to. But they willingly facilitate by supporting it.

Now, let me ask you this. People like Obama and his buddies, associates, the Democrat Party who want all this power, do you think that they could have it if they came to us and said, “This is what we want. We want you to elect us. We want you to support us because we want the power. We want to be able to control –” Of course not. So how are they doing it? Well, there’s the Limbaugh Theorem to explain Obama’s detachment, but the trick is they have to mislead everybody as to their true ambition, as to their true desire, in order to acquire this power, because it is such anathema to the American human spirit and tradition.

You acquire all of this data on people, you think about how easy it is to manipulate low-information voters with this kind of information, this kind of data. The way this bunch does it is they claim to be the kings of compassion, the kings of love. All they want to do is help people. All they want to do is give you this and give you that, make sure that can’t be taken away from you and that, so forth, and what they’re ending up doing at the same time is the exact opposite.

Now, you know this, and this is why all of this is so upsetting. And once you realize it, it’s simple. It’s obvious to see. Then the frustration sets in, “Why don’t other people see it? Why don’t they believe it when I tell them about it?” Because most people can’t conceive of wanting this kind of power. And the people seeking it never, ever give any indication that it’s what they want. Or they wouldn’t stand a chance.

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