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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noelah.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis codenamed Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. A lot of news in the world these days, these evenings, A lot of it surprise surprise, folks, is strange. So, fellow conspiracy realists, we return to you again at the top of the
week with some very strange news. There are a lot of stories we might not get to in full, but we're going to explore some stuff Congress doesn't want you to know. Maybe depending on your representative. We're going to have an intensely troubling story about fast food joint spoiler, have you ever felt like the person at the drive through didn't want to be there? But before we do any of that, we're going to talk a little bit about how do you want to put a bent products.
Oh yeah, we'll just talk about some products. It's about imports and exports boys products. Ah oh yeah. This is a story that comes to us from the BBC News. It's an article that was published on Monday, December eleventh, and the tale is from a little place called Stratfordshire. It's just north of Birmingham, not Alabama, but in the United Kingdom.
Is it upon Avon or is that a different Stratfordshire.
Oh, that's on Sandwich.
Carry on.
There's one town within this Stratfordshire, I guess county called Burton upon Trent, which is kind of nice. Okay, But here's the story. It's a little vague at first, and we're doing this purposefully, so it's kind of a surprise when you find out what the products are. Here we go from the article in Stratfordshire, Trading Standard officers seized eight pounds of illegal products from twenty two shops in
one rate and Burtened upon Trent. Over three hundred pounds worth of band product was found in a local corner shop. Last year, twenty five million pounds worth of US products were imported, which is seventy percent more than in twenty seventeen. What are we talking about here, guys?
Products?
Products, So let's jump to a quote from John Herriman. I think Herriman. He's the chief executive of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute or CTSI. This is the quote. Trading standards work extremely hard to protect the public by removing dangerous products from sale, but the popularity of these items is being increased by videos on social media platforms such
as TikTok. The increase in demand means importers are sending these through our ports and borders in the millions, and these are then being widely distributed and ending up in retail stores and in the hands of children.
Wait, and we're not talking about drugs here, are we? Retail stores? What kind of affront is this?
What do children buy? Like?
Nuclear weapons, tires, dirty weapons, slam shots. No, here's a short list of some of the products. The dangerous products that were removed. Mountain dew, double bubble gum, Jolly Rancher gummies and hard candies, Starburst gummies, hot to mollies, you know, the candy Swedish fish, lemonheads and Little Debbie cupcakes.
The white phosphorus of snacks.
Yeah, it will be the first one to say that Swedish fish should be categorized as carcinogenic toxins because they're really gross and they get stuck in your teeth.
No, thank you, but thanks for laughing at the phosphorus joke. Man, I go in a little place with this. So why why these Why these specific?
Well, specifically because the United Kingdom has past legislation that makes specific food additives that are in all of these products, it makes them illegal. You cannot buy or sell food products that have some of these things in them. Several of them they classify, I guess you would say, as being carcinogenic or genotoxic.
Yeah. When I first hear you talking about this, I'm picturing this as being another one of the popular recall stories of twenty twenty three. That's not the case. These products are shipping as intended right, Like.
No, these are illegally being shipped into the United Kingdom because these are it's essentially contraband. It's these are products that you cannot sell inside the United Kingdom.
But the formula, it's not like there's some adulterants, Like the stuff that's in these is what's the formula. It's not legally incidental.
Yes, I got it, Okay, legally manufactured in the United States. However, again, the EU and the US have different standards, widely different standards the and the UK and the UK. Oh, right, shout out Brexit. But the main thing is the on the other side of the pond, as you know, when you look into this, on the other side of the pond, the EU and the UK seem a little bit more concerned about the safety of their residents.
Oh, it's fascinating, and we're going to end this segment with a one more quote from a professor that is just I think it's perfectly British and exactly like the way the thinking differs between the FDA and then the organizations within the UK government that monitor these kinds of food additives. Right, so let's just talk about some of those the ingredients that are the dangerous thing that's banned.
So if you look at Jolly Ranchers, the hard candies, they contain mineral oil, which according to the UK government, if contaminated with other compounds, can quote initiate cancer formations. But again totally fine for us to have it here in the good old US. But again it's approved by the FDA, So everything's fine.
Oh yeah, and it's not like they're on the board of Okay, well, you know what, leave it in. Just play along at home, folks, choose your own adventure and let us know your opinion on privatized healthcare.
Yeah. Well, then let's look at something like Mountain dew. Why is that banned before the show? Mapp Well, it is one of my favorites on this show. Numerous times we've talked about brominated vegetable oil, which is one of the big problems with that drink. You know, a flame retardant ingredient that's for other things. There's also calcium disodium edta, which is fully banned within any drinks in the United Kingdom.
In animal studies, according to this article from the BBC, the crystalline powder caused adverse reproductive and developmental effects and has been shown to contribute to cancer in the colon.
And obviously, obviously Swedish fish contain a lot of thlidamide, Right.
Is that what it is?
Or perhaps mercury maybe too right, I don't.
Know, there's a question here, Matt. Before we continue, we know that the EU, the UK, and previously just the EU and the US have a booming trade relationship with these sorts of consumer products, and this has been a known issue for a while. But why the raid didn't this happen before? That these things would get shipped.
Over This is a thing that occurs fairly regularly. That group we quoted a person, John Harriman, I think is how you would say it. The chief executive of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, that person, and that group does these kinds of checks, almost like looking into shops to see if there's any kind of dangerous materials for sale.
Maybe it's a real problem because again social media TikTok in particular, there are a lot of people putting out videos that just show someone enjoying, you know, any of these things. Lemonheads. Wow, these lemonheads are incredible, but you can't get them. You can't buy them on a high
street anywhere in the UK. But well yeah, but then some big, big box chain stores are guilty of this, and then a lot of smaller stores will find a way to import these products and then put them for sale, you know, in a corner shop, right, a bodega type situation. And then this group goes in and just does checks basically, and they pull stuff off the shelves. They literally do that.
In the UK, you can buy mountain dew, but it's a very different mountain dew with many fewer ingredients, and it tastes very different and it looks very different.
I can vouch for that with soda in general and other parts of the world. The uh, the ingred It's refreshing to read an ingredient list in the United Kingdom or in Japan or something, or the EU as well, because there are far fewer difficult to pronounce chemical combinations added in at the end. And also, you know, shout out to Little's right, isn't that the grocery chain that's like the New Jersey of selling stuff. They might not sell you lemonheads, but they'll sell you like citrus uh,
citrus cums. Yeah.
Well yes, it's just crazy to think of. I just really quickly, just to listen to more things. If you go down the cereal I in the UK, you're not gonna see fruit loops or lucky charms or frosted flakes because those are all banned because of the stuff that they've got in them. Gatorade, coffee, mate creamer, pop tarts, ritz crackers, depleted depleted uranium, wheat thins. I mean these are all.
Things which wheat thins. I thought those were healthy.
It's it's the again, the food additives that go into that stuff. BHD is what it's called, I think, beutilated. That's probably not wrong.
Probably the sweetest breakfast cereal you get over there is like something like puffins.
You know, Yeah, that's probably right.
A lot of cereals are really popular too over there, are like musely and very very not vanilla flavor, just very like basic kind of health food type cereals.
Hot cereals. Still a very big market for porridge.
Yeah, but not not oatmeal at least not Quaker oats because those also have additives in them. Most almost every single bread this manufactured in the US cannot be sold in the UK. Almost every chock full of sugar.
Right people in People in other countries say the US doesn't make bread, it makes cake.
But it is so weird that this stuff is just what we eat every day. Any any place you go and do to buy food in the US has most of these products, if not.
All of these products totally. I mean, I did have one question. I didn't notice in any of the articles that you've shared any talk of like food dyes like yellow number five and.
Red whatever all of that.
Have you read anything about any of those being banned or is that a thing over there? Maybe that's less of an issue in this particular story.
Yes, artificial colors as additives are also banned, such as yellow five, yellow six, and red forty. For sure.
Check out our previous episode.
Exactly for sure.
It's so funny though, because my kid recently told me that a lot of these TikTok videos sharing this kind of stuff, they're almost kind of nihilistic in nature, where they acknowledge how potentially dangerous they are. It's almost like tempting fate. And they're really like like red forty and yellow five, those are almost like buzz terms in the in the gen z, you know, kind of parlance.
Yes, exactly. I would recommend everybody, if you've got time, head over to Stratford Sure dot gov dot UK and check out their newsroom because they've got they've just got a little, i guess, an official statement about this this series of raids and the number of stores they went into, and you know, like basically the pounds of product that they pulled off the shelves, and it is a regularly occurring thing and I don't think it's gonna stop anytime soon.
The real, I guess question here is is the United Kingdom's government being overly cautious about these things or is the FDA just you know, being do it do whatever, ye giant food corporations put whatever you want in there? Or is it somewhere in between.
I think it's that.
I don't know.
I think it's in between. I mean, because you know, now, I don't want to overgeneralize here. Maybe this is offensive to even bring up, but I do feel like I
have to. You know how, there's a reputation somewhat for British people not having the best of dental hygiene, you know, and then there's you can see that sometimes and maybe it has to do with insurance or whatever, just genes or something, which I wonder is that maybe a mitigating factor where it's like we've already were already a little bit behind the eight ball in terms of like mouthhealth.
Maybe we don't want to tempt fate by having all this crazy stuff out there that could further, you know, cause issues with dental health care.
I don't know. I think it's to the points that we're exploring here. I think it's more a to answer your question, Matt, I would say if the three options you outlined in that question, the second, I do think there are a ton of great people working at the FDA, and they're experts, but I do think the FDA also has a systemic problem with a quiet sort of corruption. You know what I mean. The revolving door with private
and public policy is real. And to your point, with the idea of dental health, we know, for instance, if we look at a comp country, let's look at Iran. Iran has a lot of dental issues because the country loves suites. So if you want to make a lot of money in Iran, be a dentist, by the way, and maybe it's less of a like I see what
you're saying. I think it's less of a United Kingdom fighting back against sugary foods and more a large scale, deep disagreement with what one country deems safe versus what another country is paid to deem safe.
You're totally right, and I'm looking it up now and it feels like largely the idea of British people being more likely to have issues with their teeth. It's largely a myth. So I apologize if you can bring that up. Sometimes I just spitball, I retract, and I yield my time.
Yeah, because most of these bands have to do with again carcinogens or potential carcinogens or potential again gene damaging materials.
Yeah, let's talk about that. What genotoxic?
Yeah, this is stuff that can affect like the way your white blood cells function in your body. Not great, stuff that can have effects on the way your reproductive organs are functioning, or at least the let's say, the contents of your reproductive organs. I don't know, the stuff that you need to transfer your DNA into a new being. It can mess with that. It's really it's messed up stuff, guys. And just to get back to that thing of is it overly cautious? Is it too you know? Is the
FDA just letting everybody do whatever? I'm gonna go to This quote from Eric Millstone or Millstone Millstone, I think is how you'd say it. He's from the University of Sussex. He's an emeritus professor there, and this is what he has to say, and I think this will tell us a lot about the UK government's perspective on these food additives. Quote. The US typically demands proof that something is harmful, whereas here we are prepared to restrict compounds even if there
yet isn't solid proof. Don't panic about anything you've done in the past, but if you can avoid them in the future, that's a prudent thing to do. Basically saying it would be prudent for us to probably not allow some of these compounds that are suspect in our foods.
It doesn't mean that they are actually cancer causing for humans, right, but it does seem as though there could be something there, so we're going to restrict it before it becomes a major problem for our healthcare system and our you know, citizens.
Preventative Yeah, I mean that makes the argument of caution over caution, over valor or whatever makes sense. In the previous cases we see of things like lead contaminants or things like narcotics added to over the counter medicinal stuff shout out Coca cola, et cetera. I'm wondering there's an episode here, I think in the origin of why these
things happen. Yeah, the FDA has had a problem with corruption, but also what if you are I mean, because the United Kingdom in particular has a lot of Venn diagrams of people at the top, and a lot of the people making the laws own an interest in a lot of the company's manufacturing stuff. So could this be a trade war in disguise, you know what I mean? An some to think about it could be.
Remember at the start of this it was a very small number of products and small I guess of money that was going to be potentially made by these corner shops by having these products. So I don't know if there's going to be a major trade thing here. I think it's just more of a It was striking to me thinking that this was a BBC article. This was this was deemed dangerous enough that BBC News was like, oh man, these dangerous things are getting on our soil and let's write about it.
I don't know.
Maybe maybe that's my own weird perspective. I agree with it, but there is definitely something here in is fascinating. We would love to hear from anyone who lives in the UK that has seen this kind of stuff, like the American products that are not allowed, but they're still there somehow, and just what your opinions are on these things. We will be right back with more strange.
News, and we have returned going into the idea. I love how you set up the idea of food here, Matt, because our second story takes us to something that everyone has experienced. If you have ever eaten fast food, have you gone through the drive through or entered the counter and thought, man, this person really doesn't want to be here.
Yes, quite often.
We've talked about it before. You know, there is a somewhat inverse relationship between how good the food is at some joints versus how not friendly the service might be. Like the best Popeyes in town here in Atlanta legendary, legendarily bad people's skills, but the chicken is amazing.
Ben, I think that's a Popeye's thing because the one up near my parents' house and the one where I used to live, same problem. Amazing chicken. Just it seems like nobody wants to be there.
Well, I mean, the grouchy er, the serve us, the tasty or the chicken. That's the old, old expression from the old country.
There's a yeah, I won't belabor the time to have with you guys today by talking too much about the legendary Popeyes at our old Alma matter of pods, de lay on. But if you're hearing this, you guys are the best. Thank you. There was something that stood out to me quite recently. This is a developing story. As we're listening this evening, a lawsuit came from Alabama again, just like we're recording this on Wednesday, December thirteenth, and
on Tuesday, December twelfth, the lawsuit went public. The state of Alabama has apparently been using prisoners as slave labor at fast food joints. Jeez, yeah, it might sound hyperbolic, but I looked into it, and as far as I can tell, this is not a conspiracy theory. This is a genuine when conspiracy. Let's go to Michael Levinson, writing for the New York Times. He depicts the ins and outs of this lawsuit. I looked it up. We'll tell you.
We'll tell you at the end of this how to find the lawsuit and read it yourself, and it is quite a read for legal ease. Here's what Levinson writes. A group of former and current prisoners sued Alabama the State of Alabama on Tuesday, saying that the state system of prison labor is a quote modern day form of slavery that forces them to work, often for little or no money, for the benefit of government agencies and private businesses.
They go on to say the ten plaintiffs, who are all black Americans, say the state has regularly denied incarcerated people parole and instead leased them out to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for local and state agencies as well as again and private businesses for years. I almost texted our pal Jason Flam about this from Lava for Good. I'm sure he knows about it.
Yeah, Oh my gosh, this is I mean, hold on a second. So this is while they're incarcerated, Yes, and this is like they get a day passed or I don't understand these fast food restaurants. Where are they located?
Well, isn't it like the work release program before?
Yeah, prison work program, work release. It's not the kind of thing where you know, in some cases you'll have people who are incarcerated and serve their time, or they serve jail time, not prison time, but they serve jail time by checking in on the weekends to the World's
worth sleepover. But what is happening with these folks is that the Alabama Parole Board is denying parole to anyone convicted of a violent offense, regardless of the contact, regardless of any mitigating or extenuating circumstance, and they are targeting people who are deemed low risk and most importantly, who are eligible to participate in these prison work programs. This lawsuit calls upon some powerful and quite disturbing precedent earlier conspiracies.
I would call them the idea of convict leasing, which is, you know, eighteen seventy five until nineteen twenty eight in the state of Alabama, if you were in prison, and if you were black, you were going to be forced to work for these private companies and they weren't paying you, really, they were paying kickbacks to state and county governments.
Dude. It's a little confusing to me because we know, again, I think collectively, maybe even as a country or even as a world, that the prison la favor system in the US's nuts, even when it comes to just inside the prison jobs, right like the hourly wage, if there is one at all, is so far below minimum wage. It's nuts. But the concept of private companies then benefiting is it's hurting me. It's hurting my brain a little bit. Do we know which companies are benefiting from this?
Yes? We do, Yes, let's play these reindeer games. Since about twenty eighteen, a little less than six hundred different companies, so we can't name them all, wow, in the time we have today, but more than one hundred public agencies we're added to this, so let's call it six hundred and seventy five discrete entities. They have used incarcerated people as landscapers, janitors, drivers, metal fabricators, fast food workers every year since twenty eighteen. At least, lawsuit alleges they've made
four hundred and fifty million dollars in that. Yeah, spoiler, The folks that are being forced to labor in these circumstances haven't seen much of that money.
Yeah, what does the lawsuit have to say about the pattern they're observing? And I mean, you would think that the prison you know, officials would be smart enough to cover their butts in a way where they could deny you know, that this was they were being denied a parole for any other reason than that they had done something you know, worthy of being denied parole. But does the lawsuit allege anything specific about how this pattern was kind of sussed out.
Yeah, the fig lea for the fig lea for the corruption here was the idea of violent crime. Right, So even if you even if you had been locked up fifteen or twenty years ago for an efense, you had made good on your time, you paid your debt, you know, then you would be a vulnerable target. Right, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for people who do not have the wherewithal to bring their case to court. They're looking for the people that do not have community or
resources to avoid this sort of predation. And look, the plaintiffs also aren't just I don't want to say just. They're not simply people who have been incarcerated. There are labor unions like the Union of Southern Service Workers, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, the Mid South Council, an Alabama nonprofit called the Woods Foundation. People on the outside, right, people who have people who represent fast food workers. We're saying,
look at this, this is egregious. This is slavery with a euphemism painted over it.
Well, we also certainly know that the state of Alabama doesn't exactly have the squeakiest clean of track records when it comes to dealing with people of color, you know, and treating them in the most inhumane of ways. So this to me feels extra egregious coming from a state like Alabama that really does have something to prove in terms of trying to make up for their past, you know, transgressions like under folks like George Wallace.
Yeah, dirty, intergenerational friar Greece. Right. We also so we said that there are hundreds of people or entities alleged to have profited from this scheme since twenty eighteen. Some of those here's the tricky part. The big companies, three of whom I'm about to name on air, are going to get away with it. Just so you know, they're going to be fine. Those three fast food companies or four, I should say, would be McDonald's, KFC, sorry Japan, I
know it's almost Christmas time, Wendy's and Burger King. However, here's how they're going to get away. They're going to get away because of the franchise model. So McDonald's corporate can say, uh, you know, we're kind of like, do what thou wilt. We have plausible deniability. We had no idea this was going on, and I don't know how the case is going to go yet. The defendants, there are quite a few defendants obviously, but they're taking shots
at the king here in the lawsuit. We're talking about the current governor of Alabama Kivy, the state Attorney General, Steve Marshall. So they're fighting like the final boss of Alabama legislature and the chair of the Board for Pardons
and Paroles. This is this is crazy because technically, if they're correct, if their arguments correct, then technically and in spirit, I would say this is a violation of some very important US laws, one of the primary being the federal law that protects victims of trafficking.
Yeah, that's exactly what it is, especially if the prison system is really making forty percent off of any wage that any of these workers is getting.
And that's the gross Yeah, and then they're claiming or whatever saying they're using it to offset the cost of their incarceration, which, as sure is expensive. But that's no damn excuse, is it.
I mean?
Yeah, no, no, it's as in a way I would say, it's a kissing cousin to the dangers of the company town right, or the company's store, because in your way, with your labors, right, and without a choice in your
pursuit of labor. Also, these private companies that are legally required to pay people, you know, the bottom barrel minimum wage, they are ostensibly paying that to the individual, but then the individual is running into all these baked in cost, all these hidden fees to simply that you incur simply by existing day to day in the US prison system. We're talking like fifteen dollars a month for laundry, five
dollars a day for transportation to work. And you know, I know, gas prices go up and down, but five dollars a day is a lot, especially if you're going every day. So again, our journalists for places like the Washington Post and New York Times break it down in simple what politicians would call dinner table conversation terms. A prisoner working for a private laundry service, you might get seven bucks and a quarter an hour, but then you've
got forty percent of that going to the state prison system. Then, of course, guess what, folks, it's America. So unless you're a billionaire, you pay taxes. So then they have to pay federal taxes, state taxes, and then they have to pay that fifteen dollars a month laundry fee, they have to pay that five dollars day transportation costs. All told, the average person in this private laundry service makes two dollars and six cents an hour, no tips, by the way.
And as taxpayers, we're subsidizing these kind of grease payments, right or like these sort of you know, sweetheart deals for these corporations because we're also paying for the cost of the incarceration, and then this labor is giving a sweet deal to these fat cats. And also, you know, subsidizing, are subsidizing, right, So it's like we're kind of getting screwed here too.
It costs less in real terms to the American public to send someone in prison to college and to get them a four year degree than it does to keep them in prison for four years. That's it. And you know, not to mention the knock on effect of giving someone opportunity for higher education versus the knock on effect of sending them to criminal university, which is what a lot of federal and functions as at this point, I don't know.
I think it's I think it's unclean, and I'm startled that it's It's going to be one of those stories that I genuinely believe is going to make the rounds for a few weeks, right, and then when it goes to court, it goes to appeal process. We're talking about very disadvantaged people fighting very powerful people who are entrenched in a system of corruption and criminality. We'll get an update when it hits some sort of legal roadblock, and then the world quite possibly may forget about it because
a lot of other terrible things are happening. But if you are listening to this and you live in the United States, you need to realize this is your fight as well.
Yeah, I think there might be some cognitive dissonance in people's minds simply because some of the human beings of by these laws that are terrible were convicted of doing terrible things and they actually did those terrible things. Then some of the people that are being affected by this got convicted of terrible things and they didn't do anything, you know, or they at least didn't do that thing. And you know, as in as an individual looking at this,
you know, from afar or from above. There's no way to differentiate between you know, people that maybe deserve like some serious like punishment to people who are just in there receiving this punishment because they got caught up in the system, which is a really awful. It's an awful thing all around. I guess I can imagine it being hard for people to get past the well, so one
of the you know, some of them deserve it. When when you know, I've heard I've heard people in my family say stuff like that, you know, So it's just I don't know, it's it's it's tough, man.
Hey, but guess what, there's more, wait, there's more. It does get worse. Let's talk Yeah, let's talk a little bit about unpaid labor forced upon people in the prison system. Right where you are. You are now your serving time, and now you are coerced into functioning as someone who does labor in the prison system in terms of like housekeeping, unloading, loading supplies, cooking things like that. What if you're not
paid for that, why would you say yes to it? Well, according to folks like Lekira Walker, who was incarcerated for fifteen years, in Alabama. If you don't say yes to this stuff, then you are at risk of being sent back to prison, and they'll say, well, you don't get to choose your job work for these folks, or you're back to lock up. Or if you are in prison and refuse to participate in this modern day slavery scheme, you could get a discipline infraction which adds on to
your prison sentence. And unfortunately, for anyone who has not had the dubious privilege of visiting the US prison system, disciplinary infractions are incredibly subjective and you have no real means of appealing a disciplinary infraction. It can be a case where it can be a case where a guard has a bad day and you just caught them at the wrong moment, or they didn't care for you for some reason. You may not have violated a rule and it could end up being months or years more off
of your life. So I think we're going to follow this one for a while. We want to hear from you. We want to hear your opinion of this sort of practice. Do you think these allegations are hyperbolic or overblown? Do you think there's more to the story in your neck of the Global Woods. Is there something similar afoot? Is
there something they don't want you to know? Conspiracy Guyheart Radio one eight three to three std WYTK will be back after word from our sponsor with one more piece of strange news.
And we've returned with today's last piece of strange news. This one comes sort of by way of an update to a very intense piece of legislation that I know
we have talked about in the past. This is called the Section seven two of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which of course allows the US government to essentially force domestic communications companies, organizations, corporations to aid them in surveilling any non US individuals who are outside of the country by giving access to their streams of communication, which sounds, I guess a little bit basic and not dull exactly, but when you start to really think about
what is meant by streams of communication, that's when things
get very interesting. This bill, which was set out by the Intelligence Committee, or a pair of bills rather by the Intelligence Committee and won by the Judiciary Committee, were intended to change the language and reauthorize Section seven O two of FAISA in order to completely overhaul the idea of what these communication streams might be referring to and what that language would have changed to were these to have gone forward, was that it would have expanded the
definition of electronic communications service provider to include any types of equipment that are used to transmit from the language of the legislation to transmit or store such communication, which, if interpreted broadly enough, which would be the idea here, that could include something like a Wi Fi router at an Internet cafe or or a public library, perhaps essentially allowing this term to refer to any type of publicly available Internet stream.
Can I just tell you how far down my thinking in this already? Oh?
Please?
Just maybe in my negative assumptions about it.
Nothing much positive to take from it?
Please?
Man?
Well, I just feel like that was already happening, and maybe I'm i dot.
Okay, I have no doubt, But I mean, you know, we know that sometimes while a lot of legalese tends to be very bespoke and specific, you know, it also tends to be almost is equally vague, sometimes by design. But here's the good news. The update here is that you know, to your guys' point, this list, these laws already existed, and the expansion, while maybe not overt and like set forth in these reforms that were official. Of course,
stuff like that was already happening. But I guess I would argue that, you know, if this stuff were to be broadened in such a way, then it would be even easier for them to do and they could probably secretly broaden them even further. Right, So the good news
is that this was shot down. The House of Representatives will not, in fact vote on these two bills, these proposed surveillance bills that would have essentially given unilateral, you know, freedom to the government to surveil any kinds of these public streams.
Still need that rubber stamp from PFISA. Right, they're famous for being I can't even finish at PISA's kind of bullshit right now, Oh for sure.
Yeah, and this was thanks to the Rules Committee, keed. You got your Rules Committee, you got your Intelligence Committee, and you got your Judiciary Committee, Intelligence and Judiciary. We're all about this, and that Rules decided to shoot it down. So take from that what you will. There is a term here, maybe you guys are familiar. They were said to be voted on simultaneously yesterday as we record this on December thirteenth, and what was referred to as a
Queen of the Hill vote? Do you know what a Queen of the Hill vote is? The first time I've heard this term before.
Isn't that where there are two basically competing bills that get voted on and then instead of like voting one yes or no, you've you know what I mean, like, yeah, both of them don't get a yes or no. It's basically a or B.
Yeah, most votes. When I see I say, got done in a Queen of the Hill thing, I think it's also it's also a snapshot into what I see is a very serious problem in US discourse. Congress has a lot of parliamentary rules, procedural rules, you know, just housekeeping things, and the US public is by a large not aware
of a lot of these. So when you read some kind of street name for a slick procedural move like Quaene of the Hill, then the first thing you think is, you know, if you're most Americans, you think, wait, didn't we have a war about not having a queen? What's really going on? And next thing you know, you're in a TikTok rabbit hole where there's further misinformation propagating, and if bills like this go through, then the surveillance state
only extends even further. I would I would posit this is not about, in terms of practice and operation, expanding government surveillance abilities. This is about laying the groundwork to justify previous and current That's right.
And now let's hear a little bit from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had this to say about Section seven O two that it was by the way, this is from some great reporting done and vice by Jules Roscoe, and this is what they had to say. It was designed to allow government to warrantlessly surveil non US citizens abroad for foreign intelligence purposes. Increasingly, it's this US side of digital conversation that domestic law enforcement agencies trawl through,
all without a warrant. FBI agents have been using the Section seven to two databases to conduct millions of invasive searches for Americans, and that includes things relating to protesters, racial justice activists. Remember what happened with the Rico cases
against some of the forest defenders here in Atlanta. You know, it's similar to that, and probably we were using this type of expanded you know, language to surveil those folks and then build these reco charges against them, journalists, donors to congressional campaigns, and even members of Congress themselves.
Okay, and yeah, yeah, podcasters don't for you podcasters, Sure you guys noticed the weird sounds on your phones when you make calls? Well, do you guys ever notice that?
Well?
Uh, cool, it's fine, it's fine.
Okay, let's just stay in Plato's cavern of surveillance for a moment here. But let's also point out, you know, folks, not to always be plugging our book, but we do have a pretty solid chapter on the expansion of surveillance. And there's something else here happening, which is seven O two is sort of attempting to podify or to justify or rationalize things that are always already happening via the
five eyes loophole. Right, Like, you can't spy on your own citizens, but New Zealand and the UK sure can. And if they happen to slide just some information at the next embassy hangout, or even if it's just a couple guys at a bar, well then it's all in the service of a greater good. So I think they're just trying to This feels like trying to put some trying to put some touch up paint over something they've already marred.
You're a hundred recent, right, Ben. And just to follow up, statement from some folks opposing this from the Brennan Center for Justice and the Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC, which is an EPIC acronym, referred to the bill as a wolf in sheep's clothing that would target businesses far outside the tech sector that do not even have access to communications, and they listed some potential misuses of this in monitoring places like hotels, libraries, coffee shops, other businesses
that provide Wi Fi could be compelled to serve as surrogate spies, structuring their systems so that they can give the government access to entire communication streams.
Dude, it's it's exactly what inward facing in outward facing intelligence agencies want. Just let us have the keys to all the stuff given it. If we need to look, will look because we're trying to protect What do you do?
You do you not support the troops?
You know, like safety?
Do you know what I mean?
Come on, god, oh my god, we're just watching.
The protect and hey, by the way, bro, we saw that you read War's racket well carefully right, shout out Smethley Butler. I mean that there's I don't know there. I'm glad you brought this story up. No, because there are all sorts of conflicts of interest here, But to your earlier point, this is right.
Now.
Overall, this is good news because they did say no, right, yeah.
No again, And I thought it was I didn't remember if we had specifically talked about this being up potentially, and it seemed initially like it was gonna just kind of be just sail right through. But thankfully it didn't, so I did want to go into some of the background. Hopefully it wasn't too redundant. But the good news here is that this attempt, at the very least, you know,
was not successful. But that's not to say that it won't be attempted again and again, you know, with just slightly tweaked language to make whoever may have objected to it in this case happier, or you know, maybe they just needed a little something something to agree, because I have no doubt in my mind that so many of these types of decisions are not about what's right, they're about what are you going to do for me? And how can you help me in my efforts legislatively speaking moving forward?
Because it's directly tied to the National Defense Authorization Act that happens every year, right, Like they have to do that every year.
She should be cool. You're absolutely Matt, You're absolutely right, you know. And sometimes it's like a matter of pr messaging, like what is the what is the most non objectionable name we can find for? Like this the Patriot Act? Oh what you vote against? Patriots? Dog? Like it sounds weird, but that that's how it works, you know. Like maybe seven o two returns uh sooner than we think. And now it's just called the the the Puppy Act or something, Right.
Do Sweet Widow Puppies, Sweet.
Widows Puppies Act?
You have to do dona against cuteness. You don't like snuggles, this, you don't like kisses? You don't like kisses.
Now, I'm sure we can all agree that there are some real cute little vomments out there in American soil, and it's our job to do our best to protect them, God and our country. However, my opponent seems to have a problem with children.
As I yield the floor to you, this hot wet down there, sir.
Do you deny that your childhood puppy has indeed expired under your ka.
Yeah, you know, like that's how she was hidden between the couch cushions.
It was an accident.
It was a horrible accidents.
But that's how it's that's how it's framed, you know, and that's why this work. Like you know, you said at the top, you're worried maybe this would be dry or in the weeds, but I think it is absolutely not. I think this is mission critical stuff to understand, you know, And it's not going to get a ton of news coverage because there's not a celebrity face attached to it, right sadly.
Uh.
But the people that are going to encounter consequences for this, some may be celebrities, a lot are going to be journalists that we rely on to learn more about the world. A lot are going to be protesters, like you said with stop Coop City, with forest defenders, those folks got rico, laude and unfairly and law and as this stuff. As these sorts of things, these mac nations occur in the background, then We're going to see more and more clamping down,
more and more attempts. I think it. I mean, maybe it verges upon conspiratorial to say we have to be vigilant, because I know that's a dog whistle for some people. But you do have to keep an eye on this, and I don't know. Sometimes it's tough. It's tough to not be nihilistic. Right to the point about TikTok candy experiments, right, like, what can one do? The truth of the matter is, I would say what one can do is collaborate with many,
right and through the many we move. There are more good people than there are bad people out there.
Yes, good people who move to farmland in the mountains somewhere in North Georgia.
Faiza loves our group chats.
By the way, guys, really, you guys think we get looked at a little bit. I think we have to be probably. I think it's like it's literally just a checking a box kind of well, and just make sure they're not doing anything other than talking about this story.
We get algorithmically checked, so the checking on us is automated. Intern Steve, I am happy to report, is now a tourist traveling certain segments of the world. Best of luck, Steve, how do you know that he just sends us? He sends us communicats every so often. But yeah, to answer your question, I think for a lot of us, right, the idea like paranoia can be so tempting, right.
Well, it's not not paranoia in my mind. It's like, I guess, just if they have this stuff in place around the capability right well, I mean I don't know.
I'm telling you though, it's these systems are also pretty lazy.
Oh exactly, that's a great point.
The first past, dude, It's just it's algorithmically hoovering up stuff right in an automated How how close are you to knowing Kevin Bacon or and ser Kevin Bacon here? And then like maybe there are key words for things that you talk about. I don't know. I genuinely guys, I doubt that there is someone at the Puzzle Palace who is like I got to tune in to stuff they don't want you to know. Did they figure out Glenn Miller, because that's still important to me.
Yeah, no, I hear you. We don't have to talk about this now together. It's just I think about some of the travel that we've been doing recently, and because generally outside of the US is what these you know, these courts are for, right, and these authorizations and all of this stuff. It just makes me nervous even traveling in country just to different states and stuff. It just feels I don't know, it feels like what the thing was made for.
Oh, one hundred percent, and yeah, I know. Thanks for all the additional perspective on this, guys, And again, hey, let's look at this one as a win, shall we. Maybe we end this episode with feeling a little less hopeless when it comes to this kind of stuff. But unfortunately, there always will be the next swing. But for now seems like we've at the very least staved off making this stuff even more egregiously invasively agreed.
And while unfortunately activities or attempts like this will always occur, we can say that we are very fortunate to be hanging out with you this evening, folks, and we would consider it a win. If you join up with the show. Let us know your thoughts, let us let us know where you get the good limit heads or the good Mountain do with the bodega. Let us know if you have seen any any programs similar to that horrifying thing in Alabama and your neck of the global woods, wherever
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