Did Snowden Expose the NSA’s Secret AT&T Spy Center in NYC?

What is the Patriot Act turning into?

The administration worked with a group... All the mass shootings that are happening, if they were really surveilling everybody, don't you think those people had some type of communication or... This is one of the facilities capturing all of our phone calls.

The what building?

The Long Lines building. Can you confirm that NSA is not capturing hundreds of millions of Americans' records and e-says?

Perhaps, but not, not wittingly. What got you interested in the

topic how to pop up on your radar? It's been going on for a long time. Been going on for a while. It popped up on my radar for when I was doing an episode about 33 Thomas Street which is the Long Lines building. But the what building? The Long Lines building. It's the AT&T Long Lines building, 33 Thomas Street, New York. Code named Titan Point. And it, New Yorkers will know this building. It's the weirdest building you'll ever see. It has no windows, just has exhaust vents. It's no lights. So when it's

nighttime in the city, you've got all the lights on the skyline and you've just got this void for 32 Thomas. It's a very strange building. And all you hear is the exhaust. And the lobby looks normal until you get up kind of close and it's like, wow, there's a lot of security here. And you can't get in there.

So it's codenamed Titan Point, which we learned from the Edward Snowden documents. And it turned out that this is one of the facilities, one of several, but this is a big one, that was capturing all of our phone calls. You know, they talk about, well, it's just metadata. But that's, metadata is enough, because metadata includes who you're calling, what time, where they are, your location, so you

could be totally tracked. And it helps them create that network, which the Patriot Act allows, where if you're a person of interest, anyone you communicate with is automatically a person of interest, and it just is a geometric progression. So when I was doing that episode, I was really just wanted to cover the weird building and you know, what NSA was doing there, capturing the records.

And it just started to get emotional because whenever I can, I just play James Clapper lying to Congress, you know, whenever I can, when he's asked, so can you confirm that we're not, that NSA is not capturing millions or hundreds of millions of Americans' records? And he says, no, sir, we're not, you know, intentionally or something like that. And then later he says, well, I told the most truthful, you know, least truthful, whatever

it was, and then eventually had to apologize because the Snowden documents revealed they're capturing everything. So it's not just metadata they were doing whole capture of phone calls all kinds of stuff. NSA was embedded inside of Google and Yahoo and Microsoft so that everything on like your Google Drive was accessible. If you look at the PowerPoint, the engineers are so excited they have like emojis and smiley faces like we got it we you know we finally got into Google. So that's that was

probably the first episode that got me really thinking okay every so often I'm going to do a government corruption, government transparency episode. Try to make it fun but but the point is, you know, do not trust them. They are constantly lying to us and And There's no regard to the Constitution at all Now the Patriot Act is for me. It's kind of weird because I'm a New Yorker. I was there for 9-11

It's very emotional for New Yorkers that were there still, still very emotional. You know, I had a friend who was a fireman there as part of cleanup and he was just, he was a broken man after that, just completely broken. And my brother had friends in one of the towers that came down.

So, it's close to us. So I remember I was all in with whatever we got to do to get these guys. Patriot Act, let's do it. But we kind of expanded the government's powers a lot there. And it seemed like it happened pretty quickly. So you've got 9-11 and the Patriot Act is signed, I think like October 16th or 20, like it happened pretty quickly. So you've got 9-11 and the Patriot Act is signed, I think like up to October 16th or 20,

like it was like four, six weeks that they got this giant bill together. So either they had some really smart lawyers or this was kind of hanging around, like, and here's an opportunity to do it. And that leads into the 9-11 conspiracy,

which kind of makes sense, which I don't go into on my show. Why don't you go into that? Because it's a taboo topic and it's emotionally charged and the bad guys are the government. If we learn that 9-11 really was an inside job, I don't know how that doesn't really challenge your patriotism.

Now I consider myself a patriot. I love my country. I just don't like the people that run it. I like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I really like those. I'm a very libertarian, borderline anarchist in a political sense, not like craziness,

meaning like I don't think we need much government for anything. Keep us safe abroad, domestically keep it local, that's kind of how I feel. I think the federal government's way too involved in our lives in every different level.

I'm with you.

But the Patriot Act violates the First Amendment in a few different ways. Free speech is gone. So if you say anything that's considered dangerous or explosive, suddenly you're on a list. And then you can be gag ordered. So that's prior restraint. you can't do that. Then you've got the Fourth Amendment violations where illegal search and seizure, you can't

search through Americans without probable cause, you just can't. But the Patriot Act says you no longer need probable cause, you just need to be relevant. So if you're relevant to an investigation, then we don't need a warrant. We can just look into your files. And this gets renewed time and time again. So it's not a left-right Democrat-Republican. They just keep—these are sunset clauses that keep getting re-signed.

I forget the numbers offhand, but 215 is certainly one of them. And the Patriot Act is mostly used for finding drug dealers. It's not really used for terrorism. It never really was. We don't really know if it's ever stopped anything. And then, you know, the IC and the government will say, well, you don't know because we

can't tell you, but we stopped this or that. But did you know? At some point you have to tell us if it worked because we need to decide if we still want to do this because you're encroaching on a First Amendment right, our Fourth, our Fifth Amendment, due process, habeas corpus. And I thought this was just supposed to be for like foreign agents.

But now if an American is on the phone with someone who's a foreign national, now this American is wrapped up in the Patriot Act. When what should happen is as soon as who's ever, surveil foreigners all you want, I don't care. Leave my citizens alone. So as soon as you find out, well, all right, this person of interest is on the phone with an American, well, then it stops. Now we have to bring this out of the Patriot Act and put it into our legal system and have a judge

look at it and all of that. Not a FISA court rubber stamp where FISA is like 99.97% just get yes, go whatever you got to do. That's another violation of separation of powers. You have no oversight. It just seems like, doesn't seem like it's what it is.

You know, it's interesting too, because if they were doing that, with all the, just one aspect, and you know, all the mass shootings that are happening, if they were really surveilling everybody, don't you think those people maybe have

had some type of communication or, I mean, it's been proven, right? There's been things on Facebook, there's been things on Instagram. If they're on there, they're definitely in text messagings and voice calls and all of that stuff.

Unless they want that stuff to happen, maybe they do. Maybe, who knows? Maybe they use it against the Second Amendment.

Well, rather than even speculate, let's look at an actual case where at some point, I don't remember when, during the Biden administration, remember you had all these parents that were protesting about whatever trans issues or whatever they were? I'm not interested in that. Believe what you want to believe on that issue.

That's none of my business. What I care about is the administration worked with a group to write a letter to the president to designate these Americans as potential domestic terrorists and use the Patriot Act to surveil them and gather records on them and look into them.

That's, we can't have that. I don't know why there was an outrage over that. These are Americans from the jump, so the Patriot Act shouldn't apply. But it does, and no one really challenges it. I don't think anyone even really talks about this that much.

I'd never heard about it.

You know, it all goes back to Snowden because they lied and lied and lied. And then the Snowden documents were, it was just such a bombshell, but not only are they collecting all this stuff, I mean, all of us,

every single one of us, But they were in our files, they can read our email, our search history, everything about us. If I'm charged with something and you use the Patriot Act against me, my first thing would be like, well, it's all inadmissible. I'm an American citizen. I have Fourth Amendment right. You didn't have probable cause. Let me see the warrant. Let me see the affidavit.

What judge did you use? Well, we used the FISA judge. Well, the FISA reviews are done in complete secrecy. There's no transparency. No one can, you can't sit in on those. You know, you can't wander into the courtroom like you can in most towns here and just watch proceedings. It's all secret.

It's just,

you've got Richard Nixon who turns the intelligence community, foreign and domestic, against his political enemies. That's bad. So then we review that, then you have the church committee, and out of that you've get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, it's FISA. What was the Church Committee? That was

reviewing all What like CIA and FBI was doing all the bad stuff kind of came to light during the Church Committee and that made? Congress realize oh, there's they're using FBI and to actually go after political enemies. We can't have that. So we'll have FISA, which will review these. But then FISA starts to get abused.

And then when the Patriot Act comes along in 2001, it supercharges FISA. And now everything is just rubber stamped. And we don't know really what they're doing with it. We just know they renew it. And whether it's Trump or Biden or Obama, they sign with a pen and there's applause don't know really what they're doing with it. We just know they renew it and whether it's Trump or Biden or Obama, the sign with the pen and there's applause and America's

going to be safe. And I don't know if there's any evidence of that. You know, out of that time we got the TSA. I think the TSA is just in the way. I think in 2015, they sent, they were called red teams to test the TSA, like secret shop them. And they created mock weapons and mock explosives. Take a guess at what percentage got through.

Oh, man.

95. Are you serious? 95% got through. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan Show from. If you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can.

And if you're feeling extra generous, And if you're feeling extra generous,

please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.