Dangerous Expansion of Government Surveillance Capabilities

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 2:

4:05pm- On Saturday, the House of Representatives passed four foreign aid bills totaling $95 billion—including a package that would send $60 billion to Ukraine. The bills had cleared a procedural hurdle on Friday with bipartisan support—316 to 94, passing with more Democrat than Republican support. The aid package includes a measure that, if passed in the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden, would force Chinese company ByteDance to sell its popular social media platform TikTok to an American-based company—citing a threat to national security. Refusal to sell TikTok would result in the app being banned in the United States.

4:10pm- Eric Boehm of Reason writes: “Tech companies and First Amendment groups are calling attention to a provision in a domestic spying bill that they say would significantly expand the federal government's power to snoop on Americans' digital communications—potentially by forcing employees of private businesses to become informants. The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a global trade group that represents major tech companies including Google and Microsoft, is calling for last-minute changes to the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), which could get a final vote in the Senate on Friday. The bill's primary purpose is to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to scoop up communications between Americans and individuals abroad. But the bill also includes a provision that ‘vastly expands the U.S. government's warrantless surveillance capabilities, damaging the competitiveness of U.S. technology companies large and small, and arguably imperiling the continued global free flow of data between the U.S. and its allies,’ the ITI said in a statement this week.” You can read the full report here: https://reason.com/2024/04/19/how-the-fisa-reauthorization-bill-could-force-maintenance-workers-and-custodians-to-become-government-spies/

4:30pm- Dave McCormick—Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania & former Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs during the George W. Bush Administration—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to preview tomorrow’s Pennsylvania primary, and his campaign to unseat Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-PA) in November’s general election. You can learn more about his campaign here: https://www.davemccormickpa.com

4:45pm- While speaking to the press before boarding Air Force One last Wednesday, President Joe Biden seemingly suggested that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in New Guinea…wait. what? The White House later clarified that Biden’s uncle had not been eaten by cannibals—however, according to reports, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea is not happy about the unsubstantiated claim!