WEBVTT

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We are all activists now.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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I'll just stop here.

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(Laughter)

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From the families who are fighting
to maintain funding for public schools,

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the tens of thousands of people
who joined Occupy Wall Street

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or marched with Black Lives Matter

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to protest police brutality
against African Americans,

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families that join rallies,

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pro-life and pro-choice,

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those of us who are afraid

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that our friends and neighbors
are going to be deported

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or that they'll be added to lists

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because they are Muslim,

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people who advocate for gun rights
and for gun control

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and the millions of people
who joined the women's marches

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all across the country this last January.

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(Applause)

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We are all activists now,

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and that means that we all have something
to worry about from surveillance.

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Surveillance means
government collection and use

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of private and sensitive data about us.

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And surveillance is essential

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to law enforcement
and to national security.

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But the history of surveillance

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is one that includes surveillance abuses

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where this sensitive information
has been used against people

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because of their race,

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their national origin,

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their sexual orientation,

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and in particular,
because of their activism,

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their political beliefs.

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About 53 years ago,

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
gave his "I have a dream" speech

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on the Mall in Washington.

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And today the ideas behind this speech
of racial equality and tolerance

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are so noncontroversial

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that my daughters
study the speech in third grade.

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But at the time,

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Dr. King was extremely controversial.

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The legendary and notorious
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed,

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or wanted to believe,

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that the Civil Rights Movement
was a Soviet communist plot

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intended to destabilize
the American government.

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And so Hoover had his agents
put bugs in Dr. King's hotel rooms,

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and those bugs picked up conversations
between civil rights leaders

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talking about the strategies and tactics
of the Civil Rights Movement.

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They also picked up sounds of Dr. King

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having sex with women
who were not his wife,

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and J. Edgar Hoover
saw the opportunity here

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to discredit and undermine
the Civil Rights Movement.

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The FBI sent a package of these recordings

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along with a handwritten note to Dr. King,

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and a draft of this note
was found in FBI archives years later,

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and the letter said,

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"You are no clergyman and you know it.

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King, like all frauds,
your end is approaching."

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The letter even seemed
to encourage Dr. King to commit suicide,

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saying, "King, there is
only one thing left for you to do.

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You know what it is.

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You better take it before
your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self

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is bared to the nation."

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But the important thing is,

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Dr. King was not abnormal.

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Every one of us has something
that we want to hide from somebody.

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And even more important,

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J. Edgar Hoover wasn't abnormal either.

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The history of surveillance abuses

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is not the history
of one bad, megalomaniacal man.

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Throughout his decades at the FBI,

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J. Edgar Hoover enjoyed the support
of the presidents that he served,

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Democratic and Republican alike.

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After all, it was John F. Kennedy
and his brother Robert Kennedy

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who knew about and approved
the surveillance of Dr. King.

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Hoover ran a program
called COINTELPRO for 15 years

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which was designed
to spy on and undermine civic groups

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that were devoted
to things like civil rights,

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the Women's Rights Movement,

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and peace groups and anti-war movements.

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And the surveillance didn't stop there.

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Lyndon Baines Johnson,

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during the election campaign,

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had the campaign airplane
of his rival Barry Goldwater bugged

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as part of his effort
to win that election.

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And then, of course, there was Watergate.

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Burglars were caught

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breaking into the Democratic
National Committee headquarters

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at the Watergate Hotel,

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the Nixon administration was involved
in covering up the burglary,

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and eventually Nixon
had to step down as president.

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COINTELPRO and Watergate
were a wake-up call for Americans.

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Surveillance was out of control

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and it was being used
to squelch political challengers.

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And so Americans rose to the occasion

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and what we did was
we reformed surveillance law.

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And the primary tool we used
to reform surveillance law

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was to require a search warrant

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for the government to be able to get
access to our phone calls and our letters.

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Now, the reason why
a search warrant is important

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is because it interposes a judge

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in the relationship
between investigators and the citizens,

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and that judge's job is to make sure

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that there's good cause
for the surveillance,

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that the surveillance
is targeted at the right people,

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and that the information that's collected

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is going to be used
for legitimate government purposes

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and not for discriminatory ones.

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This was our system,

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and what this means is

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that President Obama
did not wiretap Trump Tower.

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The system is set up to prevent
something like that from happening

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without a judge being involved.

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But what happens when we're not talking
about phone calls or letters anymore?

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Today, we have technology

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that makes it cheap and easy
for the government to collect information

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on ordinary everyday people.

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Your phone call records

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can reveal whether you have an addiction,

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what your religion is,

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what charities you donate to,

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what political candidate you support.

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And yet, our government
collected, dragnet-style,

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Americans' calling records for years.

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In 2012, the Republican
National Convention

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highlighted a new technology
it was planning to use,

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facial recognition,

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to identify people
who were going to be in the crowd

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who might be activists or troublemakers

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and to stop them ahead of time.

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Today, over 50 percent of American adults

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have their faceprint
in a government database.

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The Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

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concocted a plan

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to find out what Americans
were going to gun shows

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by using license plate detectors

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to scan the license plates of cars

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that were in the parking lots
of these events.

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Today, we believe that over 70 percent
of police departments

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have automatic license plate
detection technology

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that they're using to track people's cars
as they drive through town.

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And all of this information,

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the license plates, the faceprints,

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the phone records,

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your address books, your buddy lists,

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the photos that you upload
to Dropbox or Google Photos,

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and sometimes even
your chats and your emails

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are not protected
by a warrant requirement.

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So what that means is we have
all of this information on regular people

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that's newly available
at very low expense.

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It is the golden age for surveillance.

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Now, every parent is going
to understand what this means.

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When you have a little baby

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and the baby's young,

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that child is not able
to climb out of its crib.

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But eventually your little girl gets older

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and she's able to climb out of the crib,

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but you tell her,
"Don't climb out of the crib. OK?"

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And every parent knows
what's going to happen.

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Some of those babies
are going to climb out of the crib.

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Right? That's the difference
between ability and permission.

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Well, the same thing is true
with the government today.

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It used to be that our government
didn't have the ability

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to do widespread, massive surveillance
on hundreds of millions of Americans

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and then abuse that information.

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But now our government has grown up,

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and we have that technology today.

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The government has the ability,

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and that means the law
is more important than ever before.

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The law is supposed to say

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when the government
has permission to do it,

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and it's supposed to ensure
that there's some kind of ramification.

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We notice when those laws are broken

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and there's some of kind of
ramification or punishment.

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The law is more important than ever
because we are now living in a world

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where only rules
are stopping the government

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from abusing this information.

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But the law has fallen down on the job.

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Particularly since September 11
the law has fallen down on the job,

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and we do not have
the rules in place that we need.

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And we are seeing
the ramifications of that.

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So fusion centers
are these joint task forces

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between local, state
and federal government

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that are meant to ferret out
domestic terrorism.

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And what we've seen
is fusion center reports

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that say that you might be dangerous

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if you voted for a third-party candidate,

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or you own a "Don't Tread On Me" flag,

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or you watched movies that are anti-tax.

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These same fusion centers have spied
on Muslim community groups' reading lists

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and on Quakers who are resisting
military recruiting in high schools.

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The Internal Revenue Service
has disproportionately audited

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groups that have "Tea Party"
or "Patriot" in their name.

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And now customs and border patrol

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is stopping people
as they come into the country

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and demanding our social
networking passwords

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which will allow them
to see who our friends are,

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what we say

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and even to impersonate us online.

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Now, civil libertarians like myself

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have been trying to draw
people's attention to these things

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and fighting against them for years.

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This was a huge problem
during the Obama administration,

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but now the problem is worse.

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When the New York Police Department

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spies on Muslims

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or a police department
uses license plate detectors

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to find out where
the officers' spouses are

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or those sorts of things,

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that is extremely dangerous.

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But when a president repurposes the power

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of federal surveillance
and the federal government

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to retaliate against political opposition,

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that is a tyranny.

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And so we are all activists now,

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and we all have something
to fear from surveillance.

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But just like in the time
of Dr. Martin Luther King,

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we can reform the way things are.

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First of all, use encryption.

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Encryption protects your information

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from being inexpensively
and opportunistically collected.

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It rolls back the golden age
for surveillance.

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Second, support surveillance reform.

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Did you know that if you have a friend

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who works for the French
or German governments

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or for an international human rights group

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or for a global oil company

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that your friend is a valid
foreign intelligence target?

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And what that means is that when
you have conversations with that friend,

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the US government
may be collecting that information.

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And when that information is collected,

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even though it's
conversations with Americans,

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it can then be funneled to the FBI

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where the FBI is allowed
to search through it

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without getting a warrant,

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without probable cause,

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looking for information about Americans

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and whatever crimes we may have committed

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with no need to document
any kind of suspicion.

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The law that allows some of this to happen

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is called Section 702
of the FISA Amendments Act,

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and we have a great opportunity this year,

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because Section 702
is going to expire at the end of 2017,

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which means that
Congress's inertia is on our side

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if we want reform.

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And we can pressure our representatives

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to actually implement
important reforms to this law

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and protect our data
from this redirection and misuse.

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And finally, one of the reasons
why things have gotten so out of control

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is because so much
of what happens with surveillance --

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the technology, the enabling rules
and the policies

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that are either there
or not there to protect us --

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are secret or classified.

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We need transparency,
and we need to know as Americans

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what the government is doing in our name

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so that the surveillance that takes place
and the use of that information

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is democratically accounted for.

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We are all activists now,

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which means that we all have something
to worry about from surveillance.

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But like in the time
of Dr. Martin Luther King,

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there is stuff that we can do about it.

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So please join me, and let's get to work.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)