WEBVTT

NOTE Unintended Consequences of NSA Spying

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.500
Dr. Mark Thornton is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the World Research

2
00:00:05.500 --> 00:00:08.760
and Education Center for the Austrian School of Economics.

3
00:00:08.760 --> 00:00:09.760
Dr., good morning.

4
00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:10.760
Good morning, Stephen, Joanne.

5
00:00:10.760 --> 00:00:11.760
It's great to be with you.

6
00:00:11.760 --> 00:00:12.760
Good morning, Michigan.

7
00:00:12.760 --> 00:00:15.760
Well, good morning to you, my friend.

8
00:00:15.760 --> 00:00:16.760
Good morning.

9
00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:20.320
Let's talk about unintended consequences of this whole PRISM program.

10
00:00:20.320 --> 00:00:24.400
I mean, there's a lot of discussion, obviously, as to whether it was the right thing to do,

11
00:00:24.400 --> 00:00:28.940
the wrong thing to do, who's in charge, where's the command and control and the oversight,

12
00:00:28.940 --> 00:00:58.940
Well, it's just a bad sign for the country. I mean, it's a sign that the Democrats and the Republicans are in league with one another, you know, not just on expanding the budget, not just on expanding the national debt, but also expanding government's reach into our privacy. And, you know, companies don't like that kind of thing. Yahoo! and a lot of these other companies have sued the government to prevent them from spying on their customers.

13
00:00:58.940 --> 00:01:11.940
And you know, when companies like that, the biggest employers with the best jobs, start getting kicked off at the government and what they're doing to our privacy, they're going to locate elsewhere and they're going to go elsewhere with those jobs.

14
00:01:11.940 --> 00:01:15.940
Internet jobs and technology jobs can go anywhere on the planet, basically.

15
00:01:15.940 --> 00:01:27.940
And this kind of intrusive behavior on the part of the federal government is the type of thing that drives people, not just Snowden out of the country, but companies and jobs out of the country.

16
00:01:27.940 --> 00:01:33.140
So it's just a bad, bad policy that's ineffective, of course, as in, you know, all of what the

17
00:01:33.140 --> 00:01:36.460
government does is ineffective, and it chews up a lot of resources.

18
00:01:36.460 --> 00:01:42.240
The NSA is getting at least $10 billion a year, and, you know, so it's a losing proposition

19
00:01:42.240 --> 00:01:45.820
for Americans across the board, besides being unconstitutional.

20
00:01:45.820 --> 00:01:49.860
You know, I guess for a lot of Americans, though, I think when they look at, you know,

21
00:01:49.860 --> 00:01:57.100
the prison program, I think that they're thinking, is prison really helping to prevent terrorist

22
00:01:57.100 --> 00:02:01.980
Attacks, and we heard about the New York incident, but we don't hear a lot about much else.

23
00:02:01.980 --> 00:02:04.700
Do you think that program is effective in protecting us?

24
00:02:04.700 --> 00:02:05.700
Absolutely not.

25
00:02:05.700 --> 00:02:08.860
It's not even designed to protect us against attack.

26
00:02:08.860 --> 00:02:15.520
It's more designed to apprehend the terrorist after the attacks because with all the computers

27
00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:19.980
that they can use, they're not going to be able to take every record, every phone call

28
00:02:19.980 --> 00:02:23.660
and email in the country and be able to spot terrorists in advance.

29
00:02:23.660 --> 00:02:27.020
So it wasn't really even designed to stop terrorism.

30
00:02:27.020 --> 00:02:31.980
is designed to clean up the mess afterwards, and so, you know, the whole idea that it has

31
00:02:31.980 --> 00:02:33.860
any effect, and who can we trust?

32
00:02:33.860 --> 00:02:41.860
I mean, at one point the NSA said, well, we've prevented dozens of attacks, and then in Senate

33
00:02:41.860 --> 00:02:47.060
testimony they said they've only prevented a few attacks, and some of these attacks are

34
00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:53.620
things that the FBI and the CIA have set up, you know, they set people up with fake bombs

35
00:02:53.620 --> 00:02:54.620
to, you know...

36
00:03:24.620 --> 00:03:28.260
Telling us what we are supposed to think, and I don't, frankly, trust any of them.

37
00:03:28.260 --> 00:03:29.260
No, you shouldn't.

38
00:03:29.260 --> 00:03:30.260
Absolutely not.

39
00:03:30.260 --> 00:03:35.700
You should not trust the mainstream media and the mainstream pundits and the mainstream

40
00:03:35.700 --> 00:03:36.700
politicians.

41
00:03:36.700 --> 00:03:40.900
They're, you know, they're basically, they have an agenda, as you suggest, and it's an

42
00:03:40.900 --> 00:03:45.860
agenda of, you know, the big government, basically, and that they're living off of that government.

43
00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:51.940
They're getting all the power, and, you know, you and me are paying the bill, basically.

44
00:03:51.940 --> 00:04:00.060
So people have to pay attention to media such as yourself, and our website is mises.org.

45
00:04:00.060 --> 00:04:02.100
We give an alternative opinion.

46
00:04:02.100 --> 00:04:06.780
The Keynesian economists line up in favor of government programs no matter what it is,

47
00:04:06.780 --> 00:04:07.780
basically.

48
00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:08.780
Despite failure.

49
00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:11.580
Yeah, despite continuing failure.

50
00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:16.660
Ben Bernanke with his green shoots and Paul Krugman with his massive deficit spending,

51
00:04:16.660 --> 00:04:22.460
You know, going along with things like spying on the American people, you know, these people

52
00:04:22.460 --> 00:04:23.460
can't be trusted.

53
00:04:23.460 --> 00:04:28.640
I mean, they're in it for themselves, and they are selling the story of big government,

54
00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:31.500
big brother, and, you know, we just have to look elsewhere.

55
00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:35.860
We only have about 15 seconds left, but you know, the Boston Marathon bombing, we had

56
00:04:35.860 --> 00:04:40.940
a suspect identified by a foreign government, we had websites being viewed that were problematic,

57
00:04:40.940 --> 00:04:45.140
and yet we had to go to the public to try to identify these guys through videotape.

58
00:04:45.140 --> 00:04:49.460
How effective is PRISM, then, in even cleaning up after the fact?

59
00:04:49.460 --> 00:04:50.460
Absolutely.

60
00:04:50.460 --> 00:04:51.460
It's totally ineffective.

61
00:04:51.460 --> 00:04:55.780
If you look at these cases, you know, these shootings and these killings, it's always

62
00:04:55.780 --> 00:05:01.940
some private individual or private cameras or, you know, the private system that actually

63
00:05:01.940 --> 00:05:08.180
solves the case, whether it's shooters, terrorists, robbers, kidnappers, it's always the private

64
00:05:08.180 --> 00:05:09.780
sector that solves these things.

65
00:05:09.780 --> 00:05:10.780
Got that right.

66
00:05:10.780 --> 00:05:12.700
Yet the government's bumbling on.

67
00:05:12.700 --> 00:05:17.540
Dr. Mark Thornton, terrific conversation today. Love to have you back sometime in the future.

68
00:05:17.540 --> 00:05:21.300
Much more to talk about. Really like your insights. Like you said, you can find out

69
00:05:21.300 --> 00:05:24.980
more at mises.org. Doctor, thank you.

70
00:05:24.980 --> 00:05:26.060
Thank you. I loved it.