Liberal or Conservative, You Should Worry About the Government Targeting Your Data

September 22, 2017

WRITER

The IRS has targeted conservative groups in the past, infamously taking aim at Tea Party nonprofits. Last month, the site-hosting platform DreamHost reported that the government wanted more than 1.3 million IP addresses for people who visited a site created to organize an anti-Trump riot on Inauguration Day.

Whether you’re closer to being a Tea Party protestor or an anti-Trump demonstrator, this kind of big government should scare you. Glenn Beck talked with tech journalist Saul Hansell about the dangers of having our entire lives online on Thursday’s “The Glenn Beck Radio Program.”

“Should the government be able to have the names, the IP addresses and the search history of everyone who went to that website?” Glenn asked. “This is what’s being debated right now.”

The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” listing “probable cause” as the exception. But what happens in a world where so many details of our lives are in the digital cloud, not in our homes?

“There’s a line here that has become very, very difficult in a world of digital information,” Hansell said.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Do you remember during the Tea Party movement at its height, where the IRS started playing games with people's information? And imagine if during the -- the Tea Party days, if you had gone to the 9/12 Project and you had just searched or you had gone to a Tea Party website and you had just searched and you had maybe posted. And then some people go out and they start to do something violent.

Should the government be able to have the names, the IP addresses, and the search history of everyone who went to that website?

This is what's being debated right now. But it's being debated not with a 9/12 Project or a Tea Party project. It's something that would make a lot of people on the right happy, I guess. Disrupt J20. That was the group that disrupted the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Now the government has arrested 200 people under felony rioting. But the government wants the IP addresses, the emails, and the history of anyone who engaged with these people through the website, Disrupt J20. Should they have that right? And how would you feel if the situation were reversed?

STU: We've talked a lot about these lines and how they're drawn with the government and how it relates to your data. Wanted to get someone who really knows these things, the ins and outs of it. Saul Hansel is a former technology reporter at the New York Times. He's now the managing director at Media Paradox Labs.

GLENN: So, Saul, you wrote about this in 2008, about your -- your op-ed was, one subpoena is all it takes to reveal your online life.

We're entering a new world here. Are we not?

SAUL: The world even in the nine years since I wrote that, the amount of information about you that is online somewhere, sent up by your cell phone about your location, all the questions you ask Siri, all sorts of other things, is exponentially higher.

So what you said at the introduction is I think critical here: We've got to be very thoughtful in drawing some lines so that prosecutors can do the right things, but not be searching everything about everybody, which is available to them now.

GLENN: So, is all, here's the problem that I think we have in society right now: We are divided into two camps. And I think they are bogus camps. Both of them. I think they both are in many ways opting for the same thing. Because when it's their side that has the power, they're all for it. When they're on the receiving side, they're all against it.

We have a job to do to try to convince people on both sides, you don't want to give the power like this to the government, ever.

How do we do that?

SAUL: You know, I think that the way you introduce this, where you said to people who might have identified with one group and against the other, that things switch, right? We know that there is a history of governments snooping on people, where they shouldn't. The FBI, you know, tracking the extra marital affairs of Martin Luther King. All kinds of things where governments do what they shouldn't do. That seems bad. But there are really horrible criminals that blow things up and kill people, and that's bad. And the art here, right? The Fourth Amendment says, the right of people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated without probable cause. So there's a -- a line here that has become very, very difficult in a world of digital information.

GLENN: We were -- you know, the Fourth Amendment was written at a time when people were using quickly pens. And so it's easy for people to say, "Well, no, I wrote that. And that's my paper." What are you doing? You can't go through my desk. You just can't come in here.

However, everything we have -- literally everything we have and done and thought and searched and questioned, everything is now up in a cloud. And it is stored forever. And there is some disconnect with people on the Fourth Amendment, if it's on the cloud. And people will make the excuse, well, I'm not looking for some -- I'm not doing anything wrong.

I don't have a problem if they look at everything. That's insanity.

SAUL: You know, the law has made a distinction. Right? Between things that are public, things that are private and personal -- you know, in your house. And things that are sort of intermediate. Like a business record.

So a cop can go up to a dry cleaner and say, you know, with a certain amount of subpoena power, did so-and-so dry clean a suit at this date? A much higher standard applies to going into your house and looking in the pockets of your suit, right? The business record was seen as something that's not quite public, but not a secret.

The problem is, as you say, we're not printing our secrets, things you might not even keep in your desk drawer, you might keep in your Gmail account or in your, you know, online files. Or are in the photographs that you don't even know have been backed up to somebody's server. And so at a minimum, I think the policy issue is, should we treat the cloud extensions of our life with the same protections that we treat things in our homes, in our personal privacy?

That's a question that I don't think law enforcement wants to ask. Because they like it this way. They get more stuff than ever. But I think it's a good discussion to have.

STU: And it's a tough thing, is all. Because if there is an attack. If there is some crime, people are going to want it solved. They're going to want the law enforcement to have these tools at their disposal.

SAUL: Yep.

STU: And it's always going to be more powerful to say, this person could have been saved. Their life could have been saved if we had these powers.

SAUL: Yep.

STU: And I don't know the story of, well, the government searched too much through my Gmail is going to convince people the other way.

How do you get people kind of across that line and to understand that it's really a bigger issue than that?

Because this is everything you've ever thought. They can prove in lawsuits, things that you made in jokes. They can tie to whatever they're accusing you of now. There's a real big consequence of this.

SAUL: Right. You know, Glenn said earlier, you know, people say, my life is an open book. What does it matter? And, you know, that's true. You know, most people are really boring most of the time.

GLENN: Yes.

SAUL: But every now and then, right? Some set of things happens that you either have a real secret. Maybe even not --

GLENN: Or, you know, may I suggest this? Saul, I know I'm different. But I don't think -- there's probably just more frequency of this. Because of what I do, probably because of what you do, I'm searching for all kinds of crazy stuff.

SAUL: Sure.

GLENN: And I'm looking up mass murder and everything else. And you could, if you had access to all of my life, you could assemble things and say, well, look at the picture we have here, Mr. Beck. And I would then be in the situation where I would have to explain, no, that's not what it is. That's not -- no. And so it -- you don't want people to be able to come in and assemble parts of your life, even if you don't have something to hide, which we all do. Even if you don't have something to hide, when somebody has all of your information, they can assemble it in very nefarious ways, should they choose.

SAUL: Yes. So they can find, you know, inadvertent things or misleading things. And we also have a general, you know, standard here, that cops need to know what they're looking for, and they can't use a search for one thing as a way to fish around to see -- you know, there must be something this guy did wrong. Right?

And what you described is absolutely true. What they're going to do in this case -- right? Because there's a -- there's supposedly a compromise the courts are imposing. But I think it has the risk you're pointing out. Which is the government is going to go search through a bunch of emails among people who are involved in this, you know, disrupt website for certain terms. Bombs or violence or riot or whatever they want. And then they get to read those emails.

And guess what, those are emails by people who they didn't expect and may not, in fact -- maybe have used the word riot in a completely different context. And suddenly the emails are read. And somebody might notice something else. And it can be used by, you know, the government to harass the centers or do all kinds of bad things. So I -- what Stu said. Yes. If I was searching every email that was sent by anybody in the world in the two weeks before 9/11 and maybe I could figure out who did something, you know, or I searched for key words, you know, you might have prevented something really bad. But is that a price you're willing to pay to let the government go on phishing?

GLENN: No. No. It's not for me.

I was -- I had a conversation with Eric Schmidt from Google.

SAUL: Yeah.

GLENN: And he said -- and he's said this publicly a few times. I don't remember the year. But I think it was like 2025 or something like that. He said, "People's lives will be so open and so destroyed by what they have put out online, just haphazardly, or not even thinking, that they'll actually have to change their name by the time they're 25 years old."

I don't think people understand the world is changing and how dramatically things are going to change.

SAUL: You know, I have teenage daughters. And basically, my advice to them is be careful about secrets. You can have some. But you shouldn't have very many. You should -- you know, think about them carefully, and preserve them. And you should make them only analogue. Right? Once you make it digital, it's not a secret.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Colorado counselor fights back after faith declared “illegal”

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck joins Megyn Kelly LIVE — One night ONLY in Fort Worth!

Get ready for sparks to fly. For the first time in years, Glenn will come face-to-face with Megyn Kelly — and this time, he’s the one in the hot seat. On October 25, 2025, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, Glenn joins Megyn on her “Megyn Kelly Live Tour” for a no-holds-barred conversation that promises laughs, surprises, and maybe even a few uncomfortable questions.

What will happen when two of America’s sharpest voices collide under the spotlight? Will Glenn finally reveal the major announcement he’s been teasing on the radio for weeks? You’ll have to be there to find out.

This promises to be more than just an interview — it’s a live showdown packed with wit, honesty, and the kind of energy you can only feel if you are in the room. Tickets are selling fast, so don’t miss your chance to see Glenn like you’ve never seen him before.

Get your tickets NOW at www.MegynKelly.com before they’re gone!

What our response to Israel reveals about us

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

I have been honored to receive the Defender of Israel Award from Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Jerusalem Post recently named me one of the strongest Christian voices in support of Israel.

And yet, my support is not blind loyalty. It’s not a rubber stamp for any government or policy. I support Israel because I believe it is my duty — first as a Christian, but even if I weren’t a believer, I would still support her as a man of reason, morality, and common sense.

Because faith isn’t required to understand this: Israel’s existence is not just about one nation’s survival — it is about the survival of Western civilization itself.

It is a lone beacon of shared values in the Middle East. It is a bulwark standing against radical Islam — the same evil that seeks to dismantle our own nation from within.

And my support is not rooted in politics. It is rooted in something simpler and older than politics: a people’s moral and historical right to their homeland, and their right to live in peace.

Israel has that right — and the right to defend herself against those who openly, repeatedly vow her destruction.

Let’s make it personal: if someone told me again and again that they wanted to kill me and my entire family — and then acted on that threat — would I not defend myself? Wouldn’t you? If Hamas were Canada, and we were Israel, and they did to us what Hamas has done to them, there wouldn’t be a single building left standing north of our border. That’s not a question of morality.

That’s just the truth. All people — every people — have a God-given right to protect themselves. And Israel is doing exactly that.

My support for Israel’s right to finish the fight against Hamas comes after eighty years of rejected peace offers and failed two-state solutions. Hamas has never hidden its mission — the eradication of Israel. That’s not a political disagreement.

That’s not a land dispute. That is an annihilationist ideology. And while I do not believe this is America’s war to fight, I do believe — with every fiber of my being — that it is Israel’s right, and moral duty, to defend her people.

Criticism of military tactics is fair. That’s not antisemitism. But denying Israel’s right to exist, or excusing — even celebrating — the barbarity of Hamas? That’s something far darker.

We saw it on October 7th — the face of evil itself. Women and children slaughtered. Babies burned alive. Innocent people raped and dragged through the streets. And now, to see our own fellow citizens march in defense of that evil… that is nothing short of a moral collapse.

If the chants in our streets were, “Hamas, return the hostages — Israel, stop the bombing,” we could have a conversation.

But that’s not what we hear.

What we hear is open sympathy for genocidal hatred. And that is a chasm — not just from decency, but from humanity itself. And here lies the danger: that same hatred is taking root here — in Dearborn, in London, in Paris — not as horror, but as heroism. If we are not vigilant, the enemy Israel faces today will be the enemy the free world faces tomorrow.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about truth. It’s about the courage to call evil by its name and to say “Never again” — and mean it.

And you don’t have to open a Bible to understand this. But if you do — if you are a believer — then this issue cuts even deeper. Because the question becomes: what did God promise, and does He keep His word?

He told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.” He promised to make Abraham the father of many nations and to give him “the whole land of Canaan.” And though Abraham had other sons, God reaffirmed that promise through Isaac. And then again through Isaac’s son, Jacob — Israel — saying: “The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you and to your descendants after you.”

That’s an everlasting promise.

And from those descendants came a child — born in Bethlehem — who claimed to be the Savior of the world. Jesus never rejected His title as “son of David,” the great King of Israel.

He said plainly that He came “for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And when He returns, Scripture says He will return as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” And where do you think He will go? Back to His homeland — Israel.

Tamir Kalifa / Stringer | Getty Images

And what will He find when He gets there? His brothers — or his brothers’ enemies? Will the roads where He once walked be preserved? Or will they lie in rubble, as Gaza does today? If what He finds looks like the aftermath of October 7th, then tell me — what will be my defense as a Christian?

Some Christians argue that God’s promises to Israel have been transferred exclusively to the Church. I don’t believe that. But even if you do, then ask yourself this: if we’ve inherited the promises, do we not also inherit the land? Can we claim the birthright and then, like Esau, treat it as worthless when the world tries to steal it?

So, when terrorists come to slaughter Israelis simply for living in the land promised to Abraham, will we stand by? Or will we step forward — into the line of fire — and say,

“Take me instead”?

Because this is not just about Israel’s right to exist.

It’s about whether we still know the difference between good and evil.

It’s about whether we still have the courage to stand where God stands.

And if we cannot — if we will not — then maybe the question isn’t whether Israel will survive. Maybe the question is whether we will.

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