➡ The video creator defends his stance on privacy, arguing that it doesn’t protect criminals but shields innocent people from mass surveillance. He emphasizes that privacy tools are not designed to evade targeted investigations once a crime has been committed. He also highlights his commitment to free speech, regardless of personal agreement with the views expressed. Lastly, he warns about the dangers of unchecked surveillance and its potential to stifle free speech, drawing from his personal experiences under a dictatorship in the Philippines.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of privacy in maintaining free speech. It warns that surveillance data, held by big tech companies and governments, can be used to manipulate opinions and silence dissent. The author encourages people to protect their privacy, not because they have something to hide, but to resist control. They advocate for open dialogue, where truth can compete freely, and discourage allowing any entity to dictate what one can say or think.

My last video on government tracking of protesters was apparently controversial. So many comments on subs and thumbs down accusing me of supporting criminals. And what is interesting is that most of the negative comments came from people who apparently didn’t even watch the video. If they did watch, they would have seen a completely politically neutral take on what is actually just OPSEC to evade mass surveillance and really applies to all people, not just those in a protest. What was also unusual was that the backlash came from the right-wing followers thinking I’m trying to protect left-wing violent protesters.

I’m consistent. I’m a free speech absolutist. I may not agree with your views, but I’ll defend your right to express them peacefully, whether it’s on the streets or online. That’s why privacy tools matter for everyone, not just one side. That’s certainly one aspect I want to address, but the other is the false notion that privacy supports criminals. Technically, this is way off. It is guided by a wrong understanding of the surveillance infrastructure. We need to clear all this up today. Stay right there. Privacy does not protect criminals. The main attack line from the backlash, you’re protecting criminals.

This is flat out wrong. It’s the exact same flawed reasoning that gave us the Patriot Act and turned mass surveillance into everyday reality. The system now assumes every citizen is a potential terrorist or criminal. Blanket tracking with no warrant, no probable cause, and that setup is tailor-made for controlling speech and dissent. Look at Australia. Lawmakers demand weekend encryption and mandatory age verification ID checks to fight crime or protect children, even though they clearly don’t understand how encryption actually secures online commerce and banking. Same pattern here. Half the US states now require age verification for adult sites, which inevitably leads to broader internet tracking and VPN restrictions.

Always the same pretext for more control. But let’s be precise. The privacy techniques and obstacles I teach are aimed at mass surveillance, the passive always-on collection that hits everyone. Every phone call logged, every license plate read, every click recorded. No trigger required. No distinction between law-abiding people and anyone else. This is precisely what the Fourth Amendment exists to stop. Unreasonable searches and seizures. In a free country, random car trunk searches at every intersection would be outrageous. The same logic applies here. If you’re following the law, you are entitled to that protection.

Once someone actually commits a crime, assaulting an ICE agent, eluding, destroying property, or injuring people on January 6th, they cross into active surveillance. At that point, law enforcement pours resources into it. Every nearby camera, reviewed, gate analysis, voice prints, targeted stingrays, deep forensics, shooters and suspects get identified quickly. Nothing in my videos is designed to block or evade that level of targeted investigation. It can’t. Privacy tools can provide some insulation for an innocent person caught in the dragnet, say geofenced near an incident. But they do not shield actual criminals from justice once active pursuit begins.

So if you’re unsubscribing or thumbs-downing because you think this content protects criminals, you need to reassess how surveillance technology actually operates. This misunderstanding is exactly what fueled the Patriot Act, expanded FISA abuses, and built the surveillance infrastructure we’re all living under now. Wake up to the real threat. Not privacy advocates, but the unchecked mass tracking that erodes everyone’s freedoms. My stance as a free speech absolutist. Now let’s focus on my intense conviction of our right to free speech. We have to establish what this means clearly. Whether or not I agree with what you speak about, you have the right to say it.

That is what the Constitution says as well, and it is my primary guide in the decision to become an American citizen. I’m an immigrant. Always law-abiding and never illegal. I chose to become an American citizen a long time ago. I’ve been an American citizen longer than many of you have been alive. And may I add that I’m a patriotic American with no dual citizenship and untainted loyalty to my country. If you do not believe in free speech or the right of the opposition to speech, then you’re no different than the fake people of old Twitter that banned people on social media at the behest of Biden’s FBI.

Then you’re an American in name only, and you should be ashamed, just as I was ashamed at the blatant use of censorship in the prior administration. Free speech is not forced on me by law. My position on free speech is guided by a life history and not based just on following the laws of the United States. I was born in the Philippines, and during my youth, the country was turned into a dictatorship by Marcos. I experienced that firsthand, the iron fist, all press controlled by the government. No dissent, otherwise you disappear.

Guns collected by the government, so no way to rebel. But the worst was an almost secret structure where those on the take could report you to the Marcos government. Anyone could be on the take. It could be your relatives or your neighbors. You had no idea. It was impossible to openly speak since you didn’t know who you were speaking to. Those profiting from the regime were known as cronies. Talk about stifling free speech. It was utter silence, even in private. If you heard of this history, you will know that the Marcos government was overthrown in 1986 when the top general and the minister of defense attempted a coup and barricaded themselves inside a fort together with loyal soldiers.

Then Marcos sent his tanks to attack the fort. But suddenly the solid majority of people, millions, took to the streets and blocked the tanks. And that’s when the military shifted and backed the people. That was the first time the people showed their true voice publicly. And Marcos fled the country to go to Hawaii. Now I was already in the U.S. when all this happened, so I did not witness this firsthand. But the history of oppression stayed with me and guides me. I don’t want a repeat of that anywhere. When someone tries to censor and block free speech, I’m reminded of how someone in power can twist people’s beliefs.

What if the dictator had surveillance tool? If Marcos lived in today’s world where surveillance tools allowed him to get a sense of his supporters and detractors, he could have attacked his enemies early on. And attacking doesn’t necessarily mean jail. It could be blocking of employment and opportunities for an entire family, for example. Pressure can be built in various ways. This kind of scenario already exists in so many countries today. Some in democratic countries like the UK or Australia where we assumed there were free speech laws. But apparently free speech is not a given.

You already know that in the UK you can get arrested for what you post in social media. Knowing that surveillance is used to shut speech on any particular side, whether conservative or liberal, it is shameful truly for some of you to target me for your misguided belief in speech control because someone doesn’t follow your line of thinking. Censorship, stifling of speech, can happen regardless if the government is currently liberal or conservative. The tools allow this control and it just shifts focus depending on who’s in control. And the effect of getting blacklisted, like the effect of McCarthyism during the 1950s, is cataclysmic for those people.

Those blacklisted could not get a job. And even in modern day America, getting listed in a database, especially improperly as a violent extremist or domestic terrorist, can have permanent implications to careers of themselves and their families. I don’t cater to the crowd that overuses the reference to Hitler or Stalin as it is much like crying wolf over and over. But I think it should be obvious to you all that giving unfettered power to a few people, to our entire data, is dangerous. Am I helping ICE protesters? I have no problem helping non-violent ICE protesters gain privacy and safety while they speak their minds freely.

Again, I’m a free speech absolutist. Some of you will even make some really bad assumptions that because I’m an immigrant and non-white, I must support illegals trying to escape ICE, even criminal aliens. What I think is actually none of your business. Well, what’s worse, trying to profile groups in absolute terms based on your own perceptions of what I am or assuming that people do not have nuanced beliefs is unfortunately a sign that you may need some help in the intellectual rigor department. Sorry, but that’s the truth. But even if you’re against the ICE protesters, the problem is that those who openly ignore privacy and put themselves in the surveillance databases don’t understand a secondary risk that’s bad for all of us.

The risk is not that government might identify the ICE protesters or a home and puts you in a violent extremist database, but the risk is that the organizer who actually fund and guide these protest groups find the fodder population for their activities. There have been active projects to use social media data to identify and de-radicalize individuals. There could also be the opposite approach, and that is to radicalize, identify people. By allowing third parties to create databases that people willing and able to attend protests, you could theoretically have the equivalent of having a source of suicide bombers in some Middle East location.

So data used to identify people can be directed for monitoring or even for recruitment. Best if no data existed at all, which is my style and what I teach in this channel. Again, the moment you step into active actions beyond free speech, then the violent behavior puts you in an active surveillance category and there’s no escaping that. While the idea of free speech is to me an exposure of truth, I do not claim some special divine skill in ascertaining what is true or not. In the debate in politics of various issues, we assume that the majority makes the correct decision, or at least we accept it.

And the basis of this, at least for those with some theological understanding, is that those who believe in God understand that God speaks to us via our conscience. And this guides our personal responses to things as right or wrong, hopefully with God speaking through us. Obviously our personal response is guided by our life experiences, so we are all different and free, but it is our hope that our collective consciences will do what’s right. And that’s the premise at least of a free democracy. Pope Leo says it’s painful to see free expression shrinking in the West due to Orwellian language and ideological exclusion, and he defends conscience as fidelity to truth, not rebellion.

Because of this understanding, I do not profess to dictate to others what truth is. It is beyond my pay grade. I’m just a lowly YouTuber, so I’d rather have everyone speak out, and the voices of truth should dominate. So I’m not afraid to let people speak. But without manipulation. The problem, though, is that surveillance data, both in the hands of Big Tech and the government, can identify and classify each one of us based on our beliefs. All this is because of the complete absence of privacy. And this subjects us to the possibility of manipulation.

In this high tech world, manipulation of what we see in the internet is not necessarily balanced or true. Those obsessed with power will go to all ends to maintain their power, and this includes manipulation of opinions. Thus by twisting words and meanings and using censorship to shut down alternate beliefs, we have the possibility that we are not allowing truth to dominate. This is what happened in my experience with the dictator controlling the press. Similarly, it happens when a government, or even a social media platform, feels it is their obligation to force a truth.

Thus, while I believe everyone should speak freely, we should be aware that censorship, or silencing any side, can be an attempt to manipulate the truth. Closing thoughts Look, folks, this isn’t about left or right, ICE or J6, immigrants or citizens. It’s about one simple truth. No privacy means no real free speech. Surveillance isn’t neutral. It is a tool that whoever holds power will use to silence whoever they don’t like. I’ve seen what happens when dissent gets crushed under silence and fear. I lived it. I escaped it, and I became an American because this country was supposed to be different.

So here’s the bottom line. Protect your privacy, not because you’re hiding something, but because you’re refusing to be controlled. Use the tools I teach. Stay off the grid when it matters. Speak freely. Let truth compete in the open. And don’t let anyone, government, big tech, or keyboard warriors decide what you’re allowed to say or think. If that makes sense to you, then please subscribe. Thanks for listening. [tr:trw].

See more of Rob Braxman Tech on their Public Channel and the MPN Rob Braxman Tech channel.