Sen. Josh Hawley rips Biden's push for text message surveillance: 'It sounds like something out of Beijing'

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Sen. Hawley calls Biden's text surveillance push 'un-American'

Missouri Republican blasts White House's attempt to dispel vaccine 'misinformation' on 'Fox News Primetime'

Sen. Josh Hawley R-Missouri., sounded off on the Biden administration's "insane" push for text surveillance in an attempt to dispel vaccine "misinformation" on Wednesday's "Fox News Primetime," claiming the move bears resemblance to "something out of Beijing" and questioning its legality.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY: It sounds like something out of Beijing. I mean, we know that the Communist Chinese Party has built this surveillance state and now it sounds like Joe Biden wants to bring that to the United States of America. I mean, getting into our phones now, it's bad enough that they use social media to censor us, to spy on us, to shut down speech. But now private text messages, I mean, what's going to happen next are going to take away our phones. Are they going to tell Verizon or AT&T or whomever to shut down people's cell service if they text things that the government doesn't like? This is insane. It is un-American. It's probably unconstitutional. 

I can't imagine that the government has the power to look at our text messages without a warrant. I mean, under our current law, they don't. Here's what worries me, though. Pressuring the phone companies, pressuring Verizon and AT&T and whomever else to voluntarily, quote-unquote, comply and tell them, tell the government what we're texting, what we're saying on our private messages. That's the real danger here. It's this big government, big corporation alliance. That's what we've got to be wary of. But we've got to say, come on, I mean, let's stand up for free speech in this country.

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