{"id":300027,"date":"2026-05-05T00:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T00:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/300027\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T00:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T00:57:07","slug":"congressman-lou-correa-talks-sense-on-privacy-ai-and-war-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/300027\/","title":{"rendered":"Congressman Lou Correa talks sense on privacy, AI and war \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a pleasure talking to Rep. Lou Correa<\/a>, whom I\u2019ve known for 30 years. I often have disagreed with his actions on tax increases and other matters, and still do.<\/p>\n

But he took a break from the action on the House floor to chat just before he voted against extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because it lacked a ban on warrantless searches. Unfortunately, a short-term extension passed<\/a> anyway in the Republican-controlled House and Senate on bipartisan votes and President Trump signed<\/a> it.<\/p>\n

But Trump and Republicans in Congress won by opposing FISA. On April 9, 2024, he exclaimed<\/a> in all caps on Truth Social: \u201cKILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!! DJT.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a major reason I voted for him and for Republican majorities in Congress.<\/p>\n

But on April 15, 2026, the president wrote<\/a>, \u201cI am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country! Our Military Patriots desperately need FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what about the \u201cRights and Privileges\u201d of the 340 million Americans he\u2019s supposed to serve?\u00a0 And our Fourth Amendment \u201cright of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWith everything that ICE is doing, everything Homeland Security is doing, everything FISA is doing, this data is being interconnected and harvested, in ways that I cannot even begin to understand,\u201d Correa warned. \u201cAnd if Americans don\u2019t understand the danger of this, you\u2019re heading to a China model.\u201d <\/p>\n

That\u2019s China\u2019s \u201csocial credit\u201d system that surveils everything about everyone.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Mass surveillance isn\u2019t the only area where Correa sees a looming \u201cChina model.\u201d I asked how Correa was grappling with the need to win the artificial intelligence race. He said he had just attended an intense, four-day seminar on AI with 25 other representatives. The U.S. and Northern Europe still lead in chips design, chip making and coding. But concerns include the lack of energy to keep up with demand. In the meantime, that risks higher electricity rates to consumers as data centers hog electrons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese are building a power plant every day,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the big one: about 60% of Main Street China is now implementing AI on a daily basis to increase their productivity.\u201d The solution, he said, is \u201cto approach this as a win-win\u201d through such policies as micro-nuclear power stations dedicated to the centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also on the energy front, I brought up the spike in gas prices from the war, now averaging over $6 a gallon in California, according<\/a> to the Auto Club. Correa said the price spike especially hits the constituents in his 46th District<\/a>, which centers on Anaheim and Santa Ana. \u201cWhat are they going to do? Stop driving to work? Are you going to drop a Tesla in their front yard overnight? Of course not. That\u2019s what people lose sight of: You\u2019re talking about working men and women who have to get to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pushed for more electric-car infrastructure as one way to handle the problem. And he broke ranks with many Democrats in pushing for fracking to produce more oil and for more California refineries. But he also blamed Trump for the Iran War, which caused the price spike now ravaging the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want a nuclear Iran,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want a nuclear armed Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates. But this attack was very ill timed and not well planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added the war has shown there\u2019s not only \u201ca limit to America\u2019s military power, but to America\u2019s soft power, which is now non-existent.\u201d Soft power is such things as international prestige from American freedom and democracy.<\/p>\n

Correa holds a safe seat and easily won with 63% in the slightly redrawn 46th District in 2024. For the June 2 primary<\/a>, he faces three fellow Democrats and Republican David Pan<\/a>, a professor of German at UC Irvine. In a March 1 X post<\/a>, Pan strongly backed Trump\u2019s attack on Iran the previous day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As someone who voted for Trump each time, I have to say that Correa \u2014 critical of mass surveillance, promoting energy abundance and pushing for peace \u2014 talks a lot more sense than Trump in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a pleasure talking to Rep. Lou Correa, whom I\u2019ve known for 30 years. I often have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,975,2082],"class_list":["post-300027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}