Government Surveillance: Security v. Liberty?
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Video
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Video
Modern surveillance activities by the United States government have taken place since World War I and continue to this day, especially in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
Proponents of such efforts argue that lawful surveillance is necessary to protect national security and that the FISA court system is designed to prevent abuses. Opponents argue that such surveillance rarely produces actionable intelligence and can be wielded by unaccountable bureaucrats at the expense of targeted individuals and groups.
In this Fourth Branch video, Matthew Heiman and Julian Sanchez debate this important policy issue and Faisal Gill, a former Department of Homeland Security official who was surveilled by the federal government beginning in 2006, tells his story.
A Fourth Branch video in association with Motivo Media.
Visit the Regulatory Transparency Project's website – https://RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of its content, and connect with it on social media.
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As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speakers.
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Gates Corporation
Matthew R. A. Heiman joined the Company in May 2026 and has served as the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary since June 2026. As Chief Legal Officer, Mr. Heiman is responsible for all legal functions for Gates, including securities and corporate governance, M&A, litigation, commercial, regulatory, compliance, patents and trademarks, real estate, employment and labor, sustainability and environmental matters. Prior to joining Gates, Mr. Heiman held senior legal leadership roles at Waystar, where he served as Chief Legal & Administrative Officer from 2023 to 2025 and as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2020 to 2023. Prior to that, he was with Johnson Controls, where he served as Vice President, Corporate Secretary, and Associate General Counsel. Mr. Heiman has been a Senior Fellow for the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law since 2018.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Attorney & former Senior Policy Advisor, Department of Homeland Security
Faisal is a lawyer living in Vermont with his children. Faisal is a former Republican who served in the George W Bush Administration Senior Policy Advisor to the Under at the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to that, Faisal worked at the White House Office of Homeland Security and then later the Homeland Security Council as associate counsel. Prior to his appointment at the White House, Faisal served as the Deputy General Counsel for Policy at the Office of Personnel Management. Faisal Gill also served in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
He has a BA and JD from American University in Washington, DC.
It was reported that Faisal was one of the prominent Muslim Americans that NSA was spying on.