The latest discoveries about NSA spying revealed that the agency has collected 27 terrabytes of information about cellphone locations to track its targets not only in cyberspace, but also real space. The Panopticon is real. It siphons billions of dollars each year from a federal budget in crisis. And it is watching you and your children.
Lost in the debate about NSA spying, however, have been the dozens of other federal agencies also complicit in Fourth Amendment abuses.
Leading the Charge: The FBI
The FBI is among the federal agencies leading the assault on the Constitution. The FBI runs its own intelligence databases, has long abused the very same sections of the PATRIOT Act for which the NSA has recently come under fire and has the further distinction of having infiltrated First Amendment-protected activist groups and religious institutions all over the country.
Nor are these new issues. Unfortunately, the FBI’s abuses are well established: For at least a quarter century, the bureau deployed a series of domestic “counterintelligence programs” that were discovered by activists in the 1970s and then investigated by Congressional oversight committees. Summarized as a “sophisticated vigilante operation” in 1976 by the Senate, CoIntelPro presaged the recurrence of similar abuses under the Bush administration and continuing into the Obama administration.
In 2008, I sued the FBI to seek public disclosure of its secret policy authorizing undercover infiltration. Our FOIA case did force the bureau to disclose the document, but the FBI redacted the entire chapter on what it calls “undisclosed participation.”
A bizarre – and widely overlooked – exchange in a 2010 Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing revealed what little we know. When asked by Senators under what legal standard the FBI Infiltrates activist groups, the then-director of the FBI assured them that “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity” was first required, only to repudiate his statement before the sun had set.
As it turns out, even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity is not required, as the FBI admitted in a letter sent to the Hill that evening, after the cameras and microphones were off. According to the FBI, any “proper purpose” can justify infiltrating an activist group, however untethered the means toward that purpose might become.
Congress: Years Late and Billions Short
After a decade of sitting on its hands and enabling the dangerous entrenchment of executive power at nearly every opportunity, Congress is finally beginning to pay attention. But even measures that purport to restrain the NSA’s dragnet spying settle for scratching at the surface.
The USA FREEDOM act was thoughtfully engineered by the authors of the PATRIOT act to restrain executive agencies including the NSA and FBI from abusing their approval of expanding powers over the past decade. Even their bill, however, fails to address most of the FBI’s recurring problems.
One measure, introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), would do more. Holt is not your average member of Congress. Having taught physics at Princeton (making him the only rocket scientist among his four hundred colleagues), he’s arguably the smartest member of the chamber. He’s also the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, the successor to the Pike committee that in the 1970s famously investigated decades of FBI crimes.
Rep. Holt’s bill, the Surveillance State Repeal Act, would rescind the PATRIOT Act entirely, as well as the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is the only pending bill that would force the intelligence agencies to justify their powers from a pre-9/11 baseline, as they should.
Unfortunately, most members of Congress who talk about privacy have yet to walk their talk. And with leading Democrats carrying the Bush administration’s water now that President Obama is holding the glass, it will take continued collaboration across the aisle, along with creative public displays of dissent to rein in the surveillance state.
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.
And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.
In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $125,000 in one-time donations and to add 1400 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.
Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.
If you have the means to make a substantial gift, please dig deep during this critical time!
With gratitude and resolve,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy