In a more innocent time not so long ago, perhaps only a million or so people in this country fell under the government’s suspecting glare. Achieving that distinctively fat FBI file might have required marching against a war or traveling to leftist lands.
These days, there’s no precise way to figure out what it takes. And once you get on that dreaded terror watch list, there’s no certain route to getting off it and flying without fear of having to spend some serious quality time with a pack of TSA goons.
Just ask Stephen Hayes. The conservative journalist and frequent Fox News guest is trying his best to get off that list. He doesn’t know how he got on it exactly, but he suspects it has something to do with a trip he and his wife took that involved flying with one-way tickets to Turkey and then carrying on their overseas adventure by land and sea.
Being a staunch conservative, this puts Hayes in the awkward position of potentially sympathizing with innocent people trying to travel while Muslim. Still, he does manage to weave his predicament into his usual narrative by pinning the blame for this spooky nonsense on the Department of Homeland Security’s “large, lumbering, inefficient bureaucracy.”
Sure. That explains everything.
Thanks to Edward Snowden and his dramatic whistle-blowing, at least you don’t have to be paranoid any longer to know that we’re all being watched. Every email and every phone call gets perused at some level as a tiny crumb of metadata. Harnessing the wonders of technology, your unopened mail is photographed before delivery too.
The really scary part is that so little has changed since these revelations began to roll out more than a year ago. The same characters continue to lead the intelligence agencies with the same arrogance we were accustomed to. The Obama administration has unveiled a few modest changes without producing the kind of overhaul that’s needed.
Congress hasn’t shown any serious leadership either. Two privacy bills now pending aren’t likely to sail to Obama’s desk this year due to the uncertainty over which party will control the Senate after the mid-term elections.
Privacy advocates can’t agree on whether one of them, patriotically dubbed the USA Freedom Act, would make things better. The American Civil Liberties Union says that legislation would mark a step forward, while Daniel Ellsberg and other famous whistleblowers have joined forces to call for the bill’s defeat.
Most of those folks are united, however, in opposing another bill known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). That legislation would essentially “militarize the Internet,” warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties group specializing in cyber issues.
Instead of guaranteeing that your privacy will be protected in this digital age, CISA’s foes say it would bestow greater freedom to private and government snoopers to poke around in your business for no good reason.
Meanwhile, the government has some serious work to do to protect us all from humdrum fraud never seen before on such a massive scale. With record-breaking scams carried out against the throngs who patronize Target and Home Depot, better safeguards are clearly required.
As Washington dallies on security policy, it’s not just failing to protect us from Big Brother’s whims. Our leaders are also falling down on the arguably simpler job of making it possible to buy mulch, paint, and a pile of nails without any fear of getting robbed by a bunch of digitally savvy thugs.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
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We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
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With love, rage, and solidarity,
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