The Patriot Act Remains a Threat to Our Movements 23 Years Later

An employee at one of my father’s convenience stores was acting strange. He looked uncomfortable and nervous as he questioned my father about the type of payments his convenience store businesses were making and to whom.

“I asked my employee if everything was okay,” my father recalled. “He eventually [confessed] that FBI agents approached him and asked him to gather information about my business and family. I was shaken to know that my employees were being intimidated and how these government officials were creating chaos for all of us for several years.”

Post 9/11, the consequences of surveillance were felt deeply in my family and by my broader community. There were Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at my father’s businesses, and various family and community members were questioned by authorities, which caused psychological trauma. In the eyes of many people in the U.S., being Muslim was a crime.

This month marks 23 years since the creation of the Patriot Act. The law, enacted on Oct. 26, 2001, during the George W. Bush administration, enabled the federal government to surveil Americans more easily. It gave officials greater authority to monitor electronic communications, share information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and collect personal information on civilians, including bank records and credit reports.

The Patriot Act is a prime example of how the freedom and liberties the United States claims to grant Americans never really existed for some. Today, the relics of this policy are very clear in the backlash against movements fighting for liberation — particularly those that are vocally and publicly opposing Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine.

Since Israel’s escalation of the genocide in Gaza last October, the surveillance and repression launched by the U.S. government, private companies, and university campuses mirrors the months following the 9/11 attacks. Law enforcement ramped up surveillance and conducted sweeps on Muslim communities. These efforts — and the wave of legislation punishing free speech in support of Palestine — show us how our collective opposition to the expansion of the U.S. police state and imperialism successfully threatens power.

Challenging the power of the state can be dangerous work. To better understand how we got here, we must look at the history of surveillance against Indigenous and Black communities. Despite being targets, they persevered and defended their people — just as we must do for those speaking out against the government and corporations fueling genocide, war, and policing.

As early as the 1700s, the government created lantern laws. Black, mixed-race, Indigenous, and enslaved people were required to have a lantern with them if a white person did not accompany them after sundown.

Since 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been hailed as a document that codified our privacy, protections, and freedom, but we know who the constitution was created by and who it is meant to serve. U.S. history is clear about who is worthy of liberty and safety and who is subjected to monitoring and scrutiny. Patrols were created in 1819 to police and terrorize the enslaved. They aimed to quell uprisings through tactics such as home invasions and excessive use of force — injustices that continue today.

The U.S. government has not only criminalized the average American opposing genocide funded by our tax dollars but has also encouraged community members to surveil their own people.

In 2011, the Obama Administration created the counter-violence extremism (CVE) program that purported to prevent terrorism by using community outreach initiatives. This initiative recruited members of the community, such as Imams, school counselors, and even doctors, to report individuals assumed to be prone to extremist beliefs. In reality, the program discriminated against and criminalized Muslims. It also largely failed as a method for preventing politically motivated violence.

These policies have created an environment that instills fear, suspicion, and doubt within communities of color. The internal friction caused by the government allows federal agencies to more easily infiltrate the spaces activists use to resist increased surveillance and policing. The purpose of this work is clear: to distract, deter, and disempower Muslim and marginalized communities from pushing back against the very policies that are oppressing and killing them.

Proponents argue that surveillance helps detect and prevent crime. In reality, surveillance is weaponized to invoke fear and mistrust among vulnerable communities. On this anniversary of the Patriot Act during an active genocide, many Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and allies in the U.S. are once again in an exceedingly vulnerable position to be targeted for protesting the genocide in Palestine and Israel’s broader escalation in Lebanon.

This vulnerability fuels a heightened sense of risk, misguiding how we view “appropriate” forms of protest. These feelings often come from internalized messaging about what it means to be “civil,” and what makes a “good” American or “respectable” Muslim. What we must recognize is how successfully the state and mainstream media shape public opinion of “good” and “bad protestors,” and even determine acceptable forms of dissent during a genocide that the media won’t even acknowledge.

It is human to struggle with these fears, but rejecting the erosion of our civil liberties is not enough. We must grapple with how distrust among our communities weakens our ability to counter suppression and build more powerful movements.

As activist Hoda Katebi said, “We must not do the work of police that want to repress Palestine solidarity.” Katebi expressed this sentiment as part of the larger concern that organizers who strive to keep protests predictable by using “peace police” as a buffer between protestors and law enforcement are legitimizing the good protester/bad protester binary — even if unintentionally. This division ultimately discredits actions that aren’t considered “civil” or contained, like the recent protest blocking access to the New York Stock Exchange to call attention to the genocide in Gaza.

While we must prioritize keeping each other safe, we must also remember that fighting for liberation has always been risky work. We cannot let fear be the central guiding principle for assessing how we take action.

We have witnessed how police, on behalf of our government, intimidate, harass, and even kill individuals to deter oppressed communities from rising up. Although surveillance is less visible, it is more insidious — and another strategy from the state to disrupt movements challenging white supremacy, capitalism, and U.S. imperialism.

The strength and resilience shown by people targeted by the state, including the Muslim men who were tortured and imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, are examples of resistance in the face of violence. As Guantánamo Bay survivor Sami al-Hajj said: “Whoever’s heart is filled with faith will be able to bear whatever is thrown at him.”

As we reflect on the anniversary of the Patriot Act and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, we should remember the legacies of those who came before us to fight repression. Let their dedication to liberation serve as inspiration to challenge surveillance and all forms of injustice unleashed on the people by the U.S. government.

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.