The broader surveillance powers of the U.S. government will not make us safer from Privacy News

Since Donald Trump’s presidency left five dead since the end of a violent uprising in the U.S. Capitol, the country and its leadership have focused on how to deal with the “new” threat of “terrorism”. The efforts of both parties backed by President Joe Biden seek to further increase the U.S. Intelligence apparatus under control.

Proponents of civil liberties and advocates for black, immigrant and Muslim communities have called for caution against such measures. However, some far-right opponents tell us that supporters of equality and civil liberties should not be concerned with the expansion of U.S. surveillance and counterterrorism capabilities.

They are wrong. A new report published by Project South, an organization that builds movements rooted in the tradition of radical blacks, describes the long history, practices, and laws of the U.S. surveillance state, and targets black, immigrant, and / or Muslim communities. special attention in the Southern United States. Spy the Margins: The History, Law, and Practice of the United States Surveillance Against Muslim, Black, and Immigrant Communities against Resistance of Contemporary Strategies and Resistance of Contemporary Strategies for Community Organizers, Lawyers, and Community Practitioners , for entrepreneurs and the practical consequences of the massive growth of the U.S. surveillance state.

Many associate systematic state surveillance practices against Muslims in the U.S. with the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing “war on terror”. But the reality is that black Muslim and immigrant communities have previously been subjected to discriminatory and abusive surveillance practices.

After the First World War, the increasingly nativist U.S. government underwent surveillance and deportation when various Muslim communities began to engage in political organization. For example, when the U.S. government exposed xenophobic laws, such as the National Origins Act of 1924, by restricting white and non-Christian immigration, the FBI began its surveillance of pan-Islamic and black and pan-African-influenced blacks. movements against white supremacy. During World War II, the U.S. government spied on black Muslim organizations, basing accusations that they could ally with the Japanese government. And after the war, blacks, indigenous peoples and leaders of the immigrant movement, black Muslims and left-wing Arabs were among many activist and civil rights groups targeted by the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO home political espionage program.

In the 70s COINTELPRO was investigated by the Senate Select Committee, known as the Church Committee, which led to a combination of factors leading to “those who enforce the law breaking the law”. The Church Commission’s reforms to COINTELPRO’s abuses led to a number of reforms, including laws designed to regulate government surveillance and internal laws that limited the FBI’s investigative authority and rules governing law enforcement operations.

These nominal reforms, however, did not stop the expansion of the U.S. surveillance state too much. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the fearful atmosphere caused by the Oklahoma City bombing, the federal government permanently pushed back the government’s ability to care for and deport people, often from Muslim-majority countries. In 1996, the Anti-Terrorist Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) was signed, which severely limited the ability of prisoners to report illegal convictions.

The state of surveillance escalated after the 9/11 attacks and resulted in a “war on terror”. Disguised as abuses against the state’s horrific rights to disguise “terror,” from mass surveillance and profiling of Muslims to torture of people detained at black Guantanamo and CIA sites, numerous aesthetic reforms emerged. However, most of the legislative authorities have called for the custody, criminalization and brutalization of Muslims and others after the 9/11 days remain in the books.

Acts of charity and kindness to Muslim-majority communities, such as Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, have been reduced to material support for “terrorism”. The political views of young Muslims are cited in the courts to suggest that they are willing to commit acts of “terrorism”. Hundreds of black Muslims and / or immigrants, many with personal vulnerabilities exploited by informants, have been involved in FBI operations against the nonsense of Hollywood thrillers.

And under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the expansion of surveillance authorities continues to allow federal agents to circumvent the rules of criminal procedure when targeted at people with suspected “terrorism”.

In the wake of the COINTELPRO scandal, the courts, Congress and the executive have always maintained surveillance beyond the usual limits of the Fourth Amendment, where surveillance is aimed “primarily” at gathering foreign intelligence. criminal prosecution. Under the Foreign Intelligence Protection Act, the government had to prove to a federal judge that the purpose of the surveillance was an agent of a foreign power where it was directed at a U.S. citizen or resident or was conducted on U.S. soil. This authority has always suffered from some form of abuse but was still limited.

But after 9/11, all branches of the U.S. government interpreted it radically and eventually changed FISA to allow for massive surveillance. The law was amended to allow “gathering of foreign intelligence,” even if it was not the primary purpose of surveillance. Congress passed section 215 of the U.S. PATRIOT Act, which allowed for the massive collection of telephone call data and the collection of previously confidential business and financial records. After U.S. communications providers reported massive collections of data that harbored executive power, Congress did not limit the president, but rather passed the 2007 FISA Amendments Act. This change allowed the executive branch to obtain FISA court approval for mass surveillance. The world includes intimate photos to be stored by the NSA, text messages, emails, and even email / password combinations.

In the fog of secrecy created by FISA, secret court rulings allowed numerous mass surveillance programs to record millions of Americans and others recording phone metadata and e-mail communications – along with espionage programs that captured the private communications of civilians and officials in other countries. Several state and federal initiatives record and store data collections that are apparently unrelated to criminal activity.

In the Southern United States, black and / or Muslim communities have had significant consequences as a result of this widespread state of surveillance. In Florida, black Muslims associated with the Moorish Temple of Science were forced into fake “terrorist” plots, including the explosion of the Sears Tower in Chicago. The same nonsense was also mocked by the sentencing judge, who tried the Palestinian American professor while committing crimes of “terrorism” – which the jury eventually acquitted or blocked in all charges – based almost entirely on his political discourse. In Georgia, Muslim teenagers suffered a constant trial, a final conviction for terrorism, and imprisonment based on online political language and travel to their ancestral homelands. Political opposition to the U.S. and Israel in North Carolina was expressed by young Muslims who ended up serving decades of sentences for terrorism-related convictions. The prosecution was able to use FISA surveillance for reasons never explained. And southern states, like much of the country, have created large data mining companies designed to share surveillance information with federal agencies, creating legal loopholes that will allow discriminatory surveillance practices.

These trapping surveillance practices continued to overwhelm the Bush presidency in the Obama and Trump administrations. Among other outrages, the Trump administration explicitly sought to use anti-FBI terrorism authorities against black protesters in George Floyd’s demonstrations. Most of these practices could be expected to be illegal in a democracy. But, as the Project South report shows, U.S. state surveillance law targets black, immigrant, and Muslim communities, precisely because federal intelligence agencies already have wide-ranging discretion.

From the Supreme Court’s ruling in Laird v. Tatum (1972), the surveillance of public activities is not in itself a violation of the First Amendment, to loopholes such as the so-called Third Party Doctrine, whereby third parties — including telecommunications companies — get a broad interpretation of FISA. to ensure broad surveillance and to avoid significant consequences even when the law is violated.

As the existing surveillance authorities have been used to address people directly affected by state repression, measures by the Democratic Party to target Trump insurgents will inevitably exacerbate the problem.

Despite the party’s loyalty to the intelligence apparatus, the Democratic Party has put forward strategies to attack black, Muslim and / or immigrant communities across the country.

In Los Angeles, community organizers ended efforts in 2018 to fund a “Violent Extremism” (CVE) program – these are designed to prevent violence but are designed to study and criminalize almost Muslim teenagers. In the San Francisco Bay Area, community groups forced local police departments in 2017 to cut ties with the FBI’s joint “Terrorism Task Force”. In Georgia, a coalition of immigrant rights organizers shut down the state measure that would facilitate it. sharing student data with state and federal intelligence agencies in 2019. And in some places, Muslims were able to strike at the FBI’s intelligence-gathering effort by refusing to participate in them.

The establishment of the Democratic Party should bow to the head of these basic organizers. However, community groups across the country should be prepared to deal with further threats to the surveillance situation.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of Al Jazeera’s editorial.