ICE denies having a protester database. A letter to Congress sheds more light
npr.org>Department of Homeland Security officials have repeatedly denied having a database tracking U.S. citizen protesters or a database of "domestic terrorists", even as anecdotes like what happened to Pantos and Williams suggest federal agents are collecting observers' information in some capacity.
The real list of domestic terrorists is the DHS employee payroll for ICE and CBP.
The DHS's list of people who observe them is not standalone, they say they integrate it into existing databases, and this is their strongest claim. But it's just obfuscation, the intent, that they maintain a list of normal people who observe them so they can terrorize them has been confirmed.
Welcome to the list.
We're all on the list, just getting ranked up or down
posting a sardonic comment like that? also list.
Replying to a sardonic comment - believe it or not, list.
Posting a level 3 meme comment? Straight to list.
Wait a minute, are we the baddies?
History tells us fascists do not respect the law, or their opposition, and are not interested in honest discourse. It's self-evident that those who wish to rule through force don't feel bound by rules of order, or intellectual honesty. In short... they're going to lie and you should expect it.
There are always personal risks when you engage with society at a political level.
If you see a police stop on the highway, should you pull over and record to observe? Could this stop make you a person of interest, or at least a known nuisance, to the average law enforcement agency? Would footage of interactions between the detained driver, police, and yourself be of interest on social media? Does the U.S. government possess a vast well of data of each citizen's interactions on communication networks?
Let's be honest here - what was this person's intentions? A quick Google search of "Xenia Pantos" shows details about this person's life and practice that would place them a political/social enemy of the current U.S. administration's voting base.
My advice is to treat all interactions with the government as neutral at best, and to avoid any reason for them to target you. If you decide to become a political, expect some negative attention from the opposing side, especially if that opposing side is in power. The ideal world where a citizen exercises their rights crumbles into brutal reality the second one of these interactions being observed becomes physically contentious or violent.
By this logic, no constitutional right that annoys the executive is ever worth exercising, which makes the right nonexistent. Recording police in public is a settled protected activity in most circuits, it's not really a gray area. It's an example of the government building files on people for doing something courts have explicitly said they may do.
Whether the protestor's politics make her a political enemy of the administration's voting base is irrelevant. The government tracking citizens because their lawful speech opposes the administration is the textbook definition of retaliation based on viewpoint, the thing the First Amendment firmly prohibits.
The story is that ICE apparently denied maintaining a database whose existence a letter to Congress suggests is real, not that the protester is surprised that activism has consequences.
ICE was ordered to confront and escalate without a reason. They came looking for trouble.
I, unlike you, live in a democracy and expect the government to not send goons to intimidate opponents.
I also live in a "democracy" as well, but the U.S. has as much corruption as any banana republic or former Soviet bloc state. We just haven't reached ostensible, Mexico-tier levels that irk the average citizen. Democracy is just the story you're told to placate your feelings of powerlessness by the powers-that-be. Any form of real threat to power through protest is squashed before it even begins. There is evidence it is fostered by the government itself.
Your assertion is the US is less corrupt than Mexico? Can you explain how laws are made in America and who they benefit what percentage of the time? Can you explain the open fraud described as AI?
Government has a monopoly on violence. It is just that the developed world hasn't seen the abuses perpetrated by the enforcers of the government.
Where do you live? I would like to go there, because you are definitely not describing the US that I live in.
> I, unlike you, live in a democracy and expect the government to not send goons to intimidate opponents.
How are those two concepts actually related or linked in any way?
I think the point is that democracies are supposed to be able to vote goons out, otherwise it isn't a democracy. In the case of the U.S. though we sort-of voted the goons in, so I'm not sure what that makes us.
A democracy where you can only vote goons out by voting other goons in is still failing at the thing democracies are for.
I think you nailed something. There's a huge chunk of people who believe the US lost its democracy (covid restrictions, #meToo, etc.), and so they voted like they were fighting a war.
> Let's be honest here - what was this person's intentions? A quick Google search of "Xenia Pantos" shows details about this person's life and practice that would place them a political/social enemy of the current U.S. administration's voting base.
You confused honesty and FUD seemingly. The article said they observed ICE activity and gave evidence this sufficed to make them an enemy in the administration's eyes. And their pronouns would make them a social enemy to some. Google showed what? They called their occupational therapy practice neurodiversity-affirming? They liked to sew?
> The ideal world where a citizen exercises their rights crumbles into brutal reality the second one of these interactions being observed becomes physically contentious or violent.
A brutal reality is citizens who did not exercise their rights lost them. And subjects who exercised them together gained them.
I just caught myself thinking Pantos shouldn’t have answered the phone. Not in a blame the victim way, more in that never answering the phone is just good opsec at this point. The phone, the door, just don’t talk to a cop without a lawyer. They don’t come to you to be helpful to -you-.
Except in this case in a broader sense, we know about something we wouldn’t have otherwise
If somebody calls you like this, immediately ask them for their name and supervisor in the calmest, most business-like tone you can muster. A good tactic is to tell them you can't talk just this second and ask for a name and number you can reach them at to discuss the matter further. If they're going to try to dox you then you should try to dox them right back.
I think that we should have a Schengen Area of the Americas, but observing the problems that this has caused the E.U. (Brexit), a proper implementation would require a much more controlled and gradual approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
Edit: It would be most pleasant to delete this comment. Drat.
But Britain was never in the Schengen area. One of their many "we are an island, we are different" privileges
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_of_Free_Association is somewhat similar
What's the connection between Schengen and Brexit?
To give more context:
The UK is not and has never been in Schengen.
I guess GP is taking about free movement of EU citizens, but that has nothing to do with Schengen.
Schengen Area has open borders with a common visa policy.
>free movement of EU citizens, [...] has nothing to do with Schengen.
Did you mis-speak?
One of the things leading up to Brexit was politicians claiming we couldn't police our borders without getting out of the EU. That was of course false. Almost the opposite in practical terms.
Presumably, if UK were to return to the EU we would do so without our past veto, and as part of Schengen. That makes it less desirable.
Not all EU countries are in Schengen so why would the UK have to be part of it if it rejoined the EU?
The EU really wants all members to be in Schengen. The UK was allowed to opt out because its membership was so desirable. After the Brexit fiasco it's unlikely that the EU would want them back in so badly that they'd accept another opt-out.
It's part of the package now. The same thing with the euro for example. New member states are supposed to adopt the euro at one point.
I thought it was a requirement now. The UK got special treatment because it was a founding or very early member of the EU, but now if it wants to rejoin it'll have to join on the same terms a country like Ukraine would.
Schengen is not the vehicle for freedom of establishment in the EU. Europe is complicated.
Whenever I would talk to people about the importance of privacy in data and online activity, people would always say something like "I don't care, I've got nothing to hide. I'm not some weird pervert." And yeah I'm not either but this kind of stuff is why it's important. Fascism thrives on knowledge of the people it wants to oppress.
It's trite, but saying you don't care about privacy rights because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
That's very well said... quotable even.
Yeah and I called it "trite" because I thought it was well worn at this point and that is b.s. on my part that I regret. I first heard this from Edward Snowden:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/may/22/edward...
and I don't think he's trite at all.
Just correct them more blatantly:
I dont care about the fourth amendment, I have nothing to hide.
This is the issue. At some point very basic and normal things, like believing in a woman’s right to vote or in people’s broad access to healthcare, can be considered radical or terroristic by the powers that be. Then the lists become so pervasive that just living your life and performing every day activities puts you at risk, even if you are trying to conform.
I'm not doing anything I should have to hide. However I am doing some things that I would have to hide elsewhere, and there is no particular reason to believe those things will remain things I don't have to hide.
Nowadays the issue is that the “I’ve got nothing to hide” crowd assumes we all live in a society where laws are equally and sensibly enforced. That is demonstrably no longer the case under the prerogative state, which now includes ICE/CBP, DOJ, and FBI.
Right, and it's a sliding scale. People think in terms of institutions acting the way they're supposed to. As we've seen those lines can get blurry and reasons can be created to track and suppress free speech.