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posted by martyb on Friday March 15 2019, @12:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the Both-Sideism dept.

Homeland Security’s Intelligence Overreach: Two Cases Illustrate Risks to Civil Society:

Two stories this week show how the Department of Homeland Security is deploying its intelligence apparatus against activists, journalists, and human rights lawyers. While this type of political surveillance rightly raises serious concerns, it is hardly surprising given the immense growth in DHS’s intelligence gathering programs during and since the Obama administration, and the lack of meaningful standards, safeguards, and oversight of their operation.

[...]NBC7 San Diego published a leaked copy of a set of slides titled “San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019, Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators and Media,” dated January 9, 2019. The document, which appears under a U.S.-Mexican seal, is essentially a surveillance target list with photographs of 59 people, 40 of whom are identified as U.S. citizens, all of whom seem to have some connection to migrant caravans heading from Central America to the United States. “Alerts” have been placed against the information of 43 people, including 28 Americans. DHS kept dossiers on the targets as well, including one that was shared with NBC 7 on[sic] Nicole Ramos, an attorney with a legal center for migrants and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico.

DHS claims it was tracking people who were in the vicinity of violence near the border in November 2018 and just wanted to talk to them as part of its investigation of those incidents. This justification rings hollow; it is much more plausible that the agency was tagging people based on their perceived involvement with the caravan, not as potential witnesses to any incident of violence.

[...]Far from the southern border, officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of DHS in New York City were also keeping tabs on protests. Documents obtained by The Nation via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request included a spreadsheet of public protests, titled “Anti-Trump Protest Spreadsheet 07/31/2018.”

The document covered protests during the two-week period from July 31 to August 17, suggesting that such monitoring may be undertaken on a regular basis. It also showed the number of people who had signed up for the protests on Facebook, indicating that ICE was monitoring social media to follow political movements.

DHS claims it was monitoring leftist activists in New York to provide agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit with “situational awareness” information in case they were traveling through the city “on work or personal time.” Again, the title of the document gives away what is likely the agency’s true intent: the list is not about protests or demonstrations in general, it is focused on “anti-Trump” (and anti-ICE) political activity.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @05:07PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @05:07PM (#814883)

    It's not a strawman . Right now the border is defacto already open

    What do you suggest then? Open or closed? How do you decide who gets to come and 'live and work' then?

    Yeah [thedailybeast.com], wide open [woub.org].

    Wide, wide open [countable.us].

    Please.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @05:26PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @05:26PM (#814898)

    20 million already got through and more come each day (several hundreds to thousands)
    Looks pretty open to me..

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @05:34PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @05:34PM (#814903)

      How many times must people post the FACTS that the vast majority of illegal immigration is due to overstaying visas after people come in legally. You're probably the type that would view Puerto Ricans as illegal immigrants too.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:09PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:09PM (#814923)

        Here is an estimate from a site tracking "undocumented" who crossed the border (so presumably they are pro illegal immigration, using that loaded "undocumented" word)

        https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/ [factcheck.org]

        And even their number is still over 10 million!!
        (given it is a pro-illegal article, the real number is probably less than the 25M number bandied by the right, and more than this 10 million figure).

        That is still a shitton of illegals...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:24PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:24PM (#814935)

          Here is an estimate from a site tracking "undocumented" who crossed the border (so presumably they are pro illegal immigration, using that loaded "undocumented" word)

          https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/ [factcheck.org] [factcheck.org]

          And even their number is still over 10 million!!
          (given it is a pro-illegal article, the real number is probably less than the 25M number bandied by the right, and more than this 10 million figure).

          That is still a shitton of illegals...

          Well then. You better get out there and start knocking on doors and demanding documents from people. Don't bother kicking the brown scum out of the country, just shoot them dead. They deserve it of course, right? In fact, why bother even asking for documents? If they're brown they're probably illegal anyway. And even if they are legal, they're gonna be shifty anway, amirite?

          If you had the courage of your convictions that's exactly what you'd be doing anyway, instead of whinging about it here.

          It shouldn't take you, your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and great-great-grandkids more than a few centuries to get it done. So get the hell off SN and get to work you lazy bastard!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:51PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:51PM (#814955)

            forgot the </sarcasm> tag..

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:56PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:56PM (#814959)

              forgot the </sarcasm> tag..

              Says who?

              Anyone who gets Poe'd [wikipedia.org] with that deserves to either be completely outraged or thinking they've found a kindred spirit.

              Either way, if some folks can't figure it out their reactions will be amusing. Kisses!

            • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Friday March 15 2019, @08:54PM

              by fritsd (4586) on Friday March 15 2019, @08:54PM (#815058) Journal

              you can use mine, I had one too many.