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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.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @06:27PM (2 children)
George Soros is wealthy; incredibly wealthy. George Soros has a political agenda. He does not dispute nor does he try to hide his political strategy and he uses his wealth with great success to achieve that goal. He is no different philosophically than Rupert Murdoch but only resides on a different end of the political spectrum. Every time you (or your political compatriots) show disdain for Murdoch you should show the same for Soros for they are two sides of the same coin. You (or your comrades) only support and defend the activities he financially supports because it aligns with your particular political leanings. As the recent news of the university admittance scandal demonstrates so conspicuously, wealth gives individuals great power and influence. If you do not support the undeserved influence of rich assholes over your lives, you cannot support one and condemn the other. Soros buys influence.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fritsd on Friday March 15 2019, @09:07PM (1 child)
I remember when George Soros had a project to ask Western European universities to send old typewriters and stencil machines to the students in Timişoara, after the dictator's death.
I can really not imagine Rupert Murdoch doing something like that, ever. To enable journalism by people not under your pay and control.
They are on different ends of the political spectrum, but it's two-dimensional. There are authoritarian leftist assholes (Stalin, Ceausescu?) as well as authoritarian rightist assholes.
But the other dimension runs from authoritarian to liberal (in the "personal freedoms" meaning; ordoliberal or ortholiberal or something?). G.S. and R.M. are on different ends in that dimension, as well.
Soros is a Holocaust survivor who doesn't really like authoritarian dictators because he *knows* what they do to scapegoats. He even knows the meaning of the word "invasion".
Anyway, both are going to be dead soon because they're very old. Get ready to select new bogeymen!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @12:02AM
You mean we could actually elect them? Like, aren't they pushed in front by the lizard people or something?