Originally posted on Syncretic Politics November 6, 2019
Source: New York Times
To no one’s surprise, unless you live under a rock, the FBI was found to have used section 702 of FISA to search through the emails of American citizens in a secret FISA court ruling that was declassified by Trump Admin recently. As I’ve already explained in a previous post, our “private” telecommunications and tech companies are little more than agents of the state for conducting dragnet warrantless surveillance on the American people. The FBI is notorious for violating constitutional law since its inception and they have many ways of doing this. The FBI also uses so called National Security Letters to obtain the communications of American citizens without even going through a secret court. Moreover, even when they do decide to obtain a warrant they can use one to conduct an indefinite number of searches and search the computers of people who aren’t even part of their criminal investigation. This NYT write up is a limited hangout of what is really going on behind the scenes in Washington. Don’t think for a second that this is being done in pursuit of justice or counterterrorism or whatever bullshit ad hoc alibi they decide to use. Historically, the purpose of any secret police, which the FBI certainly is, is to crack down on political dissent. During the civil rights movement and Vietnam war protests of the 60’s and 70’s it was COINTELPRO. In the early 2000's, the FBI used their new surveillance powers to spy on and harass anti-war protesters, animal rights activists, environmentalists, and anyone who vaguely harbored anti-government views. Today, the FBI considers anyone who talks about conspiracy theories (like COINTELPRO) to be a domestic terrorist threat.