How the administration plans on expanding its already massive surveillance apparatus…
The Biden administration may soon recruit an army of private snoops to conduct surveillance that would be illegal if done by federal agents. As part of its war on extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may exploit a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” CNN reported last week. But federal informant programs routinely degenerate into “dollars for collars” schemes that reward scoundrels for fabricating crimes that destroy the lives of innocent Americans. The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups. Federal agencies are prohibited from targeting individuals solely for First Amendment-protected speech and activities. But federal hirelings would be under no such restraint. Private informants could create false identities that would be problematic if done by federal agents.
DHS will be ramping up a war against an enemy which the feds have never clearly or competently defined. According to a March report by Biden’s office of the Director of National Intelligence, “domestic violent extremists” include individuals who “take overt steps to violently resist or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government in support of their belief that the U.S. government is purposely exceeding its Constitutional authority.” Perhaps like setting up a private informant scheme to evade constitutional restrictions on warrantless surveillance?
One DHS official bewailed to CNN:
“Domestic violent extremists are really adaptive and innovative. We see them not only moving to encrypted platforms, but obviously couching their language so they don’t trigger any kind of red flag on any platforms.”
DHS officials have apparently decided that certain groups of people are guilty regardless of what they say (“couching their language”). The targets are likely to be simply people with a bad attitude towards Washington. That will include gun owners who distrust politicians who vow to seize guns.
The latest fuzzball standards (“narratives of concern”?) fit the post-9/11 pattern of wildly expansive threat definitions. Shortly after its creation in 2002, DHS warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who “expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government” as potential terrorists. DHS-funded Fusion Centers have attached the “extremist” tag to gun-rights activists, anti-immigration zealots, and individuals and groups “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority”—even though many of the Founding Fathers shared the same creed. The Pentagon taught soldiers and bureaucrats that people who attend public protests are guilty of “low-level terrorism.” An Air Force report accused women who wear hijabs of “passive terrorism.” Endless enemies lists come in handy at congressional appropriations hearings.
Federal officials insist that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. FBI chief Christopher Wray perennially proclaims that the FBI never investigates Americans based solely on their ideas. But, as the Intercept reported in 2019, “Who the Justice Department decides to prosecute as a domestic terrorist has little to do with the harm they’ve inflicted or the threat they pose to human life.” But that claim is belied by the FBI’s beloved “informant loophole.” As Trevor Aaronson explained, “FBI agents must obtain supervisory approval to enter a group or gathering using an undercover agent, and to obtain that approval, the FBI must have a ‘predicate,’ or a factual basis to suspect criminal activity. But neither supervisory approval nor a predicate is required if the work is done by an informant, creating a loophole that allows the FBI to investigate Americans for virtually any reason.”
Any new informants hired by the Biden administration will operate under the same perverse incentives that have long subverted due process. Informants tend to be rewarded based on how much assets they help government seize or how many people they help prosecutors condemn. As a 2019 report by the American Bar Association noted, “The government pays cash for incriminating information and testimony. This is troubling because the financial incentive to make cases against others may be much greater than the personal integrity of the informants.” A report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General slammed the Drug Enforcement Agency for failing to “document the reliability of informants” who helped the DEA to confiscate billions of dollars of private property. The DEA paid informants $237 million between 2010 and 2015, including $25 million shoveled out to only nine informants. DEA’s best paid informant, Andrew Chambers, Jr., was found to have given “false testimony under oath in at least 16 criminal prosecutions nationwide before he was exposed in the late 1990s,” USA Today reported in 2013. Attorney General Janet Reno banned the DEA from using him as an informant but in 2008, DEA re-hired Chambers and used him for at least the following five years.
Informants have become far more perilous to freedom and decency since the 1970s thanks to the Supreme Court effectively defining entrapment out of existence. Almost anything an informant or undercover government agent does to induce someone to violate the law is considered fair play. Craig Monteilh, an informant who was sent into mosques in southern California, was given permission by his FBI handlers to sleep with Muslim women he targeted and to secretly tape record their pillow talk. Other FBI informants browbeat their targets into discussing bombing government buildings, providing sufficient verbal rope to hang them. The vast majority of people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were not bona fide threats but were induced by the FBI or informants to behave in ways that prompted their arrest, according to Trevor Aaronson’s The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.
One purpose of relying on private informants is to assure that there are no federal fingerprints when people are coaxed or shoved into breaking the law. The FBI admits that it formally entitles its army of informants to commit more than 5,000 crimes a year; there is no estimate of how many crimes are committed directly by FBI agents, who have been formally taught that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” Thanks to the FBI’s Iron Curtain of Secrecy, we have no idea what sort of atrocities its informants may now be committing. During George W. Bush’s reign, the White House formally invoked executive privilege to block disclosure of the FBI’s sweetheart deals for Whitey Bulger, a notorious FBI informant and Irish crime boss linked to 20 murders. The FBI knew of Bulger’s role in killings but lied in court to protect him, even providing false testimony to send innocent men to prison for life to safeguard Bulger. That debacle was summarized in a 2004 congressional report titled, “Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants.” In 2011, a federal judge aptly labeled the FBI’s behavior in the case as “uncontrolled official wickedness.”
In 2016, Omar Mateen carried out the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11, killing 49 people at the Orlando Pulse Nightclub attack. Prior to his attack, Mateen boasted of his connections to terrorists and threatened to have Al Qaeda kill a co-worker’s family; his mosque warned authorities that he was a threat to public safety. But the FBI swayed the local sheriff’s department to drop its investigation of Mateen because a “confidential informant” assured FBI agents that Mateen was not a terrorist and would not “go postal or anything like that.” The federal case against the killer’s widow collapsed in 2018 after jurors belatedly learned that the killer’s father, an Afghan immigrant, had been an FBI informant since 2005 and may have used his influence to assure that his son was not arrested prior to his killing spree.
The FBI has long relied on informants to choreograph political violence. In the 1960s, FBI informants “set up a Klan organization intended to attract membership away from the United Klans of America,” according to a 1976 Senate report. One FBI informant with the Klan, along with other Klansmen, had “beaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked [Freedom Riders] off” and beat restaurant customers “with blackjacks, chains, pistols.” In 2006, a paid FBI informant organized and led a neo-Nazi march in a black neighborhood in Orlando, Florida. In 2017, an FBI informant masterminded a Klan rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, sharply increasing the tension and fear prior to the much larger and notorious Charlottesville Unite the Right rally the following month. There have not yet been any disclosures regarding what role, if any, that federal informants played in the January 6 clash at the Capitol.
DHS wants to enlist more private informants at the same time federal undercover operations are already out of control. At least 40 federal agencies are now conducting undercover operations involving thousands of agents. An undercover DEA agent “created a fake Facebook page from the photos of a young woman in Watertown, N.Y. — without her knowledge — to lure drug suspects,” the New York Times reported. IRS agents are officially permitted to “pose as an attorney, physician, clergyman or member of the news media.” The Times noted in 2014 that “the military and its investigative agencies have almost as many undercover agents working inside the United States as does the F.B.I.,” often serving on joint federal task forces of the type that will likely be expanded for the Biden extremist crackdown. A sting operation by the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agency swayed mentally handicapped individuals to get tattooed to help advertise its bogus gun store, violating federal laws protecting the disabled. Oversight is often a mirage: an ATF committee created to oversee undercover operations didn’t bother meeting for more than half a decade. The Times noted that “even Justice Department officials say they are uncertain how many agents work undercover.”
The Biden administration is considering unleashing a new surveillance program at a time when Americans have no idea how many federal agencies are already spying on them. Yahoo News disclosed last month that the Postal Inspection Service is running iCOP —the Internet Covert Operations Program—to sweep social media and other websites searching for any “inflammatory” postings on topics including protests against COVID lockdowns. Postal inspectors got access to private messages on Parler and Telegram, presumably with no search warrant. The iCOP program turns over its discoveries to other federal agencies. Rachel Levinson-Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice commented that iCop “seems a little bizarre” since the surveillance included “monitoring of social media that’s unrelated to use of the postal system.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) denounced the program for violating the Constitution and asked: “The USPS has been losing money for many years… so where do they find money to run this surveillance program?” Unfortunately, federal agencies that trample the law and the Constitution in their surveillance efforts are usually punished with budget increases.
Perhaps setting up a new informant scheme to work around the Constitution is not the best response to extremists who fear government is lawless. Unfortunately, Americans are unlikely to hear about crimes committed by Biden’s new snoops until long after the damage is done, if ever.
After 9/11, the entire country collectively lost its mind in the throes of fear. During that time, all civil and Constitutional rights were shredded and replaced with the pages of The USA PATRIOT Act.
Almost 20 years later, the U.S. has again lost its collective mind, this time in fear of a “virus” and it’s “super mutations” and a “riot” at the capitol. A lot of people called this and to the surprise of very few, much like after 9/11, Americans are watching what remains of their civil liberties be replaced with a new bill.
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021
The DTPA is essentially the criminalization of speech, expression, and thought. It takes cancel culture a step further and all but outlaws unpopular opinions. This act will empower intelligence, law enforcement, and even military wings of the American ruling class to crack down on individuals adhering to certain belief systems and ideologies.
“The attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month was the latest example of domestic terrorism, but the threat of domestic terrorism remains very real. We cannot turn a blind eye to it,” Upton said. “The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act will equip our law enforcement leaders with the tools needed to help keep our homes, families, and communities across the country safe.
Congressman Upton’s website gives the following information on DTPA:
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 would strengthen the federal government’s efforts to prevent, report on, respond to, and investigate acts of domestic terrorism by authorizing offices dedicated to combating this threat; requiring these offices to regularly assess this threat; and providing training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement in addressing it.
DTPA would authorize three offices, one each within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to monitor, investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism. The bill also requires these offices to provide Congress with joint, biannual reports assessing the state of domestic terrorism threats, with a specific focus on white supremacists. Based on the data collected, DTPA requires these offices to focus their resources on the most significant threats.
DTPA also codifies the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, which would coordinate with United States Attorneys and other public safety officials to promote information sharing and ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat domestic terrorism. The legislation requires DOJ, FBI, and DHS to provide training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in understanding, detecting, deterring, and investigating acts of domestic terrorism and white supremacy. Finally, DTPA directs DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Department of Defense to establish an interagency task force to combat white supremacist infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement.
Those who read the bill aren’t so gung ho to shred the Constitution
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has some serious reservations. In a recent interview on Fox News Primetime, Gabbard stated that the bill effectively criminalizes half of the country. (Emphasis ours)
“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.
She continued: “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”
Gabbard, stating her concern about how the government will define what qualities they are searching for in potential threats to the country, went on to ask:
“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this”
Tulsi said the bill would create a dangerous undermining of our civil liberties and freedoms in our Constitution. She also stated the DPTA essentially targets nearly half of the United States.
“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.
Tulsi Gabbard is not the only one to criticize the legislation
Even the ACLU, one of the weakest organizations on civil liberties in the United States, has spoken out. While the ACLU was only concerned with how the bill would affect minorities or “brown people,” the organization stated that the legislation, while set forth under the guise of countering white supremacy, would eventually be used against non-white people.
The ACLU’s statement is true.
As with similar bills submitted under the guise of “protecting” Americans against outside threats, this bill will inevitably expand further. The stated goals of the DPTA are far-reaching and frightening enough. It would amount to an official declaration of the end to Free Speech.
Soon there will be no rights left for Americans
In the last twenty years, Americans have lost their 4th Amendment rights, and now they are losing their 1st. All that remains is the 2nd Amendment, and both the ruling class and increasing numbers of the American people know it.
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the death of Terry Prachett. Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett was an author and satirist probably best known for his Discworld fantasy series, which has sold over 80 millions copies in 37 languages. He announced in 2007 that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease and his passing was reported today by the BBC and numerous SF sites.
According to Uchronia, Pratchett's entrance into alternate history came rather late in his career when he published The Long Earth series with co-author Stephen Baxter. The series was a unique take on the multiverse since instead of an infinite series of parallel Earths with alternate human histories, we were instead presented with Earths that had alternate geological and climate histories and lightly populated by primitive humanoids. The series highlighted Pratchett's fantasy and Baxter's hard SF backgrounds rather well and you can check out my review of the first two novels over at Amazing Stories.
Sadly I have not read The Long Mars yet, but I hope to complete the series in the next few weeks. The Internet is full of people pouring out their grief for the loss of Terry Pratchett and I only wish that I could read more of his works before he died. My prayers go out to Terry's family, friends and fans, and it is my sincere wish that his influence will be felt on all the generations to come.
You might think Alaskan teenagers would know what to do if a two-legged varmint makes camp, ballistically speaking. T’aint necessarily so. Enter Teens on Target, a firearms class that teaches youngsters in the Land of the Midnight Sun basic firearms safety and armed self-defense. Course founder Elaina Spraker told peninsulaclarion.com that the instruction was inspired by a conversation with her son . . .
“She asked him whether his girlfriend, who sometimes went on the shooting trips, enjoyed it as much as he did. Her son responded that the girls in the group usually hung back and often seemed intimidated by the guns.
“That’s when the wheels started turning,” she said . . .
In addition to safety, the course includes trigger technique, accuracy practice, shooting from a full range of positions, and a chance to gain experience with a variety of guns. Ted Spraker said that the class begins with shotgun trap-shooting, then progresses to rifles and handguns, and finishes with a course in the AR-50 assault rifle, which Ted Spraker said the girls are “not bashful about shooting.”
“Sometimes the only thing that saves us from running out of ammo is that it gets dark,” Elaina Spraker said.
Sounds like someone should donate some weapon-mounted-lights. Meanwhile, thanks to the NRA for helping fund the effort. And here’s hoping Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have a s-fit over this, so that the course gets even more publicity, so that instructors in the lower-48 are inspired to recreate it.
“The true value of this program is female empowerment,” said Elaina Spraker. “You take an adolescent girl, and something very positive happens when they learn the power of firearms.”
I have been reading (and occasionally commenting on) TTAG for some time now. I read with interest one of your entries from Friday 4/25, “How can the NRA become less white?” Or perhaps more generally (and more accurately), how can the NRA become more non-OFWG? I decided to address this in an email rather than a comment, mostly because this response is going to be fairly long, but also because the comments seem to be running along the lines of, “Diversity? We don’t need no steenkin’ diversity!” . . .
Grant Cunningham addressed precisely this question a few weeks ago. It wasn’t people of color he was discussing, it was tattooed and pierced, socially liberal hipsters. But I think the same analysis applies.
Cunningham writes,
“One thing is certain: these new shooters don’t like the NRA and they aren’t members. They don’t know the organization because the organization hasn’t taken the time to know them. What they believe they know about the NRA and its members comes from the mainstream media, because too many members have decided that these new shooters aren’t worth getting to know as human beings.
“(Frankly, the organization’s social stances haven’t helped, either. Seriously, look at the major social activities planned for the NRA convention later this month: a country music concert and a prayer breakfast. Do you really think these people are going to be excited about either?)
“Don’t expect them to see eye-to-eye with you on political matters, because they may not. Don’t expect them to join the NRA, because they probably won’t (at least, not until the NRA becomes more representative of them.) If that bothers you so much that you won’t treat them like you would other shooters, all you’re doing is insuring that future generations grow up without the Second Amendment advocacy that we enjoy today.”
Cunningham makes some points worth noting.
First: Culture. Want non-OFWG’s to get involved? Let’s start with last night’s concert, “Country Jam IV.” Nothing against Joe Nichols and Jerrod Niemann, but that’s not likely to appeal to people whose musical tastes run more toward Jay-Z or Pitbull, or toward Imagine Dragons or OneRepublic. A little hip-hop, a little alt rock, would go a ways toward showing that the NRA’s culture isn’t just for aging rednecks.
And Alabama? They’ve been around nearly as long as I’ve been alive. I know a lot of people still like them, but see above re fans of Imagine Dragons and Pitbull… As for the prayer breakfast? Nothing wrong with that, just that millennials are less likely to be enthused about that, and people of color would be more likely to show up if, say, T.D. Jakes appeared alongside Franklin Graham.
Second: Politics. I looked at the lineup for the NRA-ILA leadership forum. No women, a slew of very conservative Republicans. Three persons of color (Gov. Jindal, Sen. Rubio, Sheriff Clarke) so at least there was that. But still. We all know that Republicans tend to be pro-2A and Democrats for the most part tend to be anti-2A. The Democrats’ general stance is a problem that all us People of the Gun – right, left, and center – need to address.
But see Cunningham’s article above…attracting moderates and liberals to the NRA is going to be difficult as long as the NRA aligns itself with politicians who oppose women’s right to bodily and reproductive autonomy, LGBTQs’ right to live authentically and right to marry the person they love, Latin@s who have grown up here since infancy or toddlerhood being able to obtain the right of citizenship (and who are undocumented through no fault of their own). Or to put it a little more colorfully, you’re not going to get PBR-swilling hipsters and latte liberals to come if all you’re throwing is a TEA Party.
The NRA could start by supporting pro-gun Democrats (they do exist) such as Mark Begich of Alaska. The NRA could also refuse to reflexively endorse anti-gun people who happen to have an “R” after their name, such as Mitt Romney, who signed Massachusetts’ AWB when he was Governor. (Note: refusing to endorse Romney wouldn’t have necessarily meant endorsing Obama. The NRA could have said, “we can’t endorse either major party candidate this year.”)
The NRA-ILA could also have a little chat with politicians who say, um, unfortunate things about, say, sexual assault: “Hey, we’re glad you support 2A. But we’d like to increase female support for 2A rights by pointing out that firearms ownership can help women protect their right to bodily autonomy, and when you say stupid things about rape, that just pisses women off and drives them into the antis’ camp.”
Third: Wayne LaPierre. It’s time for him to go, or at least not be the public face of the NRA. He just isn’t an effective spokesman. He’s our Michael Bloomberg.
Fourth: Ditto Ted Nugent.
Fifth: More spokespeople of color, younger spokespeople, female spokespeople. (On the latter: Not Sarah Palin. She falls under the LaPierre/Nugent category of “open mouth, remove left foot, replace with right foot, close mouth.” Some women love her, but a lot of us hate her. And not because of her looks.)
Sixth part un: Introducing people to shooting and improving access to shooting. For urban people, lobbying to change laws making it difficult or impossible to locate ranges in urban areas. Recruiting and training more instructors of color, more female instructors, more younger instructors.
Sixth part deux: Identifying and winning over influential community leaders – pastors, local politicians, business leaders in communities of color. If you look at cities like Chicago or Atlanta, the black clergy are often in the forefront of anti-2A initiatives because of the heavy toll of violence they see among black youths. Recruit them, work with them on the types of social change that could reduce violence, help them see that the NRA is on their side.
