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Orwell was amazingly prescient about a 70+ years in the future
Domestic electronic surveillance has been normalized by every one of GWB's successors, but this is old fashioned cloak and dagger .
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/0...ogram-00085544For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal do ents reviewed by POLITICO. Those do ents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS’s intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal. Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. …. The inner workings of the program — called the ‘Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program’ — are described in the large tranche of internal do ents POLITICO reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Those do ents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The do ents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses. One unnamed employee — quoted in an April 2021 do ent — said leadership of I&A’s Office of Regional Intelligence “is ‘shady’ and ‘runs like a corrupt government
Orwell was amazingly prescient about a 70+ years in the future
... but somehow DHS/FBI/etc failed to stop the J6 rape of the Capitol. They certainly knew what was going to happen, but, I guess, were mostly sympathetic to the project.
We know cops watch blacks and browns very closely but let white insurrectionists slide by, even join them
Different year, same . The Patriot Act should be repealed, but that's not gonna happen.
The US Congress is improving the infrastructure of fascism, and Brandon will sign it, if passed.
"Defense bill passes Senate"
Section 702 reauthorized, extending the post 9/11 regime of domestic mass surveillance.
Private businesses can be forced to narc on their customers.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/letters...-trump-lettersSection 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already allows the government to compel communications companies like Google and Verizon to turn over information. This terrible bill would expand that to any service provider with access to equipment like routers, and let the government order them to help it monitor communications.
That means virtually any vendor who enters your home, or any business you visit, could be forced to become an involuntary government agent. That should chill you to the bone.
Congress masked the bill’s destructive impact by exempting hotels, coffee shops and a few other places. That’s cause for alarm, not relief. It admits that, without an exemption, they too could be commandeered by the FBI. Those not specifically exempted still can be.
But you may never know if they are. Under the bill, they’re gagged from telling anyone.
We ain't got a thing on Russia, eh, Winester? Six of 1---Half dozen of the other.
security/insecurity is a self-licking ice cream cone
https://x.com/poppy_haze/status/1842647876239052872
voting on this in the dead of night
for better and for worse, Republicans can't govern
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/...nsion-fe7475b0A compromise House proposal to renew a powerful national-security surveillance program for five years failed to advance early Friday, an embarrassing setback for Republican Party leaders who thought they could muscle the measure over the finish line in overnight votes.
With no immediate path forward, the House voted to extend the law for another two weeks until April 30.
"Pulty"
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-ri...py-chief-pick/The most powerful warrantless surveillance authority the US government has is on track to expire Friday for the first time ever. Because Trump won't part with a bush-league mortgage regulator who has no intelligence background, just a habit of referring his critics for prosecution.
19 Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rveillance-lawThe US House of Representatives on Thursday failed topass a short-term extension of a powerful surveillance law amid controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s decision to install an inexperienced loyalist as the country’s top intelligence official.
The measure failed in a 198-218 vote, after Democrats announced they would block the move to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) in protest of Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte, a major Republican donor, as acting director of national intelligence.
The congressional deadlock ensures section 702 of Fisa, which was enacted in the wake of 9/11 and allows US intelligence agencies to intercept foreign communications without a court warrant, will lapse on Friday.
domestic surveillance program for Trump's secret police
https://prospect.org/2026/10/14/ice-...ogram-ero-one/Immigration and Customs Enforcement is fast-tracking a $100 million domestic surveillance program to put 142 intelligence agents in more than two dozen cities and the District of Columbia, in what contracting and surveillance experts said would be a significant expansion of the agency’s ability to reach into private lives.
The new program is called the Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement, or ERO ONE, described in do ents posted last month on federal procurement websites.
Under the program, agents would analyze classified and unclassified information to identify “trends, patterns, relationships, threats, and intelligence gaps,” and provide ICE with briefings for Enforcement and Removal Operation missions, according to a statement of work published on September 18. A forecasting do ent published a week earlier said that the solicitation will likely be released on December 10. Intelligence contracting experts said the timeline suggests ICE will award the contract around February.
“It looks dangerously like the construction of an internal spying agency,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, who has written extensively on immigration agencies’ mass surveillance. “It’s a nightmare in the making.”
THE PLAN DOES NOT SPECIFY WHAT OR WHOM ICE is looking for with this increased spying capability. But one of the components that caused former intelligence contractors’ concern was that ERO ONE agents will analyze both classified and nonclassified information to produce “network, link and relationship” analyses. That type of analysis involves researching not only a target, but also every other person to whom they’re connected, including household members, family members, friends, acquaintances, or the person with whom they carpool to work.
According to the statement of work, contractors will be tasked with conducting analytical research “to identify and assess relationships among individuals, organizations, locations, events, activities, data points, and other en ies.” They will review information to identify “known, reported, or potential relationships; recurring patterns; organizational structures; associations; areas of convergence; temporal or geographic connections; and other linkages relevant to the assigned intelligence requirement.” Contractors will then “evaluate the significance and reliability” of the relationships and “prepare link charts, network diagrams, timelines, analytical summaries, written assessments, or other related products” for ICE to use.
Military intelligence agents compile the same type of research, Wriston said. He knows because he did that job.
“We’ve seen this time and time again. It’s the imperial boomerang,” said Wriston, who is also a data journalist and the founder of ICE watchdog group Project Salt Box, where he reported on ERO ONE the day the first do ent went live and has written about it since.
“These are the kinds of things that happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, for years. Now that methodology is being brought into the ICE space.”
Federal do ents likewise do not detail the specific sources of information agents will analyze, only that all agents must possess previously awarded active top secret clearance, with eligibility to access Sensitive Compartmented Information. That’s a type of information that must be accessed through certain formal control systems managed by the Director of National Intelligence, a position held by Trump ally Jay Clayton.
Details in the do ent, and the rapid timeline, show that the Trump administration intends to use the program immediately, said Brian Murphy, a government contractor who worked for 25 years with ICE parent agency DHS. It’s rare for the government to only want workers with top secret clearance, he said.
“I’ve only seen it when there is an imminent need to work on something right now,” he told the Prospect. “Trump has two years in office. He can’t wait … they want to get rolling on this immediately.”
The program description is so broad that Murphy said he thinks the goal goes beyond targeting immigrants. “I think it’s darker than that,” because the agency could use the intelligence to attack people with iden ies and views the Trump regime doesn’t like. “The question for DHS is, what is the threat they’re trying to go after?”
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