Wait so 'criticising government policies' is now grounds to classify a high school student as an extremist? Is this seriously the America that exists today? This sounds more like something a paranoid regime somewhere overseas might come up with but not the U.S.
I can say for a fact that I had my fair share of opinions on some pretty ridiculous government policies during high school, at this rate I would have been singled out as a person of interest. What stupidity is this coming from a 'world leading' country.
As someone who lives in one of those places somewhere overseas, I am kind of amazed at how rapidly the US is approaching the same sort of regime I live under. Over here, if you criticize the government (currently a military junta) they send soldiers to your house who take you to an "education center" for a week or so of attitude adjustment. Many hundreds have been through it already, including prominent academics, students, and even a few former politicians. Maybe the US will use something a little more subtle than they use here, but seems to me it is not long in coming.
I know exactly what country based on that description.
Apparently before the "education center", you're brought in before military officials "just to talk" about your statements. They publicly phrase it as just wanting to understand your criticisms of the government, but they really just grill you to see who else you've been talking to, what websites you frequent, etc.
Your situation sounds quite concerning, I hope you're doing alright and can deal with the authorities as they are. I sincerely hope current western governments don't go that far, but I too can see the day coming in the not too distant future.
I'm a foreigner here and don't have any say in politics anyway so there's little point in drawing attention to myself by criticizing the government. Just noticing some unfortunate parallels between what they do here and what they are doing in the US. BTW, they love surveillance here - they have nailed a number of people by spying on their messaging (Naver LINE).
I'm not sure what the truth is. Some people in Thailand got arrested for saying something the government didn't like on LINE. The Thai gov said they had intercepted the offending message with LINE's help. LINE denied helping and said their messaging is secure "because encryption". When I looked at their webpage that's supposed to tell why they are secure it was basically we are secure "because encryption" and stated that "In this function, a robust secure algorithm, recommended by the highest encryption authority (NIST: National Security Agency, U.S.) has been adopted." with a link to a page that is just a list of various encryption standards. It looked basically like a poor joke. I don't know how strong LINE's security is these days but based on what I've read I don't trust them.
> at this rate I would have been singled out as a person of interest
Getting "singled out" is already happening to activists and whistleblowers in the Land of the Free. These "targeted individuals"[0] are enrolled in a program designed to deny, disrupt, discredit, destroy, degrade, and deceive the targets and anyone who might be interested in their plight.
The ACLU, the FBI, and the media will not investigate; even Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras of Snowden fame will not touch the "Targeted Individual" phenomenon.
I would be inclined to dismiss the wholesale torture of and non-consensual human experimentation on "Targeted Individuals" using "less than lethal" weapons if I were not already a victim. So I don't blame anyone who cannot believe that such things are possible in the USA and other related countries.
There's a lot of JTRIG-style[1] disinfo online but there's a ton of truth for those who are prepared to consider the possibility of a 21st century update to COINTELPRO.
Like most other government surveillance programs, this just piles more hay onto the proverbial haystack. The needles are still there (San Bernadino shooters, Boston Marathon bombers, etc.) but they're even harder to find than before.
I think, somewhere in all this, one has to read between the lines.
Young kids, while still in high school, might be terrified of mom and dad finding their secret social media profiles, but otherwise they're very active, downright sloppy, and probably not mindful of carrier-grade government tier national/international surveillance.
Are they enabling full disk encryption? Are they hardening their passwords? Are they even remotely secretive beyond their immediate social spheres?
This means it's a huge, ripe fruit, full of vital information, and eager to be plucked.
So they intend to pull as much data as possible, pre-emptively, so that there's something to mine. Just in case, later on, maybe something will eventually prove useful.
So many other age groups are too savvy now. Ruined by revelations, cautious and jaded to the fact that convenience means naked exposure of identity. But in time their ways will sunset, as they grow old, and are put out to pasture.
Those who are young now... well... it's already too late.
A lot of good and smart kids have disdain for authority and status-quo. I will not be surprised that this students will be harassed by these government policies.
> Is this seriously the America that exists today?
Uh, yeah? I mean, no shit it is. This isn't much farther over the line than the shit that went down in response to the WTC attacks. Where have you been?
Australia, thankfully. Although the current direction of our government is also becoming increasingly security oriented, to the point of metadata retention schemes and site blocking at the ISP level coming in.
Australia leads the pack in defining workable, effective social control measures for its population. Whatever you think America is going to do in the immediate future, America's little cousin, Australia, has already done it, and is quite proud to show their bigger American pals just how to do it ..
"Is this seriously the America that exists today?" Not denying they have taken it up a notch, but FBI has always been some borderline Gestapo institution from it's inception. You heard of Edgar Hoover right?
For quite a while, I've been trying to remind Americans that the NSA show is a distraction - NSA really is legally prohibited from performing surveillance of US Persons (hey, that mean corporations, too!)... the FBI, however... well that's what they're all about!
With the FBI's recent strong anti-encryption views, this should come as no surprise, but what I AM honestly surprised about, probably due to that one shred of naivete and "hope" I have left, is that the Obama administration seems to be okay with all of this.
As someone who was almost expelled for participating in a very vulgar and sophomoric underground high school newspaper (and in the end, assigned to the "punishment" of building robots at the local junior college after school), I can't help but wonder if today that same activity would have had all of my "selectors" (SSN, name, e-mails, phone numbers) assigned to a lifetime watchlist of potential terrorists, malcontents, and generally "un-American" types. I guarantee you, those lists already exist, they are growing, and they will last longer than the lives of those on them. When a teenager with a passion for the environment "grows up" and decides to protest less, and instead apply for a federal forest service job, that list will be the reason they are turned away. These lists PROMOTE separation, PROMOTE extreme thinking, and SUSTAIN anti-establishment views.
It's hard to tell what's going on here. The article appears to conflate information from many different FBI publications.
I downloaded the first linked document;[1] skimming through it and searching it, it seems to lack the most inflamatory claims in the article. Mostly it seems an exaggerated threat (students at every school are at much greater risk of many other threats) and it has other flaws, but it's not so bad. I think the most common theme is to look for students advocating violence to acheive their goals and use their support network to help them.
EDIT: To give you a feel for at least part of the document:
* "The response should leverage the strengths of governments, community organizations, social service agencies, and other professionals to provide what is commonly referred to as an “Off-Ramp”. ... The school formulates an intervention plan in conjunction with the community and non-law enforcement entities on the federal or state level. Ideally, an intervention cadre should contain professionals from the local community representing multiple disciplines such as mental health, social workers, law enforcement, school resource officers, faith-based organizations, and/or crisis intervention teams."
* "If a student continues on a trajectory to violence, the one remaining option is a law enforcement disruption"
I believe that is where they got some of the pieces. At least, its the closest I can find to some of the more inflammatory claims. However, all of those have clearly violent messaging.
How about governments advocating violence to achieve their objectives? When can we send the FBI in after them? How about preventing militancy and extremism in government? When can we do something about that?
> How about governments advocating violence to achieve their objectives?
That's what governments are for. It is one of the fundemental definitions of a sovereign government, the monopoly on violence.[1] Violence is taboo but sometimes necessary. Only the legitimate authority of the people, acting under the law and through their democratically elected government can exercise it. (As I understand the theory.)
As we know, even those legitimate authorities are corrupt to varying degrees; we are cursed with no alternative to human institutions. However, I think it's still much better than individuals making those decisions.
> When can we send the FBI in after them? How about preventing militancy and extremism in government? When can we do something about that?
That's the job of the voters. Don't forget to vote!
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[1] The other is the monopoly on justice. The definition works well: For example, in regions of Syria, Daesh uses violence with impunity and runs its own system of justice. You can't really say that the Syrian government has sovereignty over those areas.
People fear terrorists because the government and news media tell them they should. There are lots of scary things in the world. Heart disease, cancer, car crashes to name a few. 610,000 people died from heart disease in America last year. How many people in America died in terrorist attacks? About 30. Yes, 30 people. Perhaps the US should take their survalence budget and use that money to fight heart disease and cancer.
>>People fear terrorists because the government and news media tell them they should.
Not entirely true. There are genuine reasons to fear terrorism (religious and/or ideologically inspired). Some reasons are - such people terrorists/extremists do NOT tolerate others to such an extent that many of them find it almost impossible to leave peacefully with people with even slightly different views/opinions.
Agreed that Heart disease, cancer, and other such things do kill many more people than plain terrorism but same can be said about sleeping e.g. "millions if not billions of people died while sleeping in their beds". Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim.
One reason why people find (irrespective of media) terrorism more dangerous than heart disease, cancer, etc is this - heart disease, cancer, and cars are NOT human beings and thus do NOT actively not tolerate difference of opinions amongst other groups of people and do NOT engage in acts of "killing other people for difference of opinions" while human terrorists do engage in such killings and do constantly search for opportunities to kill people with different opinions.
>>How many people in America died in terrorist attacks? About 30. Yes, 30 people.
I guess, either you forgot the 9/11 or deliberately not mentioned it. If later, do you subscribe to the extreme leftist opinion that 9/11 was nothing more than US conspiracy?
If yes, I will not be surprised.
>>Perhaps the US should take their survalence budget and use that money to fight heart disease and cancer.
That may be advisable, only if there is a clear evidence that all (religious and/or ideologically inspired (e.g. communists) terrorists and their organizations have ceased their efforts to bring the entire world under their control. Such evidence is extremely difficult to get even if it is there, unfortunately we do see a lot of evidence pointing the opposite.
I agree with you, but let's play devil's advocate here. How many attempted terrorist attacks were stopped? That 30 might've been 31 or 30,000,000. We'll never know for sure for two reasons:
1. Anything that could remotely reveal a method of surveillance wouldn't be included in these numbers
2. It's pretty hard to define an "attempted" attack - a lot of attempts might be thwarted in the planning, etc... What about something that wasn't intended to stop a group, but did? Or maybe an underground group that wasn't being monitored, how do we know the gov't stopped them?
That does not comport with the high-profile extradition and prosecution of a teenager who was lured into translating documents for a fake terrorist organization. The FBI trumpets their results, even the most trivial concocted results. If they stopped a terrorist plot, there would be a press release. There is no hidden cache of thwarted terrorists going unprosecuted.
The terrorist problem is exactly as we see it. Tiny.
We know how many terrorist plots succeeded in the US. The FBI issues press releases when they stop some plot at an earlier stage. So we should have a good idea of how many terrorists plots have been stopped per actual incident.
Bombings in the US are way down. Most terrorist incidents in the last 10 years are shootings. The last big bombing was the Boston Marathon, in 2013, and that was two brothers working alone, so intel wouldn't have helped. The last organized plot was in 2009, aimed at the NYC subway and some UK targets. That was allegedly foiled by intel into Al Qaeda communications.
Since 9/11, terrorism in the US [1] has been much less of a problem than routine mass shootings.[2]
Lot's of "successfully prevented" attacks are actually alienated, lonely men that are radicalized by the FBI, and given terror assignments by the Bureau so that they can be arrested as "lone wolf attackers":
Can you (or a populace) be influenced by something you are unaware of? If so, you can be a victim of an act terrorism without knowing of the act.
If a terrorist shoots my sister, and nobody knows it was a terrorist plot, the destabilization and other negative effects are still there. I will be afraid, perhaps not of ISIS, but I will generally be terrified that someone might shoot me too.
Terrorism is not so simple. Thinking that all terrorism must be some extreme, singular act seems short-sighted. What is the terrorist's goal?
Terrorism can be subtle and long-term.
Edit: What terrifies you? Did terrorists exclusively create this (threat of terror)? My point is, does a terrorist exclusively create terror... or do these terrorists have a broader goal beyond simple terrorism?
> Surely there are successful terrorist plots that have succeeded that we are unaware of.
No. Terrorists even take credit for things they had nothing to do with. The goal of a terrorist is to strike fear into the population by committing crimes in the most public way possible. Secrecy of the result doesn't serve this goal. The other reason to publicize is for recruiting purposes.
We certainly know the number of successful plots. Failed plots and fizzles, perhaps not.
Thanks for the link (I love gwern). Terrorist organizations are always evolving though. For example, the ongoing PR campaign by ISIS. The PR is creating terrorists but there is never a singular attack. I would say the PR campaign is successful, but many people are unaware of it, compared to 9/11.
My point is, terrorism is not exclusively a single, concentrated moment of terror. Some terrorist plots are more subtle and long-term.
Frankly, terrorists have been around for a long time, and they didn't do shit before 9/11 and they haven't done shit since.
If there were an alternate world where 9/11 happened once a month every month (so, 36k people die due to terrorism every year), that would be equivalent to approximately the US car accidents per year (well, technically that's only ten 9/11's worth, not twelve, but whatever).
And remember, 9/11 only happened once in the last century, so if statistics hold up we're good to go, and we have a spare few billions per year that were funded the TSA.
The FBI has failed so long to meaningfully preemptively stop a terrorist attack that it seems like they're are just throwing everything at the wall in desperate hopes something works. So their jobs can produce something more tangible than just providing some abstract deterrent effect. Not just a mysterious ever-watching machine scaring away would-be actors, but people who can actually go into the field and gets results.
I mean they already have about ~100k paid informants, they can't really find enough poorly educated targets to keep scaling up that program. Only so many young impressionable kids can be talked into doing terrorist attacks they were hardly capable of in the first place by undercover agents disguised as authority figures.
So, hey, what if we build snitch networks in high schools like East German youth programs?
>>The FBI has failed so long to meaningfully preemptively stop a terrorist attack that it seems like they're are just throwing everything at the wall in desperate hopes something works.
How can you be so sure? What evidence have you got to support your claim? Curious to know.
Obama used the "think of the children" canard when talking about privacy at SXSW the other day. Now, with this, it sounds like the government really wants to think of the children. All the time.
Today's children's are tomorrow's voters. A state that cannot indoctrinate the young - cannot have unity and dumb nationalist people needed to sacrifice for the survival of the state.
Under new guidelines, the FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies and “western corruption” as potential future terrorists
This is as "classic" a move as the "think-of-the-children" strategy. It has been predicted by so many people (which of course have been labeled as "tinfoil hat" wearers and "conspiracy activists") that the fact that this has been allowed to become reality makes one simply speechless. (Pun not even intended.)
What does this remind you of?
Does this sound like a country you want to live in?
Reminds me of communist countries, especially East Germany, where neighbours were meant to spy on each other and report any suspicious activity to the (secret) police.
It seems like this could backfire. Tell a bunch of angsty teenage boys that there are these anarchists fighting the man and here's how they do it, and some of them will think that sounds like an awesome idea.
And feeling targeted and discriminated against increases anger, fear and hatred of society, which leads to the outcomes that these policies are trying to stop.
Not to be flippant, but "Anarchist extremists believe that society should have no government, laws, or police, and they are loosely organized, with no central leadership" is a core belief of both libertarian Republicans like the publicly-visible two Koch brothers but also, to a lesser degree, some more educated, but unworldly, people whom happen to also believe that government "just gets in the way" until Flint, Michigan water crises and Hurricane Katrinas happen. Perhaps also criticizing ineffective and wasteful government, apart from deliver services or enforcing laws, may also be viewed as a potential tool to silence critics, whom have the significant power of social media. In Europe, a continual attempt to balance between anarchy and Big Mother is called democratic socialism, although the coloring of the word "socialism" implies Big Mother communism in many older Americans' minds... this is unfortunate when there are many more "Jungles" dispersed around the US than all of Europe and people living in their cars in the shadows (both situations are "bad"). I hope the US and more countries get a basic income soon.
Parents should also be upset at the thoughtpolice sort of world this kind of policy reinforces. It's bad enough the FBI monitors social media of security researchers and calls their employers should they be tagged or take photos with "watchlisted" people... this already happens, today, and it's not just some tinfoil wingnuttery. Considering how low the bar is for millions on various watchlists, how must it feel to become "radioactive" without a trial or even hard, unclassified evidence? Fear and gossip are powerful motivators, especially threatening people's careers and reputations.
We continue to move from a law enforcement system of warrants/detective work into wholesale surveillance. We have lazily been doing that since 2001.
I think the authorities forgot how to solve crimes without full access to your data. They forgot about what started this country and they despise the bill of rights and especially Amendment #4. At some point having all this data is just noise and makes actual detection harder. Even if they have the data, without detective work by smart authorities, having all that data is useless.
Terror attacks are horrible and we should try to prevent them, but the legislative and executive attack on our freedoms is much worse than any terrorist could do.
I've often felt upset about knowing that the US people have many good traits, but the US Government is frankly scary and that I would love to visit the US people but would hate to interact with the US Government by doing so. To this end, I've always deferred the idea of visiting the US hoping that future governments would improve the situation before I do.
More recently however, I'm beginning to think that the risk may be ultimately worth it now despite the issues, because at this rate the US may become too scary to visit at all in my young adult life.
I feel you. I left about 3 years ago for a mixture of personal reasons and increasing discomfort with the direction of the country.
Not only do most Americans seem oblivious to their loss of personal liberties, but they also are also apparently unconcerned with the widespread havoc wrought by US foreign policy. Now after 3 years of living in one such country that got deeply fucked over by the apathy and ignorance of US citizens, that last part is especially hard for me to tolerate.
I'm actually considering a visit back for the first time to see my ailing grandparents, and honestly I'm worried about re-entering because I frequently voice "radical" opinions online (though never violent). We'll see how it goes.
This assumes you can find a preferable country that will take you. Most of the world is as anti-immigrant (on average) as the US is. Unless you have a lot of money they can take through taxes, changing citizenship isn't always easy.
Well, I've been to a few of those schools. There are terrorists in them to be sure, but they're too busy terrorizing their peers to criticize the government. You'd probably be put on the list for pointing that out.
Wouldn't it be sufficient to monitor what people publish on social media? How many extremists have not posted violent threats on YouTube before going on their shooting spree?
Damn, this article pushes my buttons. I really want to rant about it. Being a libertarian, this kind of thing drives me nuts.
But I see from the comment thread that ranting is already covered, so instead I will try to provide a little context by defending the FBI (a little bit)
Part of the job of any police force is not to act in a reactive manner. You should develop leads, work confidential informants, and keep files on folks you might expect to deal with in the future. This process fits into staffing, handling large crowds, planning for needed jail and prosecution resources, and so on.
Police forces just don't sit on the corner waiting to react. If they did, they'd use a helluva lot more force than they do now. This is a good thing for everyone -- up until a point.
Likewise, in extreme circumstances, citizens should expect to be roughly handled and/or have their rights taken away from them. If you're on a public conveyance that is in danger of exploding, you might be forceably removed. Under certain unique threats, you could be strip-searched. All sorts of bad things happen -- every now and then.
This is the way it should be. When things like this occur, somebody should be taking political risk. Ticking nuclear bomb? Sure, waterboard the terrorist (please excuse arguments for torture not working for sake of argument). But that torture was a one-time, political decision made by an elected person with executive authority. That person is taking a risk. Perhaps evidence shows there was no threat. In that case, they could be removed from office.
What we're doing here that's so batshit crazy is systemitizing things that should be one-of occurrences. There are provisions for one-time extraordinary events in our system of government. But with modernization, what the government wants to do is automate all of that. No free system of government can last long under these conditions. You're killing the baby to put the fire out in the house.
Each little department, however, only sees their little piece of the action. I saw a video yesterday where a conservative congressman is now coming around to believing Apple's case[1]. He was questioning the Attorney General. What about all these side effects of what the FBI wants, he asked. Are you considering what kind of impact this case can have on the entire system?
The answer was nope, not in my wheelhouse. FBI needs something, Apple has it. They're going to need it again, so we want a system where it's easy and/or automated.
This is the case all over, from traffic tickets to civil asset forfeiture to financial reporting standards. Ideas in the past would have sounded good, Congress would have passed a law -- and 12 guys would be stuck trying to implement it. Eventually they would have given up. But now, that's no longer the case. Whatever each little silo wants, it can pay to have automated. You can bet it'll happen.
Our system is made for people to operate, not machines. Apologies for the over-the-top rhetoric, but the automation, systemization, and computerization of what used to be manual government processes is an evil far beyond anything mankind has ever seen. I don't even think most folks understand the problem, much less know what to do about it.
I can say for a fact that I had my fair share of opinions on some pretty ridiculous government policies during high school, at this rate I would have been singled out as a person of interest. What stupidity is this coming from a 'world leading' country.