Anyone — anyone — can be labeled a “security risk.”
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If you’re not thinking about how the rapid clampdown on individual liberties could affect you, if you’re still mostly thinking about your job or your house or your social life, you are, frankly, a fool.
Because things are getting worse, much worse, by the day.
I could cite so many examples. Like the French scientist on the way to a conference near Houston who was stopped at an airport, where authorities conducted a “random search” of his computer and phone. When they found emails in which he expressed critical views of Donald Trump’s impact on science, he was accused of making unspecified “hateful and conspiratorial” comments.
Then they decided to bar him from entry into the United States.
At one point, in the not so distant past, this apparent watershed moment would have generated big headlines and outrage, and the government, embarrassed, would have scrambled to undo the damage, very likely clarifying or apologizing.
No more.
To the contrary. This stunner appears to have passed as little more than a blip — in part because we’re already anesthetized by other outrages, like the arrest of foreign nationals, even those with green cards, for expressing opinions, notably the Palestinian graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. (See our story on him: ‘Of All the Bad Things Trump Is Doing, This May Be the Most Alarming’)
Another person, Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University postdoctoral scholar from India, is getting similar treatment from the DHS. (And, like Khalil, this “threat,” who was also accused of spreading pro-Hamas propaganda, is, paradoxically, involved professionally in conflict resolution.)
It should be noted that it isn’t solely people from the “Global South” who are being detained. US border agents recently stopped a German national named Fabian Schmidt — a permanent US resident and electrical engineer who has worked for over 20 years in the US. Upon his return from a trip to Europe, his mother said he was “violently interrogated,” stripped naked, thrown into a cold shower, and needed to be hospitalized afterward. He is now stuck in a detention center in Rhode Island. The issue appears to involve a bureaucratic snafu.
But as often, the basis is ideological. Trump said on Truth Social that he plans to have many more immigrants deported — for their foreign policy views.
And here’s where you come in. Did you know that the Trump administration will be keeping track — not just of foreign nationals — but of US citizens who, on social media, criticize his mass-deportation agenda?
From there, it is a slippery slope to almost anything he and his cohort don’t like. It could be as trivial as simply ridiculing him. And this should terrify every American.
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The truth is that this sort of thing has been going on since long before Trump’s ascension.
I know from personal experience what it’s like to be stopped with no idea why one has been detained. I recall years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, I was returning to the US and was stopped at immigration, taken to a room, made to sit with no explanation for a long time, then interviewed at some length by an officer. He later said I was free to go, and, sensing a sympathetic spirit, I asked him why I had been stopped. He explained that my name was similar to someone on a terror watch list. It sounded unlikely. What? Rasul al-Bakur? But what could I do? Fortunately, they did not seize my devices. (To be clear, in that period, I was an outspoken early critic of Bush, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq invasion, at a time when most media supported the administration. For examples, see this, this and this.)
Flash forward to 2022, under the Biden presidency. Note this headline:
Customs officials have copied Americans’ phone data at massive scale
Contacts, call logs, messages and photos from up to 10,000 travelers’ phones are saved to a government database every year
Much of that information was from people not suspected of any crime. More from the same story:
Agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], another Department of Homeland Security agency, have run facial recognition searches on millions of Americans’ driver’s license photos. They have tapped private databases of people’s financial and utility records to learn where they live. And they have gleaned location data from license-plate reader databases that can be used to track where people drive.
Again, that was published in September 2022, during a Democratic administration. Imagine how much worse it is now — under Donald “Long Live the King!” Trump.
If they can stop American citizens at entry points and look through their devices, and find any pretense to detain a person — including but not limited to political views — what then?
Security personnel can not only download all of the contents but can even hang onto your devices for days or weeks, based on “extenuating circumstances.” And they can even bar your reentry into the US if they decide you’re allegedly what they call a “security risk.”
Lack of Controls
Once an individual’s information is in the possession of the government, it is no longer possible to trust assurances that it will be closely guarded. We already know this from Elon Musk and his ridiculously unqualified team of hotheaded 20-year-old programmers angling to gain access to all manner of private information on Americans.
Another example emerged the other day. With the release of thousands of JFK assassination records, the administration accidentally released personal information on living individuals listed on documents, including former congressional investigative staffers; this information encompassed social security numbers, birthplaces, and birth dates.
Also, I just saw a notice from the White House on “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos” — which explicitly calls for information in possession of the government to be much more widely shared — with minimal protections.
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Previous administrations understood why sharing too much data too broadly was dangerous. The current regime doesn’t care — in fact, despite longtime howls by Republicans and MAGA about government overreach, knowing as much as possible about everyone now seems to fit into the apparent plan to make authoritarianism a reality.
Despite the growing basis for alarm, I still don’t sense sufficient urgency. Sitting in a cafe in Manhattan, I hear people chattering happily away about their pets, children, vacations, jobs, etc. — all healthy normal conversation for normal times.
In these abnormal times, if we’re not taking personal precautions, and participating in massive resistance to the rapid push into the danger zone, right now, we’re… fools and sitting ducks.
I know how alarmist this may sound to some, particularly those still reassured by America’s long and much-trumpeted commitment to individual liberty. But listen to those who actually lived through authoritarian power consolidations around the world. (And for details on tactics, go here and here.) This is how it goes.
Make no mistake. This is not something that will “blow over.” This is not something that you can ignore. Nor can your friends and relatives. We all need to be pumping this warning out to everyone we know.
Because if you’re reading this, you’re likely very aware. But most people are not. And they need to wake up. Now.
