PerspectiveConstitution Day 2019: The Hidden Domestic Surveillance Crisis
As we mark the 232nd anniversary of the signing of America’s governing charter in 1787, we have ample evidence that it continues to be violated by the federal officials charged with upholding it. The FBI’s 2018-2020 “Consolidated Strategy Guide,” for example, not only references the targeting of so-called “Black Identity Extremists” (BIE’s) but also those designated as engaged in “Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Extremism,” “Abortion Extremism,” or “Animal Rights/Environmental Extremism.” “That the FBI is using an ideological test of its own devising to determine whether a person seeking products or services on ‘the Dark Web’ is a threat raises a host of potential constitutional issues, including whether the monitoring of a person’s online activities based on their ideology runs afoul of the First Amendment or the Brandenburg v. Ohio decision,” Patrick Eddington writes, adding: “If we are on the cusp of a de facto COINTELPRO 2.0, the infamous Cold War-era FBI program of domestic spying and organizational disruption, we need to end it. Now.”
As we mark the 232nd anniversary of the signing of America’s governing charter in 1787, we have ample evidence that it continues to be violated by the federal officials charged with upholding it.
Patrick Eddington writes in Just Security that last month, The Young Turks (TYT) news and talk network obtained the FBI’s 2018-2020 “Consolidated Strategy Guide,” which not only referenced the targeting of so-called “Black Identity Extremists” (BIE’s) but also those designated as engaged in “Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Extremism,” “Abortion Extremism,” or “Animal Rights/Environmental Extremism.” In a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee hearing in June, FBI Counterterrorism Division Director Michael McGarrity had admitted under questioning that the FBI could not cite a single example of a murder that could be linked to any African American activist group, including Black Lives Matter. He also claimed that the Bureau had eliminated the entire category of “Black Identity Extremists” from its lexicon. The document obtained by TYT casts doubt on McGarrity’s claim, particularly given the use of the term “Black Racially Motivated Extremists” (BRME) elsewhere in the Guide.
The Guide does not disclose the precise criteria the FBI uses to label individuals or groups as extremists or alleged threats,
“That the FBI is using an ideological test of its own devising to determine whether a person seeking products or services on ‘the Dark Web’ is a threat raises a host of potential constitutional issues, including whether the monitoring of a person’s online activities based on their ideology runs afoul of the First Amendment or the Brandenburg v. Ohio decision,” Eddington writes, adding:
The FBI and other federal departments and agencies are trying to erect an impenetrable legal shield over their potentially illegal surveillance activities via the misuse of FOIA exemptions, either statutory or court-constructed, as in the case of Glomar. For the Constitution to have meaning and force, the public — including the Congress, the courts, and the press — must be able to establish what the executive branch is doing in our name and with our tax dollars, particularly when it comes to the use — or misuse — of federal surveillance powers. If we are on the cusp of a de facto COINTELPRO 2.0, the infamous Cold War-era FBI program of domestic spying and organizational disruption, we need to end it. Now.
