aka like we tried to tell Republicans during the Patriot Act days, these things will be used against regular American citizens and within years not decades.
As somebody who was a radical lefty in the 2000s and was all in on this theory,
it didn't fucking happen anywhere near the degree we were fear mongering about.
There were examples of it being used in "non terrorism incidents" but it was always huge shit like mass distribution of drugs, plotting violent acts that didn't
technically count as terrorism (no demands were made), gang activity, human trafficking,
none of these people were innocent or people you would like. The theories were around it being used to throw people in jail for saying the disliked a politician and that there would be mass camps with millions of people in them. Then there were instances where the feds ignored "orders from a judge" and we all know how wonderfully pragmatic judges are.
The mass surveillance shit affected us all but that's how surveillance works, they didn't know who was guilty so they had to collect everybody's data. And we know now that tech companies were collecting data from the get-go anyways, the internet has never been private and frankly neither has the post office. You're always depending on somebody else to not snoop into your shit.
Everything is a tradeoff, back then the question was
"is a few people who are technically citizens having their rights violated better than letting terrorist sleeper cells and gang operators do whatever they want with no pushback?"
and today it's
"is setting some bad legal/social precedents around arrest warrants better than having tens of millions of monsters and parasites invade the country with no pushback?"
Whenever i hear people criticize ICE's tactics I have to ask,
what exactly are you proposing? That we shouldn't do anything mean to the heckin wholesome ms-13 members because it might set a precedent where the police use such on you one day? Should we not have any laws in the books because sometimes laws might be made that hinder you? Should we not have a military because it sets the precedent that china is also allowed to have one? Should we give every single immigrant due process, a 6 month trial and $300,000 in lawyer fees?
What is your magic solution that solves the problem without getting hands dirty?
The disturbing truth is that we're in a situation where our concept of rights is being weaponized against us by people who piss on everything those rights stand for in the first place.
The entire concept of rights, privacy, and all of it was implemented at a time when the country was culturally homogonous, and deeply Christian. Ie: People who had a vested spiritual and pragmatic interest in not abusing them. We don't currently live in such a country, those things are being weaponized against us on all fronts.
There's no way out of this that won't make the founding fathers turn in their graves, because the fact that we let things get this bad
already has them turning in their graves.
