Donald Trump’s surveillance state: All the tools to suppress dissent and kill free speech are already in place
In the wrong (read: small) hands, the post-9/11 surveillance apparatus can be a dangerous political weapon
Topics: Civil Liberties, Domestic Surveillance, Donald Trump, Free Speech, surveillance state, Technology News, Politics News
(Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar/Getty/peterhowell)When Donald Trump takes office in January, he will inherit a surveillance state that George W. Bush largely created and that President Obama refused to rein in. As has been explained before, privacy is vital to a democracy, and the fate of free speech and the free press are in the hands of a thin-skinned bully who doesn’t seem to care for them.
“Surveillance powers have a history of abuse in totalitarian societies,” Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told Salon. “They also have a long history of abuse in the United States, from wiretapping to new forms of digital surveillance.”
Richards also explained that American agencies have created files on dissidents and used their power to disrupt political expression.
“The most extreme case is that of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King, in which it used evidence of an extra-marital affair he was having to attempt to convince him to kill himself,” Richards said. “Put simply, widespread unconstrained government surveillance has a huge potential for abuse and can be deeply corrosive of democratic culture, free speech, and other civil liberties.”
When people know they’re being watched, they tend to not speak out. If you’re considering protesting, writing about the president or acting in any political manner, you’re less likely to do so when you think those you’re opposing are keeping tabs on you.
“There’s fairly significant evidence to back the idea that when you think you’re being watched you tend to conform, in large part because humans are fairly conformist animals, and we like making sure that our neighbors don’t hate us,” Margot Kaminski, an assistant professor of law at Ohio State University, told Salon. “This is the reason the Stasi established its version of a surveillance state in East Germany, because if people think they’re being watched all the time, they’re more likely to move toward the mean, which means less dissent.”
Considering Donald Trump is known for being a person who relishes revenge, it seems highly plausible that he will use the vast powers of the presidency to pursue personal vendettas. A man who can’t stop himself from writing an angry tweet in the middle of the night when someone offends him is likely not someone who will crack open a book on civil liberties before targeting a political enemy with surveillance powers and more. With Trump in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon’s paranoia may look quaint by comparison.