The weaponization of law enforcement to act as the thought police is even worse than we feared.
A teaser video clip promoting Tucker Carlson’s interview of Elon Musk, airing tonight and tomorrow night on Fox News, reveals that Musk was astonished by the level of government surveillance going on at Twitter before he purchased the company.
Here is the exchange:
Musk: The degree to which various government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on at Twitter blew my mind. I was not aware of that.
Carlson: Would that include people’s DMs [direct messages]?
Musk: Yes.
The full extent of the surveillance that will be revealed in the Musk interview remains to be seen, but this small nugget is an absolute bombshell.
We knew from the Twitter Files that government actors were monitoring public posts of prominent conservative influencers and handing off lists of accounts for censoring to lackeys at Twitter to complete the dirty work. As Matt Taibbi reported, “By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
But Musk’s revelation that government agencies had access to people’s direct messages takes this scandal to an entirely new level.
What people post publicly on social media does not implicate the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. If you publish a statement for public consumption, you cannot complain that your privacy was violated if the statement amounts to advocacy of unlawful action and the government opens an investigation or comes a-knockin’ at your door.
What you communicate privately in text messages, emails or telephone conversations is protected by the Fourth Amendment. The same logic applies to direct messages on social media platforms. The government should be required to get a warrant based upon probable cause that criminal activity is afoot before it can tap your phone or go snooping through your direct messages. It appears that Elon Musk is about to blow the lid off the biggest Fourth Amendment violation in American history.
The Musk revelations are all the more alarming because of other recent developments in the arena of social media monitoring.
It was widely reported last week that the FBI developed a glossary of terms associated with Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism (RMVE) that included common expressions such as “based” and “red pill.” For the definition of “red pill,” the glossary stated, “In the context of RMVE ideology, taking the red pill or becoming ‘redpilled’ indicates the adoption of racist, anti-Semitic, or fascist beliefs.” This raises an important question that must be answered. Did government agents spy on private direct messages of American citizens by using common and innocuous terms such as “based” and “red pilled” as a pretext for investigating violent extremism?
In a resource titled “Social Media Surveillance by the U.S. Government,” published Jan. 7, 2022, the Brennan Center for Justice raised concern that the “growing and unregulated trend of online surveillance raises concern for civil rights and liberties.” The authors explained that opening a federal investigation does not necessarily require a showing of criminal activity or even a factual basis:
Law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and some components of DHS, use social media monitoring to assist with criminal and civil investigations. Some of these investigations may not even require a showing of criminal activity. For example, FBI agents can open an “assessment” simply on the basis of an “authorized purpose,” such as preventing crime or terrorism, and without a factual basis. During assessments, FBI agents can carry out searches of publicly available online information. Subsequent investigative stages, which require some factual basis, open the door for more invasive surveillance tactics, such as the monitoring and recording of chats, direct messages, and other private online communications in real time.
We can see how this might play out in action. Government agents trained to use a glossary of terms to identify violent extremism search through public posts to flag potential troublemakers who use those terms. Once the problem posters are identified, the investigation gets taken to the next level of surveillance: monitoring private communications to identify unguarded conversations where juicer evidence can be found. Maybe this explains how some conservative influencers got deplatformed for no reason that was apparent in their public social media posts.
This might also explain how the meme maker Douglass Mackey, who went by the name “Ricky Vaughn,” had his private messages monitored and had undercover agents posing as allies messaging him to elicit racist motives behind his memes. If Vaughn’s public posts were Constitutionally protected free speech, then the use of private messages against him should be deemed “fruit of the poison tree” and his conviction on election interference charges should be overturned.
If government monitoring of private citizens based on Constitutionally protected speech was out of control in the past, it is now on steroids. As reported by various news outlets, the FBI signed a $27 million contract with the software company Babel X for 5,000 licenses to conduct social media keyword searches starting on March 30, 2022. The FBI estimated that it will run 20,000 key word searches per month using the software.
Here is an article describing the FBI deal with Babel X:
https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/fbi-investing-heavily-in-social-media-tracking-predictive-surveillance-software-raises-civil-liberties-concerns/
This raises important questions. What are the key words the government is using in its Babel X searches? Are they using common terms that are used innocently most of the time, like “based” and “red pilled”? Are they using terms that are intended to ensnare left-wing extremists on an equal basis with right-wing extremists or do Antifa activists get a pass?
To some, the most disturbing aspect of the Babel X software is its touted ability to perform “predictive analytics” based on the emotions and attitudes of social media posters. Talk about thought crime! It’s evocative of the “pre-cogs” in the film Minority Report but without the creepy clairvoyant ladies submerged in a slimy jacuzzi.
The Tucker Carlson interview with Elon Musk should be closely watched and widely discussed. It promises to touch upon issues key to the restoration of the Constitutional protection of free speech against government encroachment in America.