How likely is it that the Trump administration will attempt to deanonymize online antifascists and leftists and imprison them?
How likely is it that the Trump administration will attempt to deanonymize online antifascists and leftists and imprison them?
Pretty much the title. I certainly believe Trump, Maga, the Military, and the Police will, sooner or later, probably sooner, get around to at least attempting to deanonymize and round up online antifascists and leftists and imprison them. How organized and effective that attempt is I am less sure of.
To be very transparent, this is something I'm pretty sure I'd be on the hook for. I have a long log of anti trump, antifascist, left sentiments, and am 75% sure I'll be disappeared at some point in the next 4 years as I have no plans of shutting up. The only reason I'm not 100% sure is because of how expensive it would be. But hey, maybe it's less expensive than potentially losing power? So I don't know.
Never? Not likely? Maybe? Very? Extremely? Definitely?
Thoughts?
Everyone's like "it won't happen" but I remember post-9/11 a specific Linux news site got hit with claims of radicalism and some folks who frequented the site got put on watch lists. For interest in Linux.
There was a reason folks like me were against all the surveillance from the PATRIOT Act back then, and this is why.
EDIT:
Similarly, the Bush admin had the FBI spying on Quakers, the only religious group that anti-violence is such a central tenet to their religion that they by default are considered conscientious objectors and cannot be drafted into the military without violating their beliefs.
Post-9/11 the government thought peaceful Quaker anti-war activists were dangerous.
That was post-9/11 in the War on Terror years... It can happen here.
Sources:
Linuxjournal gets "extra surveillance:"
Quakers being spied on by FBI:
Unless you're doing actual organizing, unlikely. The DNC isn't friendly towards Leftist orgs either, though MAGA groups themselves may become more millitant.
Personally, I would be worried if I was you. The first Trump term can’t be compared as he had some guardrails with his recommended cabinet picks from the traditional GOP. Now that those GOP members have been expelled from the party, those guardrails are no longer there. His cabinet picks are loyalists and is a stress test to weed out any non-loyalists in Congress.
His cabinet picks will have free will to do what they want as long as they do two things: 1) praise Trump for the popular things they accomplish and 2) take the fall or blame other groups if it’s not popular.
And it’s not the government coming after these groups that is most worrying. We all see the lengths regular citizens would go to right a perceived wrong. January 6 case in point.
We’ve all seen this film before. It doesn’t have a good ending.
Likely. The federal government has SharePoint sites with information gathered about journalists and other activists who are pro immigration. To my knowledge, these individuals have not officially been disappeared.
And absolutely all of the roadblocks, legal restrictions, grownups pushing back, worry over public sentiment, etc have been eliminated. Expect it to be much, much worse than you thought.
Any comparison to what has happened in the past is out the window.
get around to at least attempting to deanonymize and round up online antifascists
They already know exactly who you are. People dont understand how pervasive online surveilance and profiling is. AI makes it simple to compile dossiers on everyone.
Ah yes, as always, the ever-knowing magical AI. Because all the secrets of the universe can be aggregated using just few multiline prompts to the ChatGPT.
You're distrust of AI hype is fine, but you're missing the point. OP said AI makes it simple to compile dossiers on everyone, meaning it's now far less labor intensive to take all of the data being gathered by SIGINT and turn it into reports. The amount of labor required to build 10M dossiers on mostly impotent randos makes it completely unfeasible, but with generative AI being able to quickly summarize a dataset, suddenly we can have shitty, somewhat lossy dossiers on every moron shitposter.
Not chatGPT. But AIs are good at one single thing and that is pattern recognition. And there is a lot of data to train and use those AIs on. Decades of data from your PCs, phones and tablets is on NSA servers. And yes, the NSA did shit like recording you through your notebook camera or recording your phone calls with your first girlfriend.
AI will probably never replace human workers/engineers/artists/..., but sorting through your online history is exactly what AIs excel at.
Also Dragnet policies are used by the police for a long time now. This is pretty much just that. Imo the main question is more if they want to burn that data on this task, because once they do this some people will adjust and it will get harder to get new data.
It's not even an AI thing; look at how widespread domestic surveillance was back in the 60s. In the years since it's only gotten easier to record messages and calls, match those records back to addresses or GPS-given locations, catch people on video, etc.
I don't think it's very likely. Even if it was even remotely affordable or feasible he actually needs opposition to define himself and his base 'ruggedly independent' and as 'freedom fighters'.
If he's going to go after anyone at all I think it will be high profile people for maximum media impact.
It all comes to how anonymous you are on the net. I'd say having a mainstream social media account is right now a high risk if you live in the US, specially considering that Kethamine Karen owns one one of them.
This to say that deanonymizing you might be cheaper than you think, making it more likely than we all expect. If you want to keep using tnose socials, I'd start by deleting my accounts and creating new ones using new data (such as disposable mails or aliases that forward to your real email)
Of course, a trusted vpn is a must in these cases. And there is a lot you should be doing on top of all this.
Right now, if you want to keep your anti-trump line, be prepared to be treated as an enemy, so consider the deanonymation a highly likely possibility.
Not likely. This is hyperbole.
What is most likely going to happen is that any right-wing, MAGA cultist and whatever. They won't be penalized for any harassment or antagonizing behaviors committed by them to those they don't like.
That's the reality.
Online? No. Online disorganized leftists aren't actually leftists, they're leftist sympathizers. You need to be in a leftist org to actually be a leftist.
You're not a threat unless you're actually doing stuff.
Not likely. Trump doesn't even know what those words mean. Temporarily jailing them and protesters is likely a different story, though.
It's a proud fascist country now. Be prepare for ANYTHING.
And then realize you hadn't prepared nearly enough.
For people organizing protests and taking part in them, Maybe to Likely.
For people just posting things online, Very unlikely. They'll have their hands full with all the immigrants and protesters first, and there's far too many people who have said something leftist online.
It isn't November 2016 anymore. Trump has been president before and whatever you think of his first term, you already know (roughly) what tends to happen when he is president (if you are too young, there is a near-infinite amount of news articles, social media discussions, wiki articles where you can look it up). I somewhat understood fears like this in late 2016 when a Trump administration was an unprecedented phenomenon, but now?
This time is quite different, actually. First, he learned his lesson about hiring institutionalists as his secretaries and advisors since they would push back against more questionable ideas, now he's surrounding himself with yes-men like RFK jr, Kristi Noem and the likes. There have also been precedents set like the infamous "official act immunity", and just many more lessons learned from 2016 in general.
There's also just much more co-ordination now in general with the whole Project 2025.
Trump has plenty of establishment picks lined up as well.
We had the same fearmongering in 2016. Trump will do some dumb stuff Reagan style but he will not end the world.
The Supreme Court gave the office of the president full immunity for discharging duties of the office.
Given the majority of the supreme court are constitutional literalists, I'm going to stake a claim on very unlikely. That is literally against the first amendment.
Now, let's say we live in some kind of bizaro land where you can be taken to court without the protection of the first amendment. (Difficult ti believe I know). You would still, hopefully, have a right to an attorney. If your case is high profile, or you have enough money, an organization like the aclu would help.
Woooo boy! I'll be right there in the camps with you buddy! Party time!
What would the charge be?
Suspicion of terrorism, or nothing at all. If the libs are right they wouldn't care about charges anymore. But since libs are so rarely correct, the government can hold you for 72 hours without charge and the patriot act has a whole list of charges that require no evidence for an arrest. Also statistically you live within 100 miles of a US border if you're in the US, meaning border patrol can arrest you for any reason or no reason indefinitely.
Yeah, they added ANTIFA to the list of terrorist organizations a few years ago if you remember, so anything they disagree with such as calling for the persecution of specific people's and putting them in camps a racist act, could likely land you in such trouble I imagine if they ever have the time or crazed reasons to do so.
Resisting arrest. Never mind what the arrest is for.
Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?
you don't have to be imprisoned to have your life ruined. there are many relatively subtle ways to do that
I don't think it's "Trump" thing, but the USA will probably start arresting people for the media they consume if a rapidly growing and sufficiently large portion of their citizenry spread and consume messaging they disagree with. It'll be a side-effect of losing the narrative war. I don't foresee it happening in the next 4 years.
I don't see the point in publicising it. From a PR perspective, "Posted illegal content using a platform frequented by terrorists" is less likely to meet resistance than "Commented🔻on Instagram". In fact, USA propaganda is already full of vagueties about people's online behaviour today. Usually in the form of reporting on foreign (enemy) policing as "Helpless teen (19) arrested (fined) for Tweet (Bomb-threat to head of state)".
Unlikely.
If you just post stuff on the Internet, you don't have to worry. At least this type of stuff.
Haha I had to double check to make sure I wasnt on Reddit.