The false tension between Stop/Frisk and domestic spying: don't fall for it

[nashville_brook]

I've been profiled and beaten by a cop. I know what it's like to pulled out of your car, physically assaulted and humiliated. I believe it's wrongheaded to create a tension between 'stop and frisk' and domestic spying. And I think most people see 'stop and frisk' in the exact same light as domestic spying: as a frightening, game-changing assault on our Bill of Rights.

What you need to understand about domestic spying is that it's a form of profiling that leads to physical assaults, detainments, and other humiliations just like stop and frisk. The purpose of collecting all that metadata is to create profiles of potential outsiders. Forget content collection, the database of Total Information Awareness profiles poses a much greater threat to our liberty.

Think of it this way: racial profiling is conducted on the basis of skin color or clothes and/or imagined class identification. With spying, the profile for harassment is created based on a combination of your political associations, your financial transactions, your religious preference and your movements -- and those of everyone in your circle. So, people who wouldn't traditionally be pulled-over for DWB (driving while black) can be pulled-over for DWA (driving while activist), or DWM (driving while muslim).

Use the intersection of the two interests to build a coalition rather than beat the other side up. Insofar as we here at DU are participants in a virtual forum, there's likely as many... or more rural, small town and suburban areas than there are people from urban centers. Only the urban folks are going to experience 'stop and frisk' first hand...or witnessed it...or read about it in the paper. I did a Facebook meme about stop and frisk a week ago and no one understood it except one friend from New York.

When people say that they don't care about domestic spying because all they have on their hard drive are kitty pictures, they fail to see the big picture. It's not the content of your hard drive. It's the connections in your life. And what is the purpose of creating those profiles? They used to have a total of a +/- 100 people on the national watch list. Now it's closing in on a million. Give it a few more months and how many more do you think will be added?

We know from recent events and recent history that what begins as surveillance leads to further operations including physical intimidation, infiltration, assault, arrests and spurious association with criminal elements. It happened in Occupy. It happened with the Critical Mass cycling protests in NYC. It happened with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers here in Florida. Cointelpro.

There's a whole sordid history of profiling, infiltration, intimidation and on and on with labor organizations, community organizations, political groups and definitely with civil rights groups.

Stop and Frisk does not stand opposed to domestic spying -- they're the same thing. There's absolutely no sense in creating a false tension between the two. We're brothers in this fight. Not enemies.

For a really good read that gives all the history of this, pick up Heidi Boghosian's Spying On Democracy.
http://www.amazon.com/Spying-Democracy-Government-Surveillance-Resistance/dp/0872865991

[cthulu2016]

1. Assholes who stand for nothing say shit. Don't let them get to you.

God knows what sort of pig that would try to drive racial wedges among progressives by presenting S&F vs NSA as distinct issues, each cared about only by one "side" or another, but sometimes people are just horrible and that's what it is.

I know the sentiment you refer to. It is Shocking... but here we are. Was it only a matter of time until the "People concerned about the NSA don't care about persons of color" line was trotted out in flailing desperation.

Everyone who truly values civil liberties is upset about spying and has been upset about stop-and-frisk from the get-go and we all know that.

And as for anyone who needs a weather vane to know whether they care about civil liberties today, their views on civil liberties are as worthwhile as they are reliable.

[nashville_brook]

2. that's my sense too.

one's the extension of the other, and it's a rare bird who doesn't see that.

the really important takeaway...check out the book. it's damn good.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Pardon my ignorance, but what triggered this?

S&F is in exactly the same ballpark as surveillance, with the exception that the former tends at this point to have racial/ethnic complications.

Those complications don't remain for long if you happen to piss off the cops in some way. Or if you appear to be in an unprotected class(like activist).

[nashville_brook]

4. Chris Hayes did a segment in which Grio writer James Braxton Peterson

expressed consternation toward progressives vis a vis surveillance and an imagined lack of concern for s&f.


http://thegrio.com/2013/08/21/where-is-the-white-liberal-outrage-on-stop-and-frisk/
snip

Where is the white liberal outrage on stop-and-frisk?

The left’s outrage directed at the Obama administration in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaking of classified information has been palpable and well documented in both print and television media.

While the discussion has sometimes centered too much on Snowden and not enough on the principles of civil liberties in relationship to national security, I find myself in agreement with those who are suspicious of any government that wants us to simply trust that they will do the right thing regarding our rights.

Yet how can we have a discussion about civil liberties and security, privacy and safety without connecting it to the physical surveillance to which black and brown Americans have been historically subject? In short, why aren’t the champions of Snowden, Manning, and others saying anything at all about stop-and-frisk and Stand Your Ground laws/policies. They have been and remain silent on the historical and perpetual encroachment upon the civil liberties – the freedom to walk the streets without being detained or shot – of black and brown citizens of the United States.

snip


Until progressives can have more holistic discussions about the state, surveillance, and civil liberties, the reality of digital surveillance will continue to be disconnected from those of us who live under the threat of physical surveillance every day.

[DirkGently]

5. Chris Hayes brought it up last night, for one.

If anyone's really trying to make a wedge out of it, though, it's a poor one. It's all Fourth Amendment and intrusive authorities promising safety in exchange for privacy and dignity.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. No wonder I didn't get it.

Sometimes I have trouble following totally illogical arguments--a personal fault that sometimes makes it very hard for me in certain threads on this board.

[DirkGently]

7. ... a burden many of us bear