It appears that Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress about the Department of Justice’s use of counterterrorism tactics against parents at school board meetings to protest radical curriculum additions like CRT and DEI.
Now, a Federal Bureau of Investigation whistleblower has released documents explaining the bureau’s use of “threat tags” to flag parents’ behaviors. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has demanded that Garland return to Congress to explain the apparent discrepancy in his testimony. Morgan Phillips reports in The Daily Mail:
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed Joe Biden’s Justice Department for an ‘egregious abuse of power’ on Tuesday and demanded Attorney General Merrick Garland testify before Congress about the counterterrorism tactics the FBI is using to investigate parents.
‘In an egregious abuse of power with the potential to unfairly track Americans’ activities, President Biden’s Department of Justice is using FBI criminal and counterterrorism resources to target parents,’ McCarthy said in a statement.
‘Attorney General Garland must return to Congress to address, under oath, in detail, the discrepancies regarding the directives he issued involving investigating America’s parents,’ he demanded.
Garland testified on October 21 that the Justice Department and its components were not using counterterrorism tactics to target ‘concerned parents at school board meetings’ but Republicans say they have documentation that shows differently.
McCarthy also blasted Biden for going after parents instead of ‘actual threats.’
‘This is further proof that we have a President in the White House who is more interested in going after our own citizens, including concerned parents, than he is in going after actual threats. This raises the question that should alarm every American: if the Biden administration is using our country’s top law enforcement agency to go after parents, what are the actual threats they are ignoring?,’ he said.
The House GOP leader was responding to the revelation the Federal Bureau of Investigation has created a ‘threat tag’ to flag all investigations into potentially criminal threats, harassment and intimidation of educators.
Republicans argue this could be used to target parents protesting local education policies. Parents have taken to going to school board meetings to express concern about the teaching of critical race theory, transgender policies and other issues.
Tagging parents as potential resisters is just one more way for the government’s virtual panopticon to track and record American behavior.
P.S. “In the 1600s a series of civilization-threatening plague epidemics gave birth to one of the most heavy-handed surveillance states in the Western world,” writes Annie Jacobsen in First Platoon. “In order to impose the rule of law, the government ordered the full-scale cataloging of people.” You felt like you were being watched because you were, especially by your neighbors.
Historian Michel Foucault draws the parallel between the surveillance state during the plague, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and a prison called the Panopticon or “all seeing.” It was a circular prison with a guard tower in the middle from which a single guard could observe the prisoners—but where they couldn’t see him. They felt like they were constantly watched, creating a fear that produced obedience.
In Pandemic, you learn about the power of an aerostat used in Afghanistan to follow soldiers and insurgents on the ground and how problems with misidentification can and, in the end, do lead to catastrophic consequences. You see up close the power those at the top wield over the troops doing the dirty work on the ground—like pieces on a chessboard. One piece of the platoon is the COIST (Company Intelligence Support Team member), who collects fingerprints and other biometrics. (There’s been more information gathered on 25 million Afghans than we’ll ever need).
In First Platoon, you learn about how the origin of the fingerprint in fighting crime and how the FBI has more fingerprints than any other agency in the world gathered on criminals and suspects. In Afghanistan, the FBI helped train the military in fingerprint gathering along with other biometrics. But unlike the FBI work at home used on suspects, this information was gathered on everyone the troops encountered, not just insurgents. Maybe that’s OK on the battlefield, but what about in your neck of the woods?
The technology is growing at the speed of science fiction, faster than your Fourth Amendment rights. Technology can be used against you before you even commit a crime just by using A.I. and analysis of your patterns to examine how you live your life. And as we learn in the book, mistakes happen, like what almost happened to the guy in the purple hat.
Fast forward to today, where we have our National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., vetted for political views, and the higher-ups turning the place into a military state. To protect whom? You and me? Hardly. Meanwhile, this military tech is being used in cities like Baltimore and L.A. What’s to keep them out of your backyard, especially if you live in a red state?
Action Line: The tech and intelligence from Afghanistan are being shared at home in the U.S. between the military and the FBI. What could possibly go wrong in a pandemic? Welcome to our virtual Panopticon.
Don’t Miss: PANDEMIC Pushes Military-Grade Surveillance on Americans Like YOU
Read more in Pandemic Creates Virtual Panopticon.
