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      in US Politics

      Reign of Terror review: from 9/11 to Trump by way of Snowden and Iraq

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      BooksReign of Terror review: from 9/11 to Trump by way of Snowden and IraqSpencer Ackerman, once of the Guardian, displays a masterful command of the facts but sometimes lets his prejudice show Lloyd GreenSun 8 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTThis 11 September will be the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93. Two wars have left 6,700 Americans dead and more than 53,000 wounded. After the Trump presidency, America roils in a cold civil war. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the move again. Saddam Hussein is dead and gone but Iraq remains “not free”.‘A madman with millions of followers’: what the new Trump books tell usRead moreIn other words, the war on terror has produced little for the US to brag about. In an April Pew poll, two-thirds of respondents rated international terror as a “big” problem, albeit one that trailed healthcare, Covid, unemployment and 10 more.Against this bleak backdrop, Spencer Ackerman delivers his first book under the subtitle “How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump”. It is part-chronicle, part-polemic. The author’s anger is understandable, to a point.Ackerman displays a masterful command of facts. No surprise. In 2014, he was part of the Guardian team that won a Pulitzer for reporting on Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency.Ackerman stuck with the topic. A contributing editor at the Daily Beast, he has also been its senior national security writer. Ackerman is fluent in discussing the so-called security state, and how it is a creature of both political parties.In the face of Snowden’s revelations, congressional leaders came out for the status quo. According to Harry Reid, then the Democratic Senate majority leader, senators who complained about being left in the dark about the NSA had only themselves to blame. All other Americans were to sit down and shut up.Nancy Pelosi, then House minority leader and a persistent critic of the Patriot Act, a chief vehicle for surveillance powers, declined to criticize Barack Obama or high-tech intrusion in general. Instead, she called for Snowden’s prosecution. He made Russia his home.Ackerman notes that the American Civil Liberties Union and Rand Paul, Kentucky’s junior senator, were notable exceptions to the rule. At the time, Paul remarked: “When you collect it from a billion phone calls a day, even if you say you’re going to keep the name private, the possibility for abuse is enormous.”Ackerman also shines a light on how the far right played an outsized role in domestic terrorism before and after 9/11, reminding us of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, teasing out McVeigh’s ties to other white nationalists.The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January this year is one more chapter in the story. Trump falsely claimed Antifa, leftwing radicals, were the real culprits. The roster of those under indictment reveals a very different story.In congressional testimony in April, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, described “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as the greatest domestic threat. Garland also singled out “those who advocate for the superiority of the white race”.Chad Wolf, Trump’s acting homeland security chief, made a similar point last fall. Of course, his boss wasn’t listening.Ackerman delves meticulously into the blowback resulting from the war on terror. Unfortunately, he downplays how the grudges and enmities of the old country have been magnified by key social forces, immigration chief among them.Joe Biden, then vice-president, condemned the Boston Marathon bombers as “knock-off jihadists”. But Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had received asylum. The immigrant population stands near a record high and the US fertility rate is in retrograde. On the right, that is a combustible combination. When Tucker Carlson is in Hungary, singing the praises of Viktor Orbán, the past is never too far away.In his effort to draw as straight a line as possible between the war on terror and the rise of Trump, Ackerman can overplay his hand. Racism, nativism and disdain for the other were not the sole drivers of Trump’s win, much as Islamophobia was not the sole cause of the Iraq war, a conflict Ackerman acknowledges he initially supported.Trump’s victory was also about an uneven economic recovery and, when it came to America’s wars, who did the fighting and dying. Overwhelmingly, it wasn’t the offspring of coastal elites. In 2016, there was a notable correlation between battlefield casualties and support for Trump.According to Douglas L Kriner of Boston University and Francis X Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan could very well have been winners for [Hillary] Clinton if their war casualties were lower.” Residents of red states are more than 20% more likely to join the military. Denizens of blue America punch way above their weight when it comes to going to college.Ackerman, a graduate of New York’s hyper-meritocratic Bronx High School of Science, bares his own class prejudices much in the way Clinton did at a notorious Wall Street fundraiser. Hillary dunked on the “Deplorables”. Ackerman goes after those he sees as socially undesirable.In his telling, Trump is “an amalgam of no less than four of the worst kinds of New Yorkers”. According to his taxonomy, those are “outer-borough whites”, wealth vampires, dignity-free media strivers and landlords.I Alone Can Fix It: Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker on their Trump bestsellerRead moreThis year, many of those “outer-borough whites” voted for a Black candidate, Eric Adams, in the Democratic mayoral primary. Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, is a former police captain.The real estate industry is a critical part of the city economy. Strivers have been here since the Dutch came onshore. As for “wealth vampires” – come on, really?The city’s economy reels. Murder is way up. Law and order matters. Ackerman’s disdain is misdirected.Nationally, the security state is not going to just disappear. But not all is gloom and doom. In a break with Obama and Trump, the Biden White House has pledged to no longer go gunning for reporters over leaks.The US is leaving Afghanistan. Unlike Trump, Biden was not dissuaded. And last Wednesday, the Senate foreign relations committee voted to end the 1991 and 2002 authorizations of use of military force in Iraq. Even the leviathan can budge.TopicsBooksSeptember 11 2001Donald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression | Akin Olla

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      Following the fascist riot at the US Capitol, progressives and liberals have begun to mimic the calls for “law and order” of their conservative counterparts, even going as far as threatening to expand the “war on terror”. While this may be well-intentioned, it fits neatly within the trajectory of attacks against civil liberties over the last two decades. A Biden administration with a 50-50 Senate will seek unity and compromise wherever it can find it, and oppressing political dissidents will be the glue that holds together Biden’s ability to govern.A wide array of actors within the United States government have long predicted, and begun to prepare for, a new age of protests and political instability. In 2008 the Pentagon launched the Minerva Initiative, a research program aimed at understanding mass movements and how they spread. It included at least one project that conflated peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence” and deemed that they were worth studying alongside active terrorist organizations.All the pieces are in place for Biden to attempt to unite the parties by being a ‘law and order’ presidentA 2018 war game enacted by the Pentagon had students and faculty at military colleges create plans to crush a rebellion led by disillusioned members of Gen Z. This hypothetical “ZBellion” included a “global cyber campaign to expose injustice and corruption”. A campaign that would in real life no doubt be monitored by the NSA’s Prism program, which captures the vast majority of electronic communications in the United States. Prism was developed in 2007, partially out of fear that environmental disasters might lead to a rise in anti-government protest.These steps further the already oppressive post-9/11 surveillance apparatus developed through the Patriot Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation championed by President-Elect Biden. Though some of these tools were developed to “fight terrorism”, in practice they’ve also been used to monitor and interfere with the work of activists – leading to violations of civil liberties such as the placement of undercover NYPD officers in Muslim student groups across the north-east. And every post-9/11 president has added to this, steadily increasing federal and local agencies’ power to surveil, detain and prosecute those who appear to pose a challenge to the status quo.This level of repression is also being carried out by states. Since 2015, 32 states have passed laws designed to discourage and punish those who engage in boycotts against Israel. Many states have also worked to dismantle once-institutionalized statewide student associations such as the Arizona Student Association and the United Council of Wisconsin, in one blow destroying opposition to tuition hikes and eradicating an important ally to social movements, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.Republicans have long called for the increased repression of activists, but the chorus has reached a crescendo in the age of Black Lives Matter and climate protestsRepublicans have long called for the increased repression of activists, but the chorus has reached a crescendo in the age of Black Lives Matter and climate protests. In the last five years, 116 bills to increase penalties for protests including highway shutdowns and occupations have been introduced in state legislatures. Twenty-three of those bills became law in 15 states. Following the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent uprisings, we’ve seen another flow of proposals. For example, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida would like to make merely participating in a protest that leads to property damage or road blockage a felony, while granting protections to people who hit those same protesters with their cars. Following the storming of the Capitol, DeSantis, a Trump ally, has expanded these proposals with more provisions and harsher consequences. The only thing preventing the passage of many of these laws thus far has been opposition from Democrats.But now the Democrats have caught the tune and returned to their post-9/11 calls for heightening the “war on terror”. Joe Biden has already made it clear that he intends to answer these calls. He has named the rioters “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists”, both terms used to designate those whose civil liberties the state is openly allowed to violate. He has declared he will make it a priority to pass a new law against domestic terrorism and has named the possibility of creating a new White House post to combat ideologically inspired violent extremists.These moves are not to be taken as empty threats by Biden. All the pieces are in place for him to attempt to unite the parties by being a “law and order” president and effectively crush any social movement that opposes the status quo. Much of the Patriot Act itself was based on Biden’s 1995 anti-terrorism bill, and Biden would go on to complain that the Patriot Act didn’t go far enough after a few of his provisions to further increase the power of police to surveil targets were removed. Biden will be desperate to both prove his competency and demonstrate that he isn’t the protest-coddler that Trump framed him as. This, combined with demands for repression from Democrats, Republicans and large segments of the American public, is a perfect storm for a radical escalation in the decades-long war on civil liberties and our right to protest, at a time that we need it the most. More

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      in US Politics

      'I don't care': young TikTokers unfazed by US furor over data collection

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      Mauren Sparrow downloaded TikTok in March to pass the time during lockdown. Since then she’s posted tutorials on crafting and videos of her two cats, Calcifer and Jiji, some of which have accrued millions of views and likes. But with the Chinese-owned app now under fire over data privacy concerns, Sparrow, 29, and other young users have reacted with a resounding shrug.I’m so used to all social networks having my data that I feel it’s just the price I have to pay to connect with othersMauren Sparrow, TikTok user“I don’t really care that these corporations have my data as long as I know they have it,” Sparrow says. “At this point, I’m so used to all social networks having all of my data that I feel it’s just the price I have to pay to connect with others.”TikTok’s future has been in flux for weeks after the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, hinted at a potential ban in early July. Most recently, Donald Trump approved of Microsoft’s efforts to acquire a part of TikTok’s business, but only if the deal was completed by 15 September. A price has not yet been arrived at but could top $10bn.Threats of action against the app – which some US authorities fear could share user data with the Chinese government – sent shockwaves through the TikTok community, with many content creators rushing to launch live streams to direct followers to alternative platforms. Videos reacting to the potential ban ranged from technical tips on how to evade it, to anger at Trump, to indifference over data privacy. “Am I the only one who doesn’t care if China collects my data?” a user in one viral video stated. “Let [the Chinese government] have my data. They know me better than I know myself,” another joked.TikTok is one of the world’s most popular apps and has been downloaded roughly 2bn times, meaning a ban would not be easy, or popular. Forty-seven per cent of millennials and 59% of Gen Z – the biggest demographic on the platform – said the app should not be banned. Meanwhile, 25% of Gen Z users said they would be more likely to use TikTok if the US banned it. Just 9% said a ban would make them less likely to use it, according to a US survey from the market research firm Morning Consult.“I think that there would be a riot if TikTok were somehow truly banned in this country,” Sparrow said.The debate over TikTok’s future has also underscored the generational divide between the lawmakers legislating technology platforms and the people who use them. For Gen Z, which has grown up on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, having their personal data collected is a given. TikTok in particular thrives on oversharing, with young people using music to share embarrassing stories and photos of themselves, to the tune of millions of likes and comments. “Some of you are too comfortable on here” is a common refrain in the comments of videos.On a more fundamental level, most do not believe they have the choice to opt out of data collection, said Josh Golin, the executive director of the non-profit Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. “If you gave most young people a choice between protecting their privacy by getting off social media or staying on social media, they will stay,” he said. “But what if you had a choice to be both on social media and have your privacy protected?”With a historic hearing involving big tech firms last month and new data privacy laws in California and Europe, there have been incremental steps towards that goal. But many users are not in a hurry to force companies to change their data practices. Studies show Gen Z is more tolerant of targeted advertising and less bothered by surveillance. While 46% of Gen X and 45% of millennials are concerned companies will use their data against them, just 37% of Gen Z is worried, according to a 2019 survey from the marketing firm Mobile Marketer.It feels ridiculous to worry about China when it seems everyone is literally recording us as we grow upAnnie, 19-year-old TikTok userAnnie, a 19-year-old TikTok user who downloaded the app to pass the time during quarantine and now uses it daily, said she finds the US government’s focus on China “ridiculous” when US companies “do the same”.“Our personal data is collected by endless amounts of private corporations who just sell our details to the highest bidder,” said Annie, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy. “It feels a bit ridiculous to worry solely about China when it seems everyone is literally recording us as we grow up.”A spokeswoman from TikTok told the Guardian the company’s security team was led by an experienced, US-based chief information security officer with “decades of industry and US law enforcement experience”. All US user data was stored in the US, she added, with strict controls on employee access. The company has also released a series of informational videos on the app about how to keep user data private and secure. More

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      in US Politics

      Online privacy experts sound alarm as US Senate bill sparks surveillance fears

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      The Earn It Act, described as an effort to address sexual exploitation, could threaten encryption practices, opponents say Senators Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal and Dianne Feinstein, pictured, were among lawmakers who introduced the bill. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock A US Senate bill that critics say would enable widespread censorship and surveillance has taken a significant step towards […] More

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      Cyber security review may spell end for Huawei 5G deal

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      Government set for climbdown after US bans on Chinese telecoms group and growing resistance from backbenchers The National Cyber Security Agency in the UK is expected to conclude that US sanctions against Huawei will make it impossible to use the Chinese company’s technology as planned for 5G networks. The emergency review, announced on Sunday, is […] More

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      In Deep review: Trump v intelligence – and Obama vs the people

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      In Deep review: Trump v intelligence – and Obama vs the people Pulitzer-winner David Rohde dismisses the Deep State theory – but also shows government does pursue entrenched interests Donald Trump speaks at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in January 2017. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images The 2016 election left the US gaping at a brewing […] More