Winter Patriot explains it much better than I. This is just the conclusion of another great installment at his blog, which you should be reading.
Congress is about to pass the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which will establish a raft of new powers for the federal government to use in a “search” for the “roots” of “violent radicalization” in “homegrown terrorists”.
It will enable national data-mining on an unimagined scale. It will strip privacy rights wherever they interfere with the search for the elusive answer … which is not very elusive at all, but quite obvious, really.
We already know what leads these “homegrown terrorists” down the path of “violent radicalization”: agents-provocateur working for the FBI and/or local law enforcement (like the NYPD).
So why do they need to study it?
Might there be some other reason for studying the “Islamic propaganda” which “mischaracterizes American foreign policy as harmful to Muslims”?
Might there be a plan in the works under which honest patriotic Americans will find it dangerous to point out the many ways in which American foreign policy is extremely harmful to Muslims, since to do so might cause one to be accused of supporting or enabling or providing the ideological background for the next generation of terrorists?
The potential ramifications are mind-boggling. And none of them are good for you!
Damn straight. They will make it a crime to pay attention.
Glenn Greenwald has been banging this drum for a long time. There’s no question in my mind that the US government wants to track the internet comings and goings of American citizens so that they can accuse us of sedition. And as I wrote in my last post, there are millions of ignorant Americans who would be happy to believe that their neighbors are terrorists just as long as they hear it on tv.
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