The DHS quietly updated its policy manual earlier this month, removing LGBTQ+ identities from the section prohibiting surveillance based solely on immutable characteristics.
Stay classy, you Nazi fucks.
McCarthyism 2: Electric Boogaloo
“if you have nothing to hide…”
yeah my ass.
What, were they surveiling you until they find out you’re gay and then “no looksies?” They’re surveiling all of us (and I for one am goddamn sick of it. Surveil that assholes!)
They weren’t allowed to surveil you because you’re gay or trans. Now they are.
So they were allowed to surveil you for any other reason, even if you were trans or gay? Because in that case this changes nothing.
Yes to the first part, no to the second. For some reason people like to pretend that surveillance is a binary on or off thing, but that’s gross oversimplification to the point of being more damaging than an actual lie. All the various government agencies collect whatever easy to find information about you there is to get, but that information is possible for you to have some control over, and it’s too expensive for them to really properly process all of it. It’s just some random bits of trivia about you sitting in a bunch of disconnected databases until somebody takes an interest in you. If they start to take an interest in you, they start coordinating their information and actually targeting you for more individualized information gathering. This is adding gay and trans people to that next level up of surveillance, and that absolutely does change things. Pretending nothing the government does matters and there’s no point in even trying is maybe the most harmful lie you can spread. Please don’t.
Deviant Ollam posted an interesting video, This is How a Constitutional Crisis Will Begin about changes happening in prisons and makes an interesting point that the trans community make a convenient target for triggering a constitutional crisis.
You target a small, basically insignificant and harmless group, then ignore any court rulings while the media and public remain silent and disinterested. Its a pathway to uncontested executive power that can then be extended to persecution of other groups.
Arguing for privacy from government feels alarmist, distant and theoretical as long as there is rule of law and a sound participative democracy. But what happens to constitutional guarantees and legal protections if the courts lose their power and independence? Suddenly privacy becomes a very real pragmatic concern. Not only could you be in a targeted group but you could be guilty by association.
The dive into fascism
Well to be fair they said to remove all mentions of gender from government documentation. They meant ALL of it.
“What Gender are you?”
“Yes”
