Post by addisona on Feb 23, 2022 19:25:41 GMT
Trump's "deep state" conspiracy theory has scrambled real concerns about surveillance
Before Donald Trump’s emergence as a presidential candidate — and long before he apparently decided that the Constitution did not apply to him, as (in his mind) a species of elected monarch — the U.S. was only beginning to hold one of those elusive national conversations. This one was about the limits of domestic surveillance, a critical topic in any technological democracy. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about extensive spying by the NSA, the intelligence community had come under increased scrutiny and FBI practices were widely questioned.
Then President Trump began his assault on those institutions for such dumb and trivially wrong reasons, such as the FISA court’s warrant for onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, a person with uniquely suspicious activity in Russia during the run-up to the 2016 election. Trump’s attacks turned the conversation upside down as only he can do, by claiming the existence of a "deep state" conspiracy in which the entire intelligence community was part of a Democratic plot to defeat Trump — and when that didn't work, to take down his presidency.
"This was a coup, this was an attempted overthrow of the United States government," Trump said in April of the FBI’s Russia investigation. "This was a coup. This wasn't stealing information from an office in the Watergate apartments. This was an attempted coup, like a Third World country."
The problem, of course, with Trump’s hyperbole is that it thrusts legitimate criticisms to the side and forces his opponents to defend otherwise loathsome practices, people and institutions. So while Trump’s minions have promised for months that the Department of Justice inspector general's report on FISA abuse would be released any day now, the president’s unrestrained hunt for “deep state” actors looks to have violated the Constitution to such a degree that even the secretive FISA courts — which for years allowed the federal government to ride roughshod over reasonable surveillance limits — have issued a rare rebuke of the Trump administration.
www.salon.com/2019/10/10/trumps-deep-state-conspiracy-theory-has-scrambled-real-concerns-about-surveillance/
Before Donald Trump’s emergence as a presidential candidate — and long before he apparently decided that the Constitution did not apply to him, as (in his mind) a species of elected monarch — the U.S. was only beginning to hold one of those elusive national conversations. This one was about the limits of domestic surveillance, a critical topic in any technological democracy. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about extensive spying by the NSA, the intelligence community had come under increased scrutiny and FBI practices were widely questioned.
Then President Trump began his assault on those institutions for such dumb and trivially wrong reasons, such as the FISA court’s warrant for onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, a person with uniquely suspicious activity in Russia during the run-up to the 2016 election. Trump’s attacks turned the conversation upside down as only he can do, by claiming the existence of a "deep state" conspiracy in which the entire intelligence community was part of a Democratic plot to defeat Trump — and when that didn't work, to take down his presidency.
"This was a coup, this was an attempted overthrow of the United States government," Trump said in April of the FBI’s Russia investigation. "This was a coup. This wasn't stealing information from an office in the Watergate apartments. This was an attempted coup, like a Third World country."
The problem, of course, with Trump’s hyperbole is that it thrusts legitimate criticisms to the side and forces his opponents to defend otherwise loathsome practices, people and institutions. So while Trump’s minions have promised for months that the Department of Justice inspector general's report on FISA abuse would be released any day now, the president’s unrestrained hunt for “deep state” actors looks to have violated the Constitution to such a degree that even the secretive FISA courts — which for years allowed the federal government to ride roughshod over reasonable surveillance limits — have issued a rare rebuke of the Trump administration.
www.salon.com/2019/10/10/trumps-deep-state-conspiracy-theory-has-scrambled-real-concerns-about-surveillance/