Trump Inherits the Surveillance State

Resisting the damage of the Trump Administration will be made very difficult.

By Bill Humphrey, November 11, 2016 | http://www.theglobalist.com/trump-inherits-the-surveillance-state/

Takeaways

• Forget the nuclear codes, Trump just got the keys to the mass surveillance apparatus.
• There will be no institutional opposition to Trump's abuses of power.
• Trump can break up external protest movements as president via the NSA, FBI, and local police.

Among the many terrible things that will ensue under the capricious whims of President-elect Donald Trump, there is one that should be particularly chilling, in that it could prevent effective opposition to his administration’s awful policies.
Consider that Donald Trump would not merely have the nuclear codes — which he probably wouldn’t use — but also the keys to the mass surveillance apparatus and special federal counterterrorism legal systems that we constructed in our post-9/11 national panic and strengthened ever since.
It is widely known that these tools have been used to monitor, break up and crush protests over the past decade and a half — on issues from racial justice and police reform to economic inequality and environmental activism.
Now he arrives in power, which brings access to the FBI’s protest organizer surveillance records, with the support of the nation’s police unions who have shown themselves only too happy to break out the pepper spray, batons, attack dogs, smoke grenades and armored vehicles at the first sign of constitutionally protected peaceful assembly.http://www.theglobalist.com/trump-inherits-the-surveillance-state/