Tell Congress: Don’t rubber stamp more surveillance!

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Tell Congress: Don’t rubber stamp more surveillance!

Petition to Congress:
The insurrection at the Capitol is not and can not be justification for more surveillance authority. The government already has the tools it needs to target and monitor white nationalist extremists, but doesn’t use them. Instead surveillance tools are most often deployed against peaceful racial justice activists and communities of color. We demand a paradigm shift in national security, not a blank check for more unnecessary surveillance.

Hi,

The federal government might use last week's insurrection to justify giving themselves more surveillance powers to spy on you -- even though it has nothing to do with the mob that stormed the Capitol.¹

Law enforcement agencies had all the information and legal powers they needed to stop the mob.² They failed because they didn't take white right-wingers seriously.

Instead of handing the FBI, NSA, CIA, and Homeland Security more gadgets, weapons, and tax dollars, Congress needs to compel those agencies to take the threat of white nationalist violence seriously.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress not to rubber stamp more government surveillance!

Trump's insurrectionists plotted their attempted coup in broad daylight across the most popular social media platforms. And then they advertised it. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies saw it. They gave warnings. But nothing was done, in part because law enforcement saw a bigger threat from peaceful movements for racial justice led by Black and brown people.

To be blunt: our government's giant peeping eye has been looking in the wrong direction, and they’ve been doing it for years.

Right now, the nation is on edge, members of Congress themselves are grappling with what happened. But the instinct to greenlight more surveillance authorities just to feel better won't actually make us any safer. In fact, it'll make many Black, brown, and immigrant people's lives even harder.

Last year Demand Progress helped stop the renewal of some of the worst provisions of the Patriot Act. We expect to have to fight again to stop their renewal in 2021. To stop the next white nationalist insurrection, the FBI, NSA, CIA, and Homeland Security don’t need more gadgets, bigger budgets, and broader authority. Instead they need a paradigm shift that takes the threat of right-wing violence seriously.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress not to rubber stamp more government surveillance!

Sources:
1. Fast Company, "You can't fight fascism by expanding the police state," January 8, 2021.
2. EFF, "The Government Has All of the Powers It Needs to Find and Prosecute Those Responsible for the Crimes on Capitol Hill This Week," January 11, 2021.

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