Demand Progress

Tell Homeland Security: Cancel intelligence contracts that spy on protesters!

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    Tell Homeland Security: Cancel intelligence contracts that spy on protesters!

    Petition to Department of Homeland Security:
    We demand you immediately cancel any and all private intelligence contracts that spy on Americans protesting Trump’s racist immigration policies at the border.

    When news first broke last year that Trump was separating families at the border, the nation was shocked. Protesters took to the streets, immigration lawyers and legal advocates flocked to the border, and the Department of Homeland Security spied on all of them.

    Homeland Security has been using private intelligence contractors to spy on Americans who oppose Trump’s racist immigration policies.1 Never mind that protesting, or voicing political dissent, is not a crime.

    Tell Homeland Security to cancel these private intelligence contracts immediately and stop spying on Americans who disagree with Trump.

    This recent bombshell is just one of many examples of the Trump administration pushing too far and intruding into the lives of innocent civilians who voice their displeasure with Trump’s policies. Since literally day 1 under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security tried to access the IP addresses of 1.3 million people who visited an inauguration protest site. Then, Customs and Border Patrol kept a secret database of journalists reporting on family separation at the border. And now, we find out that Homeland Security has been using private intelligence contractors to blanketly spy on anyone protesting Trump’s immigration policies.

    Let’s be very clear here: protesting, reporting, providing legal advice, and visiting anti-Trump websites are not crimes. Yet, the Trump administration has seen fit to seek out, catalog, and secretly spy on as many people who’ve done so.

    The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to keep us safe from external threats, not spy on innocent civilians who openly oppose Trump’s policies. Tell Homeland Security: cancel any and all private intelligence contracts that spy on Americans.

     

    Sources:
    1. The Intercept, “Homeland Security Used A Private Intelligence Firm To Monitor Family Separation Protests,” April 29, 2019.