{"id":12187,"date":"2011-10-10T12:23:11","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=12187"},"modified":"2011-10-10T12:29:08","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:29:08","slug":"making-political-activists-enemies-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/10\/making-political-activists-enemies-of-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Political Activists Enemies of the State"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news<\/a> that the “US government obtained secret court orders to force Google Inc and a small Internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer” is now the latest government attack on peaceful American citizens to be revealed to the public.\u00a0Jacob Appelbaum, “a volunteer for the campaigning website,” had his email history looked through by the government with the help of the\u00a0Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a law “that allows the U.S. government to secretly obtain information from people’s email and cellphones without a search warrant.”<\/p>\n

This is the same Appelbaum<\/a> who “has been subjected to harassment, detention, and interrogation at airports by US agencies<\/a>.” He has never been charged with a crime<\/em> and the government has so far hid behind a wall of secrecy to avoid having to explain why he has been placed under surveillance.<\/p>\n

I’ve written before<\/a> about how activists, particularly those vocally against American wars, empire, or national security policies, are targeted for surveillance, harassment, and even prosecution<\/a>, despite having never committed any discernible crime.<\/p>\n

After all of this Awlaki business…I’m sort of left wondering what if Appelbaum happened to be vacationing in Morocco or some such country at the time of the government’s decision to frame his political activism as a crime without a name.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong>\u00a0Glenn Greenwald on Appelbaum<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The\u00a0Fourth Amendment<\/a>\u00a0to the Constitution guarantees \u201cthe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures\u201d and that \u201cno Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.\u201d In light of everything the U.S. Government has been able to seize regarding Appelbaum without a single search warrant \u2014 laptops, cellphones, cameras, memory sticks, Twitter activity, electronic goods of his friends, interrogation via forcible detention, and now lists of his email correspondents and other information showing his email activity \u2014 is there any rational conclusion other than to view that Amendment as an absurd joke?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news that the “US government obtained secret court orders to force Google Inc and a small Internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer” is now the latest government attack on peaceful American citizens to be revealed to the public.\u00a0Jacob Appelbaum, “a volunteer for the campaigning website,” had his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12189,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12187\/revisions\/12189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12187"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}