The FBI Has a New Plan to Spy on High School Students Across the Country | Alternet - 0 views
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Under new guidelines, the FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies and “western corruption” as potential future terrorists, warning that “anarchist extremists” are in the same category as ISIS and young people who are poor, immigrants or travel to “suspicious” countries are more likely to commit horrific violence.Based on the widely unpopular British “anti-terror” mass surveillance program, the FBI’s "Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools" guidelines, released in January, are almost certainly designed to single out and target Muslim-American communities. However, in its caution to avoid the appearance of discrimination, the agency identifies risk factors that are so broad and vague that virtually any young person could be deemed dangerous and worthy of surveillance, especially if she is socio-economically marginalized or politically outspoken.
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This overwhelming threat is then used to justify a massive surveillance apparatus, wherein educators and pupils function as extensions of the FBI by watching and informing on each other.The FBI’s justification for such surveillance is based on McCarthy-era theories of radicalization, in which authorities monitor thoughts and behaviors that they claim to lead to acts of violent subversion, even if those people being watched have not committed any wrongdoing. This model has been widely discredited as a violence prevention method, including by the U.S. government, but it is now being imported to schools nationwide as official federal policy.
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Under the category of domestic terrorists, the educational materials warn of the threat posed by “anarchist extremists.” The FBI states, “Anarchist extremists believe that society should have no government, laws, or police, and they are loosely organized, with no central leadership… Violent anarchist extremists usually target symbols of capitalism they believe to be the cause of all problems in society—such as large corporations, government organizations, and police agencies.”Similarly, “Animal Rights Extremists and Environmental Extremists” are placed alongside “white supremacy extremists”, ISIS and Al Qaeda as terrorists out to recruit high school students. The materials also instruct students to watch out for extremist propaganda messages that communicate criticisms of "corrupt western nations" and express "government mistrust.”If you "see suspicious behavior that might lead to violent extremism," the resource states, consider reporting it to "someone you trust," including local law enforcement officials like police officers and FBI agents.
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“The whole concept of CVE is based on the conveyor belt theory – the idea that ‘extreme ideas’ lead to violence,” Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, told AlterNet. “These programs fall back on the older ‘stages of radicalization’ models, where the identified indicators are the expression of political grievances and religious practices.”The lineage of this model can be traced to the first red scare in America, as well as J. Edgar Hoover’s crackdown on civil rights and anti-war activists. In the post-9/11 era, the conveyor-belt theory has led to the mass surveillance of Muslims communities by law enforcement outfits ranging from the FBI to the New York Police Department.U.S. government agencies continue to embrace this model despite the fact that it has been thoroughly debunked by years of scholarly research, Britain’s M15 spy agency and an academic study directly supported by the Department of Homeland Security.
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“The document aims to encourage schools to monitor their students more carefully for signs of radicalization but its definition of radicalization is vague,” said Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror and an adjunct professor at New York University. “Drawing on the junk science of radicalization models, the document dangerously blurs the distinction between legitimate ideological expression and violent criminal actions.”
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As Hugh Handeyside, staff attorney for the ACLU’s national security project, told AlterNet, “Broadening the definition of violent extremism to include a range of belief-driven violence underscores that the FBI is diving head-first into community spying. Framing this conduct as ‘concerning behavior’ doesn’t conceal the fact that the FBI is policing students’ thoughts and trying to predict the future based on those thoughts.”