Defending Rights & Dissent condemns the FBI’s infiltration of a private chat of court watchers. The troubling situation is further confounded by the fact that the FBI labeled the individuals who were peacefully and lawfully attending and monitoring ICE proceedings “anarchist violent extremist actors.” For decades, the FBI has thrown around the label of “anarchists” “extremists” and manipulated loose counterterrorism powers to spy on First Amendment-protected activity. As evidenced by NSPM-7, the Trump administration is clinging to these powers as it hopes to brand its domestic opponents as “anarchists” and unleash the national security bureaucracy against them.
That the FBI had access to a private chat raises questions that must be answered: Why was the FBI surveilling this law-abiding group, and how did they obtain access to its communications? It also further stresses the need to finally rein in the FBI’s counterterrorism powers, given their repeated use to target First Amendment-protected activity.