In my previous post, I discussed Bruce Springsteen’s comments about the president and his administration during his May 14th concert in Manchester, England. The lines reported in the press were pretty spicy and drew a rebuke from the president, threatening him upon his return to the US (yes, really), but they were just a…
I know I have used the word fascism in several of my previous posts, but I wanted to take a moment to go into it a bit deeper and, as a bonus, show how the US Government’s view on the topic has shifted over the past 80 years (spoilers, it’s a full 180°.) Key…
The title of this post kind of says it all. It’s a quote from Bruce Springsteen at his May 14, 2025, concert in Manchester, England, where he addressed the crowd about what is happening in America and his feelings about the Trump administration. As expected, it triggered the president, again showing his disdain for…
To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer. — BILL VAUGHAN To say I am a big fan of computers might be a bit of an understatement. I think they are incredible tools that can provide value from amusement to life-saving research and everything in between, but that doesn’t mean…
“A federal judge in Vermont has ordered that Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national, be immediately released from federal custody. Judge William K. Sessions’ ruling Friday comes more than six weeks after masked immigration agents picked her up on a suburban Boston street as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activists.”
This is fantastic news. Unfortunately, there is no confirmation yet that she has been released from the Louisiana Gulag that she was sent to. (see update below) Hopefully, they will comply, but if not, this may be the moment of constitutional crisis with the courts that has been looming since inauguration day.
And further proof, the government isn’t fooling anybody but themselves, the judge stated:
…that her arrest and detention appeared likely to have been carried out solely in retaliation for an op-ed she wrote in a campus newspaper criticizing her school leaders’ response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
You can read the rest of the NPR article here. If you haven’t already, you should read my previous post on Rümeysa’s abduction.
EDITED TO ADD:
She was released a few hours after the court order. Again, see NPR for the details.
EDITED TO ADD:
“Ms. Ozturk’s release was in fact delayed when the government sought to make her wear an ankle monitor, prompting Judge Sessions to issue a second order on Friday for her to be released without it.” (New York Times)
I want to say the above is inconceivable, but I am pretty sure someone would point out that it doesn’t mean what I think it means. What a bunch of aragant assholes.
“… it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.”Bruce Schneier – Secrets and Lies (2000)
I was pretty taken by this quote when I first read it 25 years ago, and it has come to mind multiple times since, while I watched with dismay as the intelligence/industrial complex continued to expand its capacity and capabilities during both Democratic and Republican administrations. It came up most recently when Bruce included it in a post last month about Trump’s firing of the Director of the NSA and his concerns about how the NSA may be directed toward domestic surveillance. The clear implication is that the technologies are installed, and we are headed for (or are already in) a police state.
It would be hard to argue against that that premise as today the U.S has the most extensive and and invasive spying apparatus in the history of the world (in your face, Stasi!!) and it’s in the hands of someone who isn’t sure if people are entitled to due process and has shown no concern about abusing his powers to strike out at his enemies. This is a real ‘leopards ate my face’ moment for anyone, including myself, who knew what was happening but didn’t do everything they could to fight it. We should have listened. We should have acted. Rolling things back now will be a huge uphill battle, and all the while, damage to individuals and the country will continue, so it’s time to look for ways to make a more immediate impact in the short term while the longer fight is waged.
A key thing to remember is that none of the politicians and spooks who approved and used these surveillance tools developed them. If you take the word ‘install’ from Bruce’s quote above, it becomes clear (to me at least) that he was speaking to the technologists designing and deploying such systems as much as he is to the politicians who approved them. And so while techies might have exercised poor civic hygiene, they are in a uniquely powerful position to clean things up.
I have been in tech for a long time, and my counterparts and I tend to be social media adverse and pro-VPN because even if we aren’t directly involved in the surveillance industry, we know enough about it to be wary. In my experience, tech workers also tend toward the liberal side and have a strong history of standing up to their bosses when the tools they develop are used for evil. I can’t think of a better time to refuse to participate in the surveillance state than today. I am not naive enough to think that majority of those who work IT for the three-letter agencies or the contractors that support them will take action, but I am hopeful that enough to make a difference will.
As noted previously, tech worker standing is at an all-time low, so we can’t expect companies to bow to pressure like they have in the past. I’m afraid the only way to make an impact is for people of conscience to remove themselves and their skills from the equation by resisting or quitting. I know that those are scary prospects, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If someone isn’t ready to quit, they can resist by speaking up internally, publicly, or confidentially to a trusted news source. All of these actions pose a risk (particularly whistle-blowing, for which protections started declining during the Obama administration), but compare that to the danger of not taking action to protect your fellow citizens and yourself from something you had a hand in, and let your conscience be your guide.
EDITED TO ADD:
Resources in case you are so moved.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/how-to-leak-to-a-journalist/
I have received a few requests for email notifications when a new post drops, so I have added that feature. Please see the newly updated Privacy Policy for details on how I will handle things should you provide me with your email address. In short, I only ask for a valid email address (no…
When I look at the pattern of actions of the Trump administration over its first 100 days, my focus is on those that directly impact individuals and groups and their civil liberties. It’s not that I don’t think the damage that is being inflicted on the economy isn’t harmful or that it won’t disproportionately…
The Trump administration is waging a full-on war against free speech, and while they are targeting the most vulnerable first, they will work their way up to harassing and jailing citizens. We must support those currently targeted not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s our self-interest.
In my previous post about Rümeysa Öztürk, I deliberately omitted any discussion of why she was arrested, as I preferred to focus strictly on the means and methods used. But if you aren’t aware of what crime she committed to rate six abductors, you aren’t alone, as the only semi-official reason I can find was in a sworn statement by Tufts University in support of her, in which they say they received an email the next day from INS that stated;
“… Rümeysa’s visa was canceled because she was a “non-immigrant status violator” (citing 237 (a)(1)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act) and/or that the United States believed that her presence in the country would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” (citing 237 (a)(4)(C)(i)).
I highly recommend reading the whole statement, as it has many good details that are hard to find elsewhere. For example, her student visa was still valid at the time of her arrest. Regarding the speculation that it was her role in a March 2024 editorial in The Tufts Daily student newspaper, the statement states that the editorial had not received a single complaint and was not violating any school policies. I have read the editorial and found it relatively mild considering the topic and compared to other student editorials I have read.
So, absent a clear statement from the US government (don’t hold your breath), it appears that Rümeysa was targeted simply for voicing her opinion. That is illegal. The Supreme Court found in Bridges v. Wixon (1945) that the First Amendment applies to all people lawfully admitted to the United States.
“..… once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders. Such rights include those protected by the First and Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinctions between citizens and resident aliens. They extend their inalienable privileges to all ‘persons’ and guard against any encroachment of those rights by federal or state authority. So, this issue is settled in law by the highest court in the land, yet the Trump administration is doing it anyway. This is an odd way for constitutional ‘originalists’ to act. I doubt the six justices in the majority on this decision were ‘woke’ as the case was tried in 1945, and they were all white men.
They have also moved to remove people with green cards (Legal Permanent Residents, or LPRs), and now the president is saying Homegrowns are next.
The administration’s behavior shows they know they are outside the law. They snatch people off the street and then play cat-and-mouse with the abductee to keep their families and attorneys from knowing where they are and then move them either out of state or out of the country to avoid legal review. This.Is.The.Behavior.Of.Fascists. If you aren’t frightened and angry, what are you waiting for?
So, it’s one thing to read articles and get worked up about the state of things, but that doesn’t do anything except cause more stress. Our family has decided to take action on issues we are upset about and try to help, but with the added benefits of helping complete our stress cycles and having a feeling of doing something. To date, we have distributed Red Cards along with multi-lingual instructional flyers to individuals and organizations in our community, upped our donations by several orders of magnitude to causes that are fighting for the things we believe in, and called and wrote our representatives to let them know this is not acceptable. In addition, I am attending rallies and protests as well as writing this blog and I will continue to do all of these things, in the open, unmasked, and lawfully because I believe they are not only the right thing to do and that it is my right as an American citizen to do so. I would hope that you will take a moment and find some action to take that aligns with your beliefs and take it. The more of us making noise and calling out the bad behavior, the better.
Banner image by SWinxy, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
I realize that the abduction of Rümeysa Ozturk from the street outside her suburban Boston apartment happened nearly a month ago, but since it was the seminal event that motivated me to start this blog, attend protests, etc. I wanted to take some time and write about it. Just looking at the images of…