, 8 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
1/ Chuckie O’Brien, @jacklgoldsmith’s stepfather, was a leading suspect in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa—and a target of government surveillance. theatln.tc/q7ThGTSM
2/ Goldsmith initially broke with his stepfather over Chuckie’s history of criminality. But, after working on a post-9/11 anti-terrorist surveillance program, Goldsmith came to believe Chuckie’s warnings about privacy.
3/ Early government surveillance targeted Nazi spies inside the United States; however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged that government wiretapping “is almost bound to lead to abuse of civil rights.” Still, the practice persisted.
4/ In 1954, a Supreme Court justice made clear that breaking into homes and offices to plant bugs “flagrantly” violated the Fourth Amendment. It didn’t matter: The U.S. later extended the scope of surveillance to include suspected domestic criminals as well as foreign agents.
5/ In the 1960s, the government bugged Martin Luther King Jr.—without a warrant—based on an unsupported link between King and communism. The FBI used the information gathered to try to destroy King’s marriage and pressure him to abandon the civil-rights movement.
6/ By 2001, in the face of dangerous terrorist threats, a new U.S. surveillance project swept up vast amounts of information about completely innocent Americans. Unable to stand by, Goldsmith played a major part in revising that program.
7/ Surveillance has only grown more intense in the technological era, with threats to privacy coming not only from the government but also from private-sector companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
8/ “Except in the most extreme cases of abuse or fecklessness, Congress will legalize the surveillance practice,” @jacklgoldsmith predicts. “And we will adjust to our more naked selves.”theatln.tc/q7ThGTSM
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