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national politics & policies partisanship Regulating Protest

Home of the Surveilled 

Abusive investigations that must themselves be investigated are piling up.

In the case commanding our attention today, the meta-​investigating organization is the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It is investigating the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

Who does FinCEN pursue? True scoundrels? Hapless executives caught in a regulatory net?

Nope. FinCEN has been on fishing expeditions. It hasn’t been going after persons suspected of either willfully committing crimes or even tripping over regulations accidentally, or at least not only such types.

It has been going after anybody whose purchasing history puts them in the category of wrong-​thinking rightists — hence, I guess, crypto-terrorists.

FinCEN has been instructing banks to scan customer records for evidence of suspect purchases. Not illegal purchases. Just “suspicious” in light of an ideological filter, unconstitutionally applied.

On Twitter, Representative Jim Jordan reported recently that the subcommittee now knows that FinCEN required financial institutions to screen transactions in which terms like “MAGA,” “Trump,” “Bible,” and “Bass Pro Shop” popped up. 

Apparently, if you’re fishing while wearing a MAGA cap and quoting Genesis, you just might be on the verge of shooting up your local post office.

Please don’t ask me to explain what anybody involved with FinCEN could possibly be thinking by engaging in this illegal spying. Or whether they have even a glancing acquaintance with constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

I’m just glad Jordan and his Weaponization Subcommittee are on the job, “watching the watchers.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

The Citizen Threat

“The Republicans,” said Tucker Carlson — speaking of elected Republicans — “who really do hate their own voters in a way that’s pathological, are just re-​upping the spy laws to allow the Biden Administration to spy on their voters.”

Mr. Carlson is not wrong, at least about Republican leaders aiding Democrats in spying on conservatives and others who sometimes vote GOP.

Yes, the federal government’s surveillance and criminal “justice” apparatus has been directed by Democrats — the Biden Administration specifically, and whoever runs that — to target, as The Enemy, conservatives and others associated with (or merely adjacent to) the Republican Party.

This cannot be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Democratic thought leaders pushed this new anti-​terrorism paradigm from the first moments of the Biden Administration, in public

Or at least on MSNBC, where John Brennan clearly reconceived opposition to his Democratic Party as a movement looking “very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas.” 

“Even libertarians,” he said, constituted “an insidious threat” to, not the Democratic Party, but “our Democracy.”

This perspectival shift, of seeing policy and political opposition as “insurgency,” is key to the new anti-​democratic mindset.

And very real. It could end our small‑r republican experiment.

Which brings us back to Republican politicians and their willingness to let Democrats institute a permanent pogrom against all who oppose Democrats’ big government programs.

Why do this? Out of hatred? Disdain? Fear?

Let’s not ignore the age-​old impulse of politicians to squelch the speech of opponents. The longer in office, the more these careerists tend to view their own constituents as threats. After all, anyone might freely offer a complaint that emboldens or comforts the opposition. This is a bipartisan principle.

Better an enforced silence about the dictates of Washington, sadly, if you are a Washingtonian delivering dictates.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment too much government

DeKalb Gas Stations DeKneecapped

The gas stations of DeKalb County, Georgia, never did nothing to nobody … except provide petrol.

Yet, thanks to a draconian county ordinance, the stations can be shut down if they fail to splurge on expensive new video surveillance systems. Even if they already have security cameras. Which most do.

The law requires the systems to operate continuously; to include cameras at registers, gas pumps, parking areas, as well as entry and exit points; to record at least 24 frames per second; to store recordings for at least 60 days.

Wait, these are private gas stations. 

By what right does the county mandate precisely what detailed security measures business owners must take in order to keep their licenses? This is government turning the tables, rather than keeping these stations safe, the county lords the license over them, demanding the stations spend lavishly on security.

Arguably, the county is acting as yet another disruption plaguing the stations — which already face more than enough criminal invasion of their premises.

The law requires recordings to “be made available to any peace officer for viewing no later than 72 hours after being requested.” Nothing about obtaining a warrant if and when an owner is less than eager to cooperate. (Assuming, generously, that the video would be used to prosecute the robber even if the police and prosecutors had it.)

Lawyers for the Institute for Justice have been talking to the gas station owners, and have sent a letter citing the Fourth Amendment as grounds for DeKalb’s commissioners to drop this “beyond creepy and dystopian” practice.

Let’s hope the outcome is not more suffering businesses but a more limited government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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free trade & free markets too much government

Why the Banks Are Failing Us

We depend on big businesses, especially upon banks. We pay for our food, clothing, medicines, and much else with little plastic cards from our banks. So when those cards stop working, all of a sudden — without warning — our hearts are going to do a bit more than beat just a little faster.

Why would there be big hiccups at all? 

As Brian Doherty remarks at Reason, it’s not just “frustrating when those businesses make seemingly arbitrary decisions that cripple your ability to function in a modern economy,” it’s hard to understand. After all, “the incentives of businesses are to, well, do business with customers.”

Why would banks, then, increasingly treat customers badly?

I’m not talking about the allegedly transient snag in the direct deposit system last week — apparently due to human error — but something more persistent, if scattershot.

Doherty found an answer in The New York Times, in an article “giving infuriating details of innocent Americans being cut off by their banks.” 

It should not shock the reader, Mr. Doherty explains, revealing: “the real cause of the banks’ seemingly arbitrary behavior is government rules designed to make sure it knows everything it can about citizens’ banking business, to discourage big cash transactions, and to ensure businesses the government disapproves of have as difficult a time as possible without being explicitly banned.”

Nearly ten years ago I wrote about it in a discussion of Operation Choke Point. Since then, in the words of the New York Times, “a vast security apparatus has kicked into gear, starting with regulators in Washington and trickling down to bank security managers and branch staff eyeballing customers.”

Who’ll be next?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights international affairs too much government

The $145,000 Virtual Fine

A Chinese programmer who worked remotely for a foreign company between 2019 and 2022 has been fined his entire earnings from that work, 1.058 million yuan or almost 145,000 USD.

We know only the surname, Ma, of the robbed developer. Ma’s crime was using a virtual private network to evade China’s great firewall, a censorship net used to keep people from seeing anything too politically thought-provoking.

Many others in China also use VPNs to circumvent the great firewall, and many China-​based companies couldn’t function without using VPNs.

Authorities first noticed Ma because of a Twitter account that was not even his, and which authorities agreed was not his. But now they were looking at him.

He says that he explained that while his remote work could be done without bypassing the wall and that the company’s support site could be reached without doing so, he needed to use a VPN only to access Zoom for meetings. 

These details fell on deaf ears.

Whatever Ma’s exact alleged violation, something in what passes for law in China could be found to rationalize punishing him for it. He seems to be a victim of bad luck. A mix-​up about a Twitter account. He ticked a few boxes. He had money. Money the local officials wanted.

The message to other Chinese: “You may think you’re getting away with X [“X” being one of the many peaceful activities that the Chinese government arbitrarily outlaws]. But we can get you any time.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment election law privacy

Donors Don’t Donate Their Privacy

Alabama recently passed a law to prohibit public agencies from disclosing information “that identifies a person as a member, supporter, or donor of a 501© nonprofit organization … except as required by law.”

SB59 is comprehensive, stating that “notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary,” no public agency may compel disclosure of such information or itself publicly release such information. 

The initial delimitation “except as required by law” seems ambiguous. But SB59 goes on to specify that exceptions would pertain to things like the requirements of a “lawful warrant” or a “lawful request for discovery of personal information in litigation.”

Passage is a big deal because, until now, agencies in the state had been permitted to collect and disclose such information.

Many nonprofits are political or ideological in character, promoting causes that are controversial. When this is so, who especially appreciates unfettered access to donors’ names and addresses? Obviously, opponents of the cause who would like to target donors with propaganda or even actively harass them.

On the national level, recognition of the problem is represented by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. The court threw out a California requirement that nonprofits in the state had to divulge the names and addresses of their biggest donors to the attorney general. The Foundation plausibly argued that the requirement would deter people from contributing.

Several other states have also enacted SB59-​style legislation. The number we need is 50.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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