“Pre-Crime” – Trump’s Plan to Target Dissent

…by Jonas E. Alexis and Andrew

Andrew is a retired attorney.

Jonas E. Alexis: Thanks to Edward Snowden, we learned way back in 2013 that the NSA routinely sends shockwaves and aesthetic terrorism across the nation with its complete violation of the Constitution. It was revealed that the NSA “violated privacy rules protecting the communications of Americans and others on domestic soil 2,776 times over a one-year period,”[1] and this was the tip of the iceberg. In an article entitled, “Army Won’t Suspend Contracts with Al-Qaeda-Tied Companies, Citing ‘Due Process Rights,’” it was also reported then that:

“The U.S. Army is refusing to suspend contracts with dozens of companies and individuals tied to Al Qaeda and other extremist groups out of concern for their “due process rights,” despite repeated pleas from the chief watchdog for Afghanistan reconstruction.”[2]

The inspector general report declares that Al-Qaeda and his associates “may be enemies of the United States, but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts.”[3] The plot thickens. There was no need whatsoever for the Deep State and its offshoots like the Neoconservative movement to say that they were fighting terrorism. What we saw through the NSA was that Al-Qaeda was largely a creation of the United States and the war machine and the very people who want to bleed America to death in the Middle East.

Now Trump is covertly supporting the ideologies that make up the Deep State. Andrew has more to say on this issue.

Andrew: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) already has technology for snooping on our phone discussions, email, etc. That is covered under FISA, but now Trump and Barr want even more snooping authority.

Trump and Barr claim the DOJ has mind reading technology to read the thoughts of ‘mass shooters’ and preemptively arrest them before they begin shooting. That’s preposterous.

But that’s exactly what Trump and Secretary of Justice, William Barr are proposing.

Following the Walmart El Paso mass shooting last August, 2019, President Trump proposed a new federal agency to be known as HARPA that would work with the Department of Justice to use “breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence,” specifically “advanced analytical tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

The data to be analyzed would be harvested from consumer electronic devices as well as information provided by health-care providers to identify who might be a threat.[4]

Trump and Barr’s Pre-Crime Program is actually designed to furnish a phony pretext for further invasion of Americans’ privacy.

Pretty soon people who voice “unauthorized narratives” (a/k/a THOUGHT CRIME LIKE CONSPIRACY THEORIES) will be subject to arrest for thinking outside the media circus of Congressional Impeachment Proceedings.

By the way, that’s why the enabling legislation for HARPA sailed through Congress unnoticed by the average American. That explains the real purpose for the Impeachment Proceedings. Distraction.

It is important to point out that such initiatives, whether HARPA or Barr’s newly announced program, are likely to define “mental illness” to include political beliefs, given that the FBI recently stated in an internal memo “conspiracy theories” were motivating some domestic terror threats and a series of questionable academic studies have sought to link “conspiracy theorists” to mental illnesses.

Thus, the Department of Justice and “mental health professionals” have essentially already defined those who express disbelief in official government narratives as both a terror threat and mentally ill — and thus worthy of special attention from pre-crime programs.” Obviously, we’re sleepwalking into an Orwellian nightmare.

This widely overlooked background is crucial to understanding William Barr’s recent memorandum and the massive and greatly underreported shift in the policy it heralds. Over a period of several months, Barr — aided by “private sector partners” as well as other current and former government officials — has been laying the groundwork for the system he has now formally announced.

Through the software products offered by companies like Carbyne911 and through Barr’s personal crusade to mandate government backdoors into encrypted software and products, Barr’s new pre-crime program already has the tools for the mass extraction and storage of political and consumer data by means of both private tech companies and public services like emergency call centers.

This is a disturbing trend. In recent decades, and especially after the September 11 attacks, Americans have quietly traded an increasing number of civil liberties for increased government “counter-terrorism” programs and wars purportedly waged to “keep us safe.”

Now, those same policies used to target “terrorists” overseas are set to be used against ordinary Americans, whose electronic lives and communications are now set to be scoured for evidence of “mental illness.”

If these nontransparent algorithms flag an individual, that could be enough lead to court-ordered “mental health treatment” or even imprisonment regardless of whether or not a crime was committed or even planned.

As a consequence, William Barr’s coming “pre-crime” program is arguably worse than the stuff of dystopian science fiction novels and films as it not only aims to detain Americans who have committed no crime but will expressly target individuals based on their use of electronic consumer products and the contents of their communications with their friends, family, co-workers, and others.”

• [1] Charlie Savage, “N.S.A. Often Broke Rules on Privacy, Audit Shows,” NY Times, August 16, 2013; see also Barton Gellman, “NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times per Year, Audit Finds,” Washington Post, August 15, 2013.
• [2] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/05/army-wont-suspend-contracts-with-al-qaeda-tied-companies/
• [3] Ibid.
• [4] Jacqueline Alemany, “White House considers new project seeking links between mental health and violent behavior,” Washington Post, August 22, 2019.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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