It makes me feel that using my First Amendment rights puts me at risk. Describing journalism as "extremist" in the context of a terrorism investigation is, to put it mildly, unsettling. This isn't the first time I have learned of surveillance like this. I have previously written about how my writing and speeches have been listed in Counter-Terrorism Unit briefing documents.
More importantly, it makes me feel that using my First Amendment rights puts my sources at risk. When I saw that my work was being used by the FBI and prosecutors against Halliday, it made me sick to my stomach. It's one thing to see my name in terrorism files, it's another to see my work being used by prosecutors to punish people I have written about. An old muckraking motto is "comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable." To have my work afflict people who already have the full weight of the U.S. government pressing down upon them goes against everything I believe about this craft.
A Pattern on BehaviorYou might be asking: Was the government really trying to send these messages? Or was this a case of bad FBI intelligence and prosecutors who don't "get it"? (To steal a line from The Daily Show, "Are they evil, or stupid?")
I don't know the answer to that question. But I know government officials have done this before. When I visited Daniel McGowan in the Communications Management Unit, prison officials did not threaten me. They did not expressly prohibit me from writing about the experimental prison units. Instead, they told McGowan that if I wrote about the visit hewould be punished for my words.
I also know that prosecutors said Jordan Halliday needs to be punished for his "stardom," so "defendant's supporters are not emboldened to follow the defendant's contemptuous ways." Through these and many other examples, it's clear that the government is openly trying to send a message.
And so, as I edit this, about to hit "publish," I keep hesitating. Will writing about this amplify that message of fear? Everything I do depends on the trust I have built with countless activists and their friends and families. What if this makes people afraid to be mentioned on this website?
The mere fact that I have to ask myself those questions is a testament to how much we have lost in the name of fighting "terrorism."
This pattern of conduct by the FBI and federal prosecutors is nothing less than an attack on the First Amendment, and an attack on journalism. It is an attempt to foster distrust between author and source, and it is an attempt to shake the confidence that one can report freely and without retribution, both of which are essential to any meaningful expression of journalism in a democracy.
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