President Trump’s nomination for Attorney General is a disaster waiting to happen.
Following his victory in the U.S. Presidential election, Donald J. Trump began the process of nominating candidates for various positions in his administration. Trump’s picks so far been more of the same – banksters with Goldman Sachs, a patron of the Oilgarchy (and Bilderberger), criminals, and other various authoritarians. But perhaps his most criticized nomination has been Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. Sessions’ nomination will be put to vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 24.
Sessions is a junior Senator from Alabama who has recently become a darling of the growing Alt-Right/Extreme-Right wing of the Republican Party. Media reports have so far focused on the possibility that Sessions anti-cannabis and pro-Drug War voting record would lead to a massive growth of arrests for victimless crimes like drug use. Sessions has also been attacked as a possible racist, or at the least, unfriendly towards equality laws. Finally, Senator Jeff Sessions’ past comments regarding immigration have some activists worried about how he will enforce immigration policy as Attorney General.
Each of these issues deserves your time and research so you may develop a more informed opinion regarding Jeff Sessions’ stances. However, I wish to take a moment to focus on Sessions’ views on surveillance and how that view will play into the issues mentioned above. In a new report, the Center for Democracy & Technology focuses on the senator’s voting record and comments on the government’s use of surveillance. His actions and comments should have all lovers of liberty concerned.
According to the CDT, “as a Senator, Sessions opposed the USA Freedom Act and was an ardent supporter of the NSA’s bulk collection program under Section 215 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, despite consistent evidence that the program never discovered or disrupted a terrorist plot.” As you may recall, the USA Freedom Act was touted as a bill that would effectively end the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. Despite the fact that the passing of the USA Freedom Act did not end surveillance of emails, it is revealing that Sessions was not in support of a bill that was weak in the first place.
The CDT also notes that “at his confirmation hearing, Sessions would not admit that the USA Freedom Act bars the NSA from engaging in bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.” So, Sessions opposed a weak bill which falsely claimed to end NSA email surveillance and now say he does not believe it is true that the executive branch cannot reinstate bulk phone records collection. When questioned about this during his confirmation hearing, Sessions responded, “I can’t swear that that’s absolutely, totally, always true, but it appears to be so.”
Following the confirmation hearing, Senator Patrick Leahy submitted and publicly released follow-up questions covering a range of issues, including encryption, and the use of cell-site simulators (aka stingrays) for warrantless location tracking. The Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Constitutional Alliance, and several other organizations signed a letter calling on Sessions to address the issues presented by Senator Leahy.
“We urge you to carefully investigate Senator Sessions’s record on privacy and seek assurances that he will not pursue policies that undermine Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” states the letter.
The Intercept also notes the possibility of an increase in facial recognition and biometric surveillance do to Trump’s transition team and their connections to the industry. “Several people on Trump’s transition team are linked to a firm called Safran, a French defense contractor that has marketed expansive facial recognition and biometric software for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As The Intercept previously reported, Morpho, a division of Safran, has touted a “Google” style search tool for capturing and storing the identities of potential terrorists using facial recognition technology. The concept has been criticized by privacy experts for denying due process rights to those ensnared in the terrorist database for simply having certain facial features.”
The CDT also called attention to the fact that Senator Sessions would not commit to the Department of Justice standards for subpoenaing journalists. During the confirmation hearing Sessions was asked to commit to the DOJ’s guidelines which limit the conditions under which journalists can be subpoenaed and forced to reveal sources. Sessions would not commit to the guidelines and instead claimed that “the Department of Justice does have sensitivity to this issue.”
Sessions would go on to say that “you could have a situation in which [the] media is not really the unbiased media we see today, and they could be a mechanism through which unlawful intelligence is obtained.” Today’s media is unbiased? Hardly. What Sessions means is that the compliant media of today is being overtaken by independent media and the government may want to question and limit journalists who obtain “unlawful intelligence.” This sounds like doublespeak for wanting to go after journalists and whistleblowers.
To be fair, Sessions alone cannot implement or grow the Surveillance State, the attack on whistleblowers, racists laws, or the Drug War. However, he can definitely set the tone for federal law enforcement agencies that focus on whistleblowers, immigration, police tactics, and drug policy. Sessions did say that if President Trump asks him to do something against the law he would resign. “This country does not punish its political enemies,” Sessions said.
Whether Sessions is being honest or not remains to be seen, but, as I have noted before, Trump’s role is to be the great divider within the U.S. Many anti-establishment activists are being duped into supporting another candidate and sucked right back into the system that is responsible for our woes. To truly be free or “awake,” one must continue to challenge the establishment narrative and break free of all the illusions and social engineering. To the free hearts and minds who see past the lies and games of Bush, Obama, and Trump, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter for ActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter. Derrick is the author of three books: The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 1 and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 2
Derrick is available for interviews. Please contact [email protected]
This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.
“Alt-Right/Extreme-Right wing of the Republican Party”
Sounds like a phrase Huffington Post would use, blurring the lines between bona fide Tea Party types (conservatives) relabeled “Alt-Right” and “Extreme Right” not identified as Globalist Neocons. Also, the Intercept cited despite founder Pierre’s Omidyar’s tacit approval of NSA spying and bankrolling a firm creating China style Social Credit Scoring for Marxist global technocratic social utility measurements of each individual.
The end of cash & the rolling out of the velvet handcuffs & mind shackle *Social Credit Scoring* juggernaut… IS…. the epitome of a ‘slippery slope’ as you outlined above…this social restructuring under the guise of ubiquitous ‘Happy Faces’ masking the deeply dark intent obscured behind the ersatz Madison Ave, marketing… is in fact exponentially far more dangerous in the applied totalitarian ‘enslavement’ potential for the 99%….than any envisioned WWIII (imo)
Derrick, I have read your article and the one you reference by the CDT, and I’m no more skeptical than I was before I read them. I found every item reaching and vague, and I have never heard of the CDT until now.
Sessions refusing to allow his formerly fellow senators to pigeon-hole him on an issue that was far from clearly defined during the hearing was a smart move, and I’m glad he did. The vast majority of those of us who are fed up with the establishment are not lemmings that will rubber-stamp every move this administration makes, but Trump and company deserve the benefit of the doubt until they show us that they don’t.
I don’t think that has happened yet by a long shot. I’m not saying that your alarmism definitely won’t turn out to be correct, but it’s unfairly premature. There might be some people who have done misguided things in the past, but they are very smart, hopefully pragmatic, and they are now under Trump’s leadership. Let’s see how that pans out.
President Trump has never criticized the surveillance state or police, and only criticizes our intelligence agencies when they go after him(admittedly I think their allegations are BS).
We have to wait to see, but look at the last acts of Loretta Lynch, US Attorney General, the day before she cleaned out her desk. OMG! Signed off on allowing the sharing by the NSA of all the blanket information obtained by any form of spying/surveillance with everyone else who wants it. No standards or barriers at all. This from the woman who makes backroom deals and has never helped any ghetto dweller to find safety or freedom from gangs. She, like Eric Holder before her, walks around with her hand out, while the other hand gives away our Constitutionally protected rights. I don’t think Sessions could ever do worse than Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.
Bullshit article. The USA freedom act was a massive extension of the Patriot Act. It’s a good thing that Sessions voted no on that. Also, let’s not forget that it was Sessions who led the one man charge against the TPP. Sessions has some flaws but also has some really good qualities.
Thank you for spelling that out. I am on the same page with Sessions, both on the TPP and as to any extension of the Patriot Act, but as to the protection of the US and the elimination of illegal immigration, and the tens of thousands of illegals who are criminals.
Nothing will change, it will only go deeper into the police state.
“When a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth. . . . What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough ?……Thus custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude.”- La Boétie in 1553
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Might as well use the tools that the idiot libtards provided, against them. Even the disgusting Patriot Act can be used to put the worst of them away never to be seen again.
Then, once we’re done, undo all of these since they’re unconstitutional.
That sucks ? This crap is getting old.
Why not, the grand mason and creator of the KKK or the Klan Albert Pike, believed in watching everyone. Jeff is trying to hide his bedsheet.
i think reince preibus needs removed…he is a devil in disguise and a thorn.
GIVE TRUMP A CHANCE ! GIVE TRUMP A CHANCE ! GIVE TRUMP A CHANCE ! ………………….
Unless the USA Freedom act, the Patriot Act are repealed and the Dept of Homeland Security is abolished, then NOTHING WILL CHANGE. BTW: it will get worse
and the NDAA indefinite detention clause
“This country does not punish its political enemies,” Sessions said.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Jeff Sessions, is a betrayer of over, 326,331,620… American people. That’s a lot of people to be lie’n too.