DHS quietly eliminates ban on surveillance based on sexual orientation and gender identity
DHS quietly eliminates ban on surveillance based on sexual orientation and gender identity
The DHS quietly updated its policy manual earlier this month, removing LGBTQ+ identities from the section prohibiting surveillance based solely on immutable characteristics.
The DHS quietly updated its policy manual earlier this month, removing LGBTQ+ identities from the section prohibiting surveillance based solely on immutable characteristics.
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What, were they surveiling you until they find out you're gay and then "no looksies?" They're surveiling all of us (and I for one am goddamn sick of it. Surveil that assholes!)
They weren't allowed to surveil you because you're gay or trans. Now they are.
So they were allowed to surveil you for any other reason, even if you were trans or gay? Because in that case this changes nothing.
Yes to the first part, no to the second. For some reason people like to pretend that surveillance is a binary on or off thing, but that's gross oversimplification to the point of being more damaging than an actual lie. All the various government agencies collect whatever easy to find information about you there is to get, but that information is possible for you to have some control over, and it's too expensive for them to really properly process all of it. It's just some random bits of trivia about you sitting in a bunch of disconnected databases until somebody takes an interest in you. If they start to take an interest in you, they start coordinating their information and actually targeting you for more individualized information gathering. This is adding gay and trans people to that next level up of surveillance, and that absolutely does change things. Pretending nothing the government does matters and there's no point in even trying is maybe the most harmful lie you can spread. Please don't.