We see private companies increasingly at the center of law enforcement operations that have profit incentives, carrying out surveillance of what ordinary people going about their ordinary lives are doing. And I think people inherently understand that we need law enforcement in this country, but there are natural, inborn limits to how much they watch us, how much they hover over us, how much they see us, and robots and A.I. have the potential to eviscerate those limits.
The way the judges have justified putting people in prison is by saying, 'We don't know if solitary confinement or decades in jail will make them more radical, and therefore we need to keep these defendants in prison for longer.' And with that logic, no one can actually win their freedom.
Data that law enforcement would require a warrant to collect if they did it directly, they now can just go buy for a few dollars from private companies with no court order and no probable cause. The surveillance allows them to circumvent the protections that we have written into law.
Detention not as a place where people wait for their cases to be decided, but as a tool to pressure them to abandon those cases and accept deportation.
But now you're not talking about abolition, you're talking about the first amendment. You're talking about the right to petition the government which is protected. And so he becomes a defender of the abolitionists not on necessarily on the grounds of abolition but on the grounds of free speech.
All throughout the north, black people are on high alert because slave catchers are out sort of like ICE, snatching people off the street, picking them up, throwing them in jail, throwing them in these holding pens, sending them back to slavery. Even if you were born in freedom, you felt like your life was at risk.
3mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
