TSA Shares Your Data, But Don't Call It a Surveillance State
Mainstream media frames this as a new Trump-era innovation, a fresh horror. But let's be real: the infrastructure for this data-sharing wasn't built last Tuesday. The 'War on Terror,' launched after 9/11 with bipartisan glee, erected the very surveillance apparatus now being leveraged. The TSA's data collection, presented then as vital for national security against 'foreign threats,' always
carried the implicit danger of mission creep. That creep is now just a full-on sprint towards domestic political ends, repurposing tools built to stop 'terrorists' for immigration enforcement. One might wonder when these vast databases, justified by fear, would inevitably be turned inward. It appears 'national security' is a flexible term, easily stretched to include the tracking of anyone deemed
inconvenient to the reigning political agenda. From monitoring 'radical' websites to passenger manifests, the state rarely dismantles tools of control once they're acquired. How many 'patriotic duty' programs will silently morph into instruments of government overreach? (Hint: All of them.)