04-30-2022, 11:45 AM
(04-29-2022, 09:14 PM)treee Wrote: It's a good question. Looking at how many subsections there are of DoHS it appears their jurisdiction is very broad. The certainly do have some number of uniformed officers but I think the purpose from the get-go has been to serve as a nexus of mainly counter terrorism intelligence. Since the current nature of information warfare is about provoking/instigating unstable individuals who are sympathetic to extremist ideology, I don't think it is necessarily outside the scope of the agency. Of course it's fair to have reservations until we see how it's actually going to be implemented.
You actually mentioned a key point of concern for me, that of labeling this a nexus of "counter terrorism". I don't disagree with your assessment, but labeling dis, mis, or mal information as terrorism, which could easily happen, gives the government broad discretion to "deal with" said terrorism. So now you've got a double whammy, the government can not only label you a spreader of dangerous untruths but they can treat you as a terrorist while they do it. If you want a real life example of the possible consequences then look no further than Guantanamo Bay. The implications are honestly terrifying and definitely a greater "threat to our democracy" (seeing as that's the current talking point) than any spreader of disinformation.
As you say, we'll have to wait and see, but as I said earlier, the optics of this are just horrible.
