The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is the independent watchdog agency tasked with ensuring that the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts respect privacy rights and civil liberties.
Since President Trump fired three Democratic members of PCLOB, it can no longer carry out its duties until replacements are appointed…which may take quite a while. Given its limited power to enforce actions, there is a good chance that nothing would fundamentally change in the short-term. However, it could represent a politicized shift in the Trump Administration’s priorities.
What are the consequences of this action? Would a Trump-aligned PCLOB be a net positive or negative for our privacy rights in the long-term? Are you worried that any pause in its duties could be harmful?
Additionally, all discussion should remind respectful regardless of its political nature.
I don’t see this as any different to any other challenge any government imposes on its citizens who care about select things that bothers/may affect them.
We must keep doing what we can do ensure what we need to - no matter what. Unless USA goes full Russia or NK or China with the great firewall and restrict significant volume of info, awareness can be spread.
What’s more challenging is the capacity of Americans’ to acknowledge, understand, value, and act against all they may be likely to lose with things like this and others we may have in the future.
The issue then becomes logistical, should Americans do the aforementioned or work and ensure they can live as cost of living keeps rising. Limited time. Limited priorities to focus on. And limited accomplishments by private citizens.
The resulting consequence is the inundation with/of so many things that Americans need to keep track and ensure which may lead to demoralization and complacency with reluctanct “surrender” of sorts.
The opositon(s) to this administration need cohesion and a break from the status quo and try new things to tackle new kinds of political threats that they consider would harm Americans. Focusing on smaller but crucial issues are important because the current administration has majority everywhere to do whatever they want if they really need to.
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Anyways, these are my thoughts and opinions. I will not be debating this as that’s not why I have commented on this particular post. Make of what I said however you want to - but know it was said with the best intentions and only means what it says. There is no implication or a greater rhetoric I am trying to get you to infer. So please, understand my response as it is written and what it says and not conflate my response to/with your pre-existing understanding/bias/view/adherence to any particular ideology/thinking/rationale/view.
Looks like this is just the typical gutting of appointee and board positions that every US President does. They have their current projects listed listed on their website. Curious to see who he winds up appointing to these positions and what their backgrounds are, and how that will impact these ongoing projects.
Do you have a source to cite this as typical? I checked the history and couldn’t find any previous president removing members of the committee. I see one unsolicted resignation back in 2007 but maybe you have more info than I do re: presidents gutting the board positions for partisan means?
I was also wondering this. I feel like it is not typical to make changes like this without replacements at the ready, but with how over-dramatized the media currently is, I don’t know if that is just because it wasn’t as widely reported on in previous administrations, or because it actually is atypical.
These are the privacy-conscious people inside government that push back against overreach. For example, they loudly pushed back against the pro-surveillance governmental talking points after the Snowden leaks:
Because they require three members to operate, Trump has rendered the privacy board useless until (if?) he decides to fill the roles.
And as you hint in the your post, “[That] future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Case in point: Disinfo (like X/Twitter) is the worst form of censorship.
Perhaps the most significant development, however, was a 2004 guideline on internet censorship that called for Chinese universities to recruit internet commentators who could guide online discussions in politically acceptable directions and report comments that did not follow Chinese law. These commentators became known as wu mao dang, or “50-cent party”, after the small bonuses they were supposedly paid for each post.
The previous time, Trump admin defunded The Open Tech Fund (which has supported Tor & WireGuard) without any warning and teams/orgs (fighting Internet censorship) that were dependent on it were just sent scrambling.
