US to ramp up tracking of domestic extremism on social media

Not every new institution created by the govt gets posted on Hacker News and the verbage in the headline triggered red flags for me. As a conservative, it would make me concerned over government surveillance possibly targeting me. As a liberal, it would make me concerned over the presence of domestic extremists. So I was trying to gauge how I should feel about this story, whether 'ramping up' means creating a new NSA, or forming a volunteer committee that meets once/week.

At least that's how I feel after leaving social media. I check NYT a couple times a day and browse Hackernews while I'm waiting for tests to complete. The rest of the time I'd spend dawdling on Twitter or Fark I put towards reading.

YMMV, but for me, I find it far more pleasant and less hectic.

I'm not sure that is well defined either - Is 'assault by intimidation' violence? People yelling at you / over you while you eat? Spitting? Throwing objects at buildings?

By that definition the person running over people with his car was likely not 'premeditated' - so it's outside of that. (imho - ianal etc)

Is threatening violence outside the definition?

adding to the gp? comment - the article does say in a couple places things like: "Biden’s top appointees have called white supremacists the greatest security threat to the country and are pushing for bolstered intelligence gathering." "“These programs almost always end up targeting Black and brown communities,” Ayoub said. He added: “It does seem that the focus...will be on white supremacy.”"

other things in the article seem to indicate that this is being created to have a focus on getting data about (extremist?) white people primarily - so I think the mention of "defined as anything outside the center left/right consensus of washington" is pretty accurate.

It's been said that previous intel collecting on 'domestic terror' stuff has been focused on black/brown people (in the article) - but I'm not sure antifa info gathering qualifies as that - maybe they are referring to after 911 the NY stuff -

Whichever situations they are referring to - it does appear that the big gov as a whole is and has been directed to use it's powers to collect info regarding those who sip info from watering holes that 'anything outside the center left/right consensus'

And that may be more of a testament to the tech algos of recent years actually - before social media it was rare to have hundreds of thousands being “who may be radicalizing, or have radicalized, to violence.” (DHS) - with today's tech you don't have to meet at some secret hideout to talk about hurting people because you don't like their agenda - now you have fang-like that can get groups together to hate by the thousands per minute.

Good on the aclu for once mentioning “The reality is that the federal government already has more than sufficient authority to investigate and prosecute white supremacist violence.”

So it's gotta make one wonder - it really seems like they are setting up new fed groups to train other fed and local groups to find dirt on non-centrist 'others' specifically - and it seems they are focused on what they call extreme right wing.

personally I don't see right wing / left wing - if you incite violence and destruction / intimidation it's just wrong. So is sending agents out to create drama for PR points on specific groups to make your tribe feel some type of way.. but that's been ongoing for a long time it seems - and strange to see so many okay (or just burying their head in the sand) with that, and many happily pushing for more.