The imperial boomerang? Under the past Presidents, the US govt has acted in nefarious perhaps "unconstitutional" ways (especially when engineering regime changes or manufacturing consent for war). Now, the same freedom of action & impunity is sought by government actors in their own homeland? McCarthyism, as TFA notes, is back with a vengeance.
And indeed agencies have thrown the law book at their adversaries. To me, it seems as if is only when Trump does it, the press seems to be in an overdrive? Or perhaps, the Trump admin is boldly targetting the "untouchables"?
> the whole business has been massively obfuscated by that special blend of state secrecy and legal gaggery that characterizes an official attempt to do something we really need to know about without telling us
Such laws, often passed in the name of counter-terrorism, exist in most European countries, including ones where "digital privacy" companies are based (like Switzerland & Sweden). Curiously, when one thinks of Stasi-like surveillance, only countries like China come to mind. As such, you wouldn't use a Chinese email provider, but a Swiss one...?
All that said, the erosion of freedom is unfortunate, and voices like Bruce Scheiner's aren't impactful enough:
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them.
We can see all of these at their most extreme in the federal US gov, but to some degree have been growing since the late 90s/00s.
Something seems to have happened to "living democracy" perhaps after 9/11. The state became more totalitarian, reaching into all life on behalf of the "ideological threat" of "dangerous beliefs". Legislatures handed more-and-more emergency powers over in response; and overly broad non-emergency powers (eg., consider they handed carte blanch war-declaring powers to the president across the entire middle east, which have never been revoked). A series of crises, coupled with centralisation of power in the internet, created a totalised media and economic environment which reaches into all aspects of civil and corporate life. And new ultra wealthy tech monopolists have arisen to own this landscape. Civil life is totalised by social media, public life is totalised by the executive -- and these are now increasingly "of one space").
All these threads were, at each stage, profoundly opposed by classically-minded liberals; but very were popular in their time.
Unless a movement for "democratic renewal" begins soon, and can somehow reverse these major forces, at least the hardest hit countries may move into autocracy. Its very hard now for anyone to defend these conditions (those on the right who want a statism of order; or those on the left who want one of justice) -- they have all now clearly combined into a moment where balance-of-power liberal democracy has failed.
Which other modern presidents decided to just ignore due process for people in the US with legal status? Which ones blackmailed lots of law firms into many hundreds of millions of free legal services? Which one had a goon haphazardly and illegally gutting services? Which one illegally fired a big wave of IGs? Which one argued for the end of Federal Reserve independence? Which one suggests running for a third term repeatedly? Which one pardoned hundreds of insurrectionists?
These things make such headlines because they're incredibly radical and not heard of in modern times or ever in the US.
So this "across the pond" writer has obviously got its taste of free speech oppression from within their own UK soil (as evidenced by UK mass arrests for only spoken words or silent prayers) and is projecting onto the United States.
We still got crazy active "free speech by action" here in US; UK, not so much for even simple free speech.
So, I feel sorry for our UK friends, and we should feel sorry for them. /s
UK get what they voted for, oh wait.
I simply don't see it. Trump here and in other cases is going after specific figures that used to work for him or can be somehow stripped of access to government resources. It's shitty but not the same as a wider attack on free speech in the media and among the public.
All the opposite is widely the case, media of all kinds in the United States is voracious in throwing shit at Trump and his government. So far, (typical of this administration) several openly published, completely uncensored scandals have badly rocked the Trumpist boat and I don't see his government doing the least thing to censor or intimidate the publishers of very, very widespread news and opinion about said scandals.
The reporter at The Atlantic who was accidentally added to a secret cabinet-level group chat on Signal literally published the entire chat thread as part of his criticism of the new administration, mainly to showcase their mendacity in denying his claims. The bloback? It has been entirely aimed at the government's people. That reporter remains free, and publishing.
People who compare this government to seriously authoritarian regimes would do well to look at what quickly happens to reporters and others who rock the boat under genuine authoritarian repression.