#orwellian — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #orwellian, aggregated by home.social.
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Incarcerated for Life in #Trump’s War on the Left
#AutumnHill had already gone home when a #protest outside an #ICE facility turned violent. She was still sentenced to 50 years, over twice as long as any #Jan6 defendant
by MATTHEW COOLEY
August 12, 2026"The battering ram took down the door first. A column of steel bolted to the front of a tactical vehicle slammed through Autumn Hill’s front entryway. Then the windows shattered. FBI agents threw flash-bang grenades through the glass, their concussions rattling the house’s front rooms. Hill was in the shared office space, in a thin red dress, puttering around on her computer. She heard screams from the other rooms. Then, the buzzing of a drone, as the police flew a quadcopter in through the splintered doorframe. A voice from the drone shrieked out, telling the residents of the house to come out with their hands up. Hill was terrified. She edged out of the door and immediately stared down a wall of gun barrels, masked agents screaming orders, the drone screaming in the air behind her.
" 'I remember thinking, ‘If I don’t do exactly what I’m told for the next minute of my life I’m going to die right now,' Hill says.
Through its loudspeaker, the #drone called repeatedly for one name: '#BenjaminSong.' Song wasn’t in the house, and no one inside knew them by that name. To Hill and her chosen family — an eclectic mix of personalities who lived together in what they called the '#BigGayHouse' — Song was 'Champagne,' a #genderfluid, politically #radical #activist who had, the night before, led a group to a demonstration outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility near #PrairielandTX. The protest, on July 4, 2025, was loosely organized in a collection of local activism group chats, and attracted a few dozen attendees, all of whom had their own idea of what they wanted to accomplish. Many, like Hill, planned a '#NoiseDemo,' or a loud protest involving fireworks and loud chants, aimed at disrupting the guards’ routine and letting the detainees inside know that they had supporters outside the fence."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/eRg8I#WarOnTheLeft #USPol #Prairieland #DetentionCenters #Fascism #NSPM7 #PrairielandDefendants #Orwellian #SilencingDissent #CriminalizingDissent #Prairieland8 #CharacteristicsOfFascism
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#Trump Wants to Put You in a Massive, Secret Government Database
Agencies are reportedly pooling immigration data, Social Security numbers, and more into a central database. #FPF is suing to learn how deep it goes.
by Lauren Harper, March 17 2026
Excerpt: "The public has never seen the reports agencies submitted by OMB, despite their impact on our privacy. However, thanks to intrepid reporting and litigation, we do have glimpses of how this is starting to play out:
- The Central Intelligence Agency has been granted increased access to domestic law enforcement databases, further blurring the line between foreign intelligence and domestic policing.
- The so-called Department of Government Efficiency got direct access to Treasury Department payment systems, including Social Security numbers, names, and birthdays, according to a whistleblower.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement got access to Medicaid recipients’ data and banking information.
- The Transportation Security Administration is now sharing biometric passenger info with immigration enforcement, turning every airport check-in into a potential trap."But these incursions are only the tip of the iceberg.
"Reports indicate the administration’s goal for dismantling privacy protections is to build a centralized national database, which would allow the administration to create detailed reports on every American, potentially for political purposes, including retaliation, harassment, and imprisonment.
"At the same time this database is becoming a reality, the Department of Homeland Security is rapidly expanding its surveillance capabilities, and the administration is unleashing AI across federal systems to analyze the data points they are harvesting from our private lives.
"Perhaps worst of all, by 'eliminating information silos,' the administration is creating a single point of failure for the privacy of every American. A centralized database that compiles our most intimate information, from our health to our finances, doesn’t just make us vulnerable to government abuse; it creates a massive, singular target for hackers and foreign adversaries."
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/government-surveillance-centralized-database-privacy/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/4fObS#SilencingDissent #SurveillanceState #CriminalizingDissent #BigBrotherIsWatchingYou #Orwellian #FreedomOfThePressFoundation #USPol
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Federal Agents Are Intimidating #LegalObservers at Their Homes: “They Know Where You Live.”
#Immigration authorities in #Minnesota have identified legal observers by name and address, and in some cases showed up at their homes.
by Austin Campbell
March 5 2026, 5:53 a.m."Former Minnesota state Sen. #MattLittle was lawfully observing federal immigration agents in a Dakota County neighborhood last month when the drive took an unexpected turn.
"As he followed their vehicles, they led him down a rural road that grew increasingly familiar during the 20-minute drive. Soon, Little told #TheIntercept, he realized where the federal agents were headed: his house.
"When he approached his driveway, two SUVs were already waiting, Little said. Agents moved to block his car, claiming he had impeded their investigation and that local law enforcement would be called. No other officers came to his house, and Little was not cited or charged.
" 'The intent was clearly to intimidate us. It’s stressful. It’s a little bit scary. But at the same time,' Little said, 'I just think it’s really important to be out there and monitoring what they’re doing.'
"Interviews, sworn declarations, and video reviewed by The Intercept indicate that Little is not the only person subjected to this kind of #intimidation. Across the #TwinCities, immigration agents have identified legal observers by name and address, and, in some cases, led them back to their homes after they engaged in lawful monitoring of immigration activity. Legal observers say this pattern of behavior sends a clear and chilling message: The federal government knows who they are and where they live.
"These encounters are unfolding amid a rapid expansion of federal #surveillance capabilities.
"Immigration authorities have significantly expanded their use of mobile #biometric and surveillance tools in recent years. Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection, for example, can use the smartphone app #MobileFortify to photograph a person’s face or capture fingerprints in the field and compare them against federal biometric databases, according to a Department of Homeland Security inventory of artificial intelligence technologies."
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/05/ice-cbp-minnesota-surveillance-intimidation-observers/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/MggRo#AbolishCBP #AbolishICE #ICESucks #Palantir #AISucks #PoliceState #USPol #Orwellian #SilencingDissent #SurveillanceState
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#Google Fulfilled #ICE Subpoena Demanding #StudentJournalist’s #Bank and #CreditCard Numbers
#AmandlaThomasJohnson didn’t know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena until months later. Google never gave him a chance to fight it.
Jessica Washington. February 10 2026
Excerpt: "Amandla Thomas-Johnson had attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel at a #CornellUniversity job fair in 2024 for all of five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. When President Donald Trump assumed office and issued a series of executive orders targeting students who protested in support of #Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding."Google informed Thomas-Johnson via a brief email in April that it had already shared his metadata with the Department of Homeland Security, as The Intercept previously reported. But the full extent of the information the agency sought — including usernames, addresses, itemized list of services, including any IP masking services, telephone or instrument numbers, subscriber numbers or identities, and credit card and bank account numbers — was not previously known.
" 'I’d already seen the subpoena request that Google and Meta had sent to Momodou [Taal], and I knew that he had gotten in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer successfully challenged that,' Thomas-Johnson said. 'I was quite surprised to see that I didn’t have that opportunity.'
"The subpoena provides no justification for why ICE is asking for this information, except that it’s required 'in connection with an investigation or inquiry relating to the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.' In the subpoena, ICE requests that Google not 'disclose the existence of this summons for indefinite period of time.'
Thomas-Johnson, who is British, believes that ICE requested that information to track and eventually detain him — but he had already fled to Geneva, Switzerland, and is now in Dakar, Senegal."The #ElectronicFrontierFoundation, which is representing Thomas-Johnson, and the #ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to Google, #Amazon, #Apple, #Discord, #Meta, #Microsoft, and #Reddit last week calling on tech companies to resist similar subpoenas in the future from #DHS without court intervention. The letter asks the companies to provide users with as much notice as possible before complying with a subpoena to give them the opportunity to fight it, and to resist gag orders that would prevent the #TechCompanies from informing targets that a subpoena was issued.
" 'Your promises to protect the privacy of users are being tested right now. As part of the federal government’s unprecedented campaign to target critics of its conduct and policies, agencies like DHS have repeatedly demanded access to the identities and information of people on your services,' the letter reads.
" 'Based on our own contact with targeted users, we are deeply concerned your companies are failing to challenge unlawful surveillance and defend user privacy and speech.' "
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/02/10/google-ice-subpoena-student-journalist/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/zEa6d
#ResistICE #ResistFascism #USPol #Authoritarianism #Fascism #ICEOut #DefundICE #Orwellian #BigBrother #NineteenEightyFour #FreePalestine #FreeGaza #SilencingDissent #SilencingFreeSpeech #DepartmentOfHomelandInsecurity