The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to combine access to the sensitive and personal information of Americans into a single searchable system with the help of shady companies should terrify us – and should inspire us to fight back.

While couched in the benign language of eliminating government “data silos,” this plan runs roughshod over your privacy and security. It’s a throwback to the rightly mocked “Total Information Awareness” plans of the early 2000s that were, at least publicly, stopped after massive outcry from the public and from key members of Congress.

Under this order, ICE is trying to get access to the IRS and Medicaid records of millions of people, and is demanding data from local police. The administration is also making grabs for food stamp data from California and demanding voter registration data from at least nine states.

Much of the plan seems to rely on the data management firm Palantir, formerly based in Palo Alto. It’s telling that the Trump administration would entrust such a sensitive task to a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights.

Bad ideas for spending your taxpayer money never go away – they just hide for a few years and hope no one remembers. But we do. In the early 2000s, when the stated rationale was finding terrorists, the government proposed creating a single all-knowing interface into multiple databases and systems containing information about millions of people. Yet that plan was rightly abandoned after less than three years and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars, because of both privacy concerns and practical problems.

It certainly seems the Trump administration’s intention is to try once again to create a single, all-knowing way to access and use the personal information about everyone in America. Today, of course, the stated focus is on finding violent illegal immigrants and the plan initially only involves data about you held by the government, but the dystopian risks are the same.

Over fifty years ago, after the scandals surrounding Nixon’s “enemies list,” Watergate, and COINTELPRO, in which a President bent on staying in power misused government information to target his political enemies, Congress enacted laws to protect our data privacy. Those laws ensure that data about you collected for one purpose by the government can’t be misused for other purposes or disclosed to other government officials with an actual need. Also, they require the government to carefully secure the data it collects. While not perfect, these laws have served the twin goals of protecting our privacy and data security for many years.

Now the Trump regime is basically ignoring them, and this Congress is doing nothing to stand up for the laws it passed to protect us.

But many of us are pushing back. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where I’m executive director, we have sued over DOGE agents grabbing personal data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, filed an amicus brief in a suit challenging ICE’s grab for taxpayer data, and co-authored another amicus brief challenging ICE’s grab for Medicaid data. We’re not done and we’re not alone.

I think there's a reason the right keeps their base only as informed as they need them to be. Most of them have no clue what truth is anymore. It honestly takes a trusted person on the right saying something is going on to even make people start questioning things.

Like without Theo Von and Joe Rogan actually asking some questions about reality, I honestly think nobody on the right would have thought twice about Palestine and Epstein would have slipped back into the abyss like before.

I was told if I voted for a repeat of Genocide Joe's team then we would get genocide or something. This is much better!

If nobody wants to rally behind your rallying cry, maybe try joining some existing organizations that have similar strategy and tactics as you. But just be aware that sometimes meeting those folks requires being active in adjacent spaces. You might need to put in the work to really get plugged in and involved.

But there is a vast sea of resistance work happening between, on one end, peacefully waving cardboard signs at passing cars and, on the other side, armed revolution. I'll give you some examples:

• Meet with your local representatives and politicians and convince them to pass resolutions or legislation that put local roadblocks in the way of fascist incursions.
• Look up vendors that supply or provide services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices and contact their customers, encouraging them to drop their contracts due to those vendors working with ICE.
• Block entrances to ICE buildings to prevent kidnapped migrants from being transferred.
• Follow and harass ICE vehicles so as to screw up their operational security.
• Bang pots and pans outside hotels where ICE agents are known to be staying so that they can't get any sleep.
• Show up at immigration court cases in support of migrants.
• Post long screeds on social media encouraging folks not to give up the fight.

I've done some but not all of the above. You might consider doing the same.

I agree that the people who are just twiddling their thumbs waiting for midterms are misguided, but so are the people who have given up six months into this regime. What I think isn't misguided is trying to slow, delay, and generally gum up the works of everything this regime is trying to accomplish before the midterms. There are only so many months before then, so the more we can prevent them from damaging now, the better off we'll be if and when we take back control. (I fully realize the prospect of even having midterms isn't guaranteed, much less winning them.)

Yep. Those genocide protestors sure showed us, didn’t they?

I respect the protests. Bring on more protests. It's the whole not voting thing that I do no respect.

I really like your second bullet.

A couple of the others, my only hesitation is that I am a naturalized, non-white citizen so I do sometimes have to balance the progress my actions will yield with being disappeared from the equation entirely. Thoughts?

But just the blood infusion thing right? Pretty sure all the other stuff is true

150 is probably way too young in his opinion. He's moved on to transhumanism. He wants to live for eternity

I hope he ends up a brain in a jar and somebody stores him in the back of a closet under some old newspapers.

Yeah, I think right now it's probably smart to be cautious. I don't know your particular situation or risk tolerance, but I gotta believe that there's some type of resistance you'd be comfortable doing. I will say though that pretty much anything worth doing right now is going to be outside our comfort zone. And that applies to all of us.

But even if you feel like there's nothing you can do, you can support those who are in a better position to act.

As much of a prick as this guy is, I don't think that's true. The behind the bastards episode on him couldn't substantiate it at least

But both sides bad!

Nah, it's true.

Well, guess I can't deny such compelling evidence

More like "both sides don't care about the working class."

The lesser evil is still evil.

More like "both sides don't care about the working class."

The lesser evil is still evil.

Yep, when it comes to MAGAs, I'll offer them the same commitment to truth that they have. They are bad people to the core, so I don't have any problems believing the worst stories about them. I'm sure they are all totally true, and if they aren't, I don't care.