Civil libertarians have sounded the alarm against big government’s surveillance state encroaching on freedom and privacy, but Social Justice Warriors only care about government spying because it might be racist.
In an op-ed written by Tech Crunch, contributor Angelique Carson claimed that government data collection on those using public assistance is a greater threat than the mass collection of data by the National Security Agency.
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Carson said she didn’t raise an eyebrow when she heard about Edward Snowden, the NSA, or Ashley Madison, however, at the idea that surveillance could be racist she lit up like a firework on the Fourth of July.
“I finally saw surveillance not as something mildly offensive to my own sense of civil liberties, but as a tool of institutional racism,” Carson wrote.
“Surveillance and power have long been closely linked to institutional racism, from slave owners branding their slaves so they couldn’t move freely and privately, to plantation owners building homes tall enough to surveil the entire plantation,” she continued. “Slavery may have been abolished, but now we see racism and oppression in a new power structure in which the powerful hold the data on the less powerful.”
As an example, Carson said pregnant women applying for Medicaid are required to answer questions that “white, privately insured women” would never be asked.
These women are asked whether they have missed prenatal care appointments, if their pregnancy was planned or accidental, if they’ve ever abused controlled substances, been domestically abused, or have been homeless.
At no point does Carson consider that some of these questions are asked for data inquiry, or to detail the possible health of the child. It also must have slipped the author’s mind that enrolling in Medicaid is optional, whereas being spied on by the NSA is not.
She is also infuriated that the government housing in Los Angeles is teaming up with the LAPD to install new security cameras to capture criminals, even using their government-subsidized phones to collect data.
Carson’s first mistake is comparing these examples of law enforcement to slavery. Generational poverty and government dependency are how poor blacks are enslaved by the system. No one can complain that the government is asking questions when people are using taxpayers services.
