The ‘Surveillance State’ creep

Like millions of Americans, Rolla Abdeljawad of Stillwater, Oklahoma, gets a lot of stuff off her chest via Facebook. She posts memes, quotes scripture and spouts her own personal opinion about the world as we know it.

No problem, it’s America, right?

Au contraire, my friends. It is apparently a big problem. And, there’s video to prove it. Here’s what happened. 

Ms. Abdeljawad last month responded to an unannounced knock at her front door. It was plain clothes FBI agents who wanted to talk to her about her Facebook posts. The agents said they had been given screenshots of some of her posts and wanted to talk to her.

As the former state-level director on American-Islamic Relations, Ms. Abdeljawad is a bit more versed on her rights than the average person. First, she had the visit videotaped. Then, she asked to see the FBI agent’s badges. The agents refused. (She later confirmed through Stillwater cops that they were, in fact, FBI agents.) 

She then said, “So we no longer live in a free country and we can’t say what we want?” 

The agent replied: “No, we totally do. That’s why we’re not here to arrest you or anything.” 

A second agent adds, “We do this every day, all day long. It’s just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will.”

Ms. Abdeljawad gave the video to her lawyer. He posted it. I can confirm that the encounter described above is pretty much what the video shows. 

She later posted this: “Don’t fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up. If you’re Muslim and/or pro-pal consider all your media accounts, Google searches, mail, messenger, local mosques & political events monitored. #NYC #usa #PoliceState #FreePalestine”. 

Ms. Abdeljawad’s encounter with the FBI over social media posts is hitting the mainstream media as you read this. Reason Magazine reached out to the FBI’s Oklahoma office for comments. After publication, Kayla McCleery, a spokesman for the office said this:

“Every day, the FBI engages with members of the public in furtherance of our mission, which is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. We can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity. The FBI is committed to ensuring our activities are conducted with a valid law enforcement or national security purpose, while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

I took a look at Ms. Abdeljawad’s Facebook page, which is public. She makes strident comments like this:

“Israhell is built on the depraved supremacist ideology known as zionism. Like nazism, zionism MUST be extinguished for the good of mankind.” Or this: “Free Palestine from the river to the sea. Dismantle the apartheid occupation & get the foreign psychotic tribal supremacist thieving squatters out.”

She’s got her views, obviously. She makes her point with some hyperbole. But there’s nothing on her page that I could see that calls for specific violence. And, therein lies the rub. 

The FBI “doorstepping” a Facebook poster and saying we’re not going to arrest you but “we do this every day, all day long,” scares the hell out of me. I have a lot of friends on various social media platforms. I’ve seen them post or share some startling stuff. Are they under surveillance? Am I under surveillance?

This Stillwater case has garnered no comment beyond the local FBI office, as I write this. It needs to be addressed in the halls of Congress. Hell, it needs to be addressed by the president, if you ask me (which the Biden Administration never does). 

What are we doing, exactly? What are the rules? What’s the difference between an “investigation” and what these guys did to Ms. Abdeljawad? Is there now a record of Ms. Abdeljawad in an FBI database? And, why the hell wouldn’t these agents display their badges?

Look, we’re on a bad path with this kind of tactic. Everything about that video stinks of a ‘Surveillance state’ ready to pounce. Don’t for a second think the danger is only to the Muslim community. Any community of interest could just as easily be next, be it abortion (either side), MAGA, Black power, the Second Amendment, fundamental Christianity, climate change or gender identification. 

The Great American Experiment is that our rights derive from the sovereignty of the individual rather than a king or the ruling elite. Freedom of expression is key to achieving the blessings of Liberty in this attempt at a more perfect union. 

We gotta stop and think about what happened in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Dig up the video and look for yourself. 

We’re on the edge of something very bad.

ONE MORE THING 

— My wife is using the word “mansplaining” incorrectly and I don’t know what to do about it. 

(Sherman R. Frederick is a member of the Nevada Press Association’s Hall of Fame. His work can be found here:  https://shermanfrederick.substack.com/.)