Surveillance -- This isn’t a new story
This isn’t a new story Nora, Free Press freepress.net From: info@freepress.net To: Mark M Giese Wed, Jul 1 2026 at 9:23 AM Mark, This Fourth of July, the country will mark 250 years of independence. But there’s a version of that history most people won’t hear this weekend — a history many were excluded from in the first place. In the 1700s, Black, mixed-race and Indigenous people in New York were required to carry lanterns if they walked after dark without a white person accompanying them. The stated reason was public safety. The actual reason was control. That was “surveillance” before the word existed. And the practice has only gotten worse. In the 1950s and ’60s, a series of FBI counterintelligence programs (known as COINTELPRO) targeted civil-rights leaders, feminist organizers, labor unions, Indigenous sovereignty movements, Black nationalists and Puerto Rican independence activists. These groups didn’t pose an actual threat to public safety. But they threatened the status q...
