EFF: Watching the Black Body
Watching the Black Body [This is a guest post authored by Malkia Cyril , executive director of the Center for Media Justice. It was originally published in The End of Trust (McSweeney’s 54)] In December 2017, FBI agents forced Rakem Balogun and his fifteen-year-old son out of their Dallas home. They arrested Balogun on charges of illegal firearms possession and seized a book called Negroes with Guns. After being denied bail and spending five months in prison, Balogun was released with all charges dropped. A reemergence of civil rights–era surveillance strategies is endangering Black activists as tech companies profit. To his shock, Balogun later discovered that the FBI had been monitoring him for years. He also discovered that he had been arrested that day for one specific reason: he had posted a Facebook update that criticized police. Balogun is considered by some to be the first individual prosecuted under a secretive government program that tracks so-called “Black Iden...