State violence

Last updated April 02, 2024

State violence is the use of force, intimidation, or oppression by a government or ruling body against the citizens within the jurisdiction of said state. This can be seen in a variety of forms, including military violence, settler colonialism, surveillance, immigration law, and other tactics used to express authority over a certain group.^[1]^[2] State violence can happen through law enforcement or military force, as well as through other branches of government and bureaucracy. State violence is typically justified under the pretense of maintaining law and order, or protecting borders. State violence can include prolonged conditions imposed on individuals that are upheld, unaddressed, or furthered by the state. For example, structural violence that lead to Flint, Michigan having lead-contaminated water may be considered state violence.^[3] U.S immigration laws are an additional example of structural violence.

Immigration Policy

The effects of US immigration enforcement policies create difficulties for transnational families. The immigration policies also create a state of anxiety within immigrant communities.^[4] Individuals with familial ties and long-term residency in the US are forced to leave the country. Additionally, immigration policing policies are intended to capture criminals, yet they do not always target serious offenders. Many immigrants are arrested without warrants by local police, often due to status violations or minor traffic violations.^[4] Harm caused by immigration policies necessarily includes involvement of the state. The nature of the states involvement in structural violence is being critically evaluated.^[5]

Violence through Policy

The passing of the Patriot Act (2001) and the subsequent formation of the Department of Homeland Security expanded the definition (status) of individuals deemed worthy for detention.^[4] Policymakers enact laws that reduce individuals to a status.^{[ clarification needed ]} The fear of family separation due to legal status causes ongoing stress for undocumented people, regardless of how long they have lived with their families.^[6]

Judicial Violence and Policing

The involvement of the state in law enforcement is frequently linked to the perpetration of violent behaviors, both on a systemic and personal level.^[3] Instances of such behaviors can range from the application of police force by officers, to extended periods of pretrial detention, excessively long prison sentences, and insufficient care provided to those who are incarcerated. These concerns tend to have a greater impact on communities of color.^[3] The policies implemented by law enforcement agencies, and the resulting imprisonment, can have a significant impact on various aspects of one's life^[7]

Mass incarceration

The United States' high rate of imprisonment represents a form of structural violence that disproportionately affects black Americans. Approximately 33% of black men in the U.S. have felony convictions which leads to disenfranchisement from the voting process.^[7] The more someone interacts with law enforcement, jail, and prison, the more they tend to believe that their place in society is predetermined. The consequences of continued imprisonment for them and other members of their community shape their views on the social structure.^[7]

Excessive use of force

The issue of excessive police violence is being critically examined as a public health concern.^[8] The location where excessive police violence occurs plays a significant role in policing. Police officers tend to use excessive force more frequently in low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly inhabited by people of color. Several factors influence the use of force, including gender, social status, and actual or perceived involvement in criminal activity.^[8]

Settler Colonialism

Unlike colonialism, settler colonialism seeks to claim land that is already occupied by an indigenous group. Typically, settlers will establish settlements, displace the indigenous groups, and initiate governmental control over the region.^[9]^[10] During the 18th and 19th centuries, the United States advanced their settler colonial project with forced conversion, residential schools, and displacement of various indigenous communities.^[11] Residential schools, also referred to as boarding schools, were state funded and typically managed by churches. These schools took a central role in perpetrating state violence against the native population. While indigenous children were in these schools, they were discouraged from participating in their culture and were given Anglo names.^[11] The children were also subjected to abuse, exposed to illness, and isolated from their families. These practices were funded by the Indian Civilization Act Fund of March 3, 1819 and the Compulsory Indian Education Act approved by Congress in 1887.^[12]^[11]

Violence against indigenous women in the United States

Historically, native women's bodies have been destroyed to further the colonial project in the United States. Because of women's ability to reproduce, native women have been killed in an attempt to extinguish indigenous populations. This reproductive state violence is then continued into the 1970's when the state performed forced sterilizations on unknowing indigenous women.^[13]

State Surveillance

Government surveillance is a tool used by government agencies to protect citizens from potential attacks from terrorists, extremists, or dissidents. Surveillance methods can include monitoring phone calls, video surveillance, or tracking internet usage. Although surveillance was designed to protect national security, it has the potential to perpetuate state violence.^[14]

While surveilling as an action is not inherently violent, it can encroach upon citizens' civil liberties and right to privacy. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act; this Act allowed for an expansion of surveillance by the government and law enforcement. In 2008, U.S. Congress passed the FISA Amendment Act that gave government agencies, such as the NSA, unfettered access to private communications of foreigners.^[15] Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act allows for government agencies to collect information from private companies like AT&T, Google, and Facebook to target non- U.S. citizens. In some instances, this permission includes communications between a non-citizen and a U.S. citizen.^[16] The FBI has been known to use these databases to search for information on U.S. citizens in a process called “backdoor searches”.^[17] Although it is unclear who these searches have been used on, they could potentially be used to control populations, target activists, or profile minority groups. The misuse of surveillance to target civilians can amplify existing power imbalances and reinforce state violence.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court</span> U.S. federal court

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil.

Project MINARET was a domestic espionage project operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), which, after intercepting electronic communications that contained the names of predesignated US citizens, passed them to other government law enforcement and intelligence organizations. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Department of Defense. The project was a sister project to Project SHAMROCK.

Project SHAMROCK was the sister project to Project MINARET, an espionage exercise started in August 1945. Project MINARET involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data that entered or exited the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor, the National Security Agency (NSA), were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. NSA did the operational interception, and, if there was information that would be of interest to other intelligence agencies, the material was passed to them. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Department of Defense. No court authorized the operation and there were no warrants.

NSA warrantless surveillance — also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" — was the surveillance of persons within the United States, including U.S. citizens, during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001, the NSA was authorized to monitor, without obtaining a FISA warrant, phone calls, Internet activities, text messages and other forms of communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lays within the U.S.

The following is a section summary of the USA PATRIOT Act, Title II. The USA PATRIOT Act was passed by the United States Congress in 2001 as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures gave increased powers of surveillance to various government agencies and bodies. This title has 25 sections, with one of the sections containing a sunset clause which sets an expiration date, of 31 December 2005, for most of the title's provisions. On 22 December 2005, the sunset clause expiration date was extended to 3 February 2006.

Hepting v. AT&T, 439 F.Supp.2d 974, was a class action lawsuit argued before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of customers of the telecommunications company AT&T. The plaintiffs alleged that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring the personal communications of American citizens, including AT&T customers, whose communications were routed through AT&T's network.

Warrantless searches are searches and seizures conducted without court-issued search warrants.

The Protect America Act of 2007 (PAA),, is a controversial amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on August 5, 2007. It removed the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign intelligence targets "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 reauthorized many provisions of the Protect America Act in Title VII of FISA.

The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 was a United States law intended to create a "a program of vocational training" for Native Americans in the United States. Critics characterize the law as an attempt to encourage Native Americans to leave Indian reservations and their traditional lands, to assimilate into the general population in urban areas, and to weaken community and tribal ties. Critics also characterize the law as part of the Indian termination policy between 1940 and 1960, which terminated the tribal status of numerous groups and cut off previous assistance to tribal citizens. The Indian Relocation Act encouraged and forced Native Americans to move to cities for job opportunities. It also played a significant role in increasing the population of urban Native Americans in succeeding decades.

Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that Amnesty International USA and others lacked standing to challenge section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008.

PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD US-984XN. PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC and Apple under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. Among other things, the NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle.

The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.

The Fourth Amendment Protection Acts, are a collection of state legislation aimed at withdrawing state support for bulk data (metadata) collection and ban the use of warrant-less data in state courts. They are proposed nullification laws that, if enacted as law, would prohibit the state governments from co-operating with the National Security Agency, whose mass surveillance efforts are seen as unconstitutional by the proposals' proponents. Specific examples include the Kansas Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act and the Arizona Fourth Amendment Protection Act. The original proposals were made in 2013 and 2014 by legislators in the American states of Utah, Washington, Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and California. Some of the bills would require a warrant before information could be released, whereas others would forbid state universities from doing NSA research or hosting NSA recruiters, or prevent the provision of services such as water to NSA facilities.

The USA Freedom Act is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015, that restored and modified several provisions of the Patriot Act, which had expired the day before. The act imposes some new limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication metadata on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency. It also restores authorization for roving wiretaps and tracking lone wolf terrorists. The title of the act is a ten-letter backronym that stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015.

The FISA Improvements Act is a proposed act by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prompted by the disclosure of NSA surveillance by Edward Snowden, it would establish the surveillance program as legal, but impose some limitations on availability of the data. Opponents say the bill would codify warrantless access to many communications of American citizens for use by domestic law enforcement.

Proposed reforms of mass surveillance by the United States are a collection of diverse proposals offered in response to the Global surveillance disclosures of 2013.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama favored some levels of mass surveillance. He has received some widespread criticism from detractors as a result. Due to his support of certain government surveillance, some critics have said his support violated acceptable privacy rights, while others dispute or attempt to provide justification for the expansion of surveillance initiatives under his administration.

Data sovereignty is the idea that data are subject to the laws and governance structures of the nation where they are collected. The concept of data sovereignty is closely linked with data security, cloud computing, network sovereignty, and technological sovereignty. Unlike technological sovereignty, which is vaguely defined and can be used as an umbrella term in policymaking, data sovereignty is specifically concerned with questions surrounding the data itself. Data sovereignty as the idea that data is subject to the laws and governance structures within one nation is usually discussed in one of two ways: in relation to Indigenous groups and Indigenous autonomy from post-colonial states, or in relation to transnational data flow. The latter case is dealt with extensively in a new anthology. With the rise of cloud computing, many countries have passed various laws around the control and storage of data, which all reflect measures of data sovereignty. More than 100 countries have some sort of data sovereignty laws in place. With self-sovereign identity (SSI), the individual identity holders can fully create and control their credentials, although a nation can still issue a digital identity in that paradigm.

Settler colonialism in Canada is the continuation and the results of the colonization of the assets of the Indigenous peoples in Canada. As colonization progressed, the Indigenous peoples were subject to policies of forced assimilation and cultural genocide. The policies signed many of which were designed to both allowed stable houses. Governments in Canada in many cases ignored or chose to deny the aboriginal title of the First Nations. The traditional governance of many of the First Nations was replaced with government-imposed structures. Many of the Indigenous cultural practices were banned. First Nation's people status and rights were less than that of settlers. The impact of colonization on Canada can be seen in its culture, history, politics, laws, and legislatures.

References

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