New York State will ramp up its “surveillance efforts,” monitoring citizens online for what they might call “hate.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that the state was doing this in response to rising antisemitism due to the conflict in Israel. Hochul says that the state will enhance the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force personnel and spend an extra $2.5 million via the State Police to monitor users online.
Hochul has tried this before. In 2022, she tried to increase online surveillance after a mass shooting in New York. A judge ruledthat her law was a First Amendment violation. Will this latest emergency give the state the powers over the internet that it has been long seeking?
This quote comes to mind about emergency government powers by Herbert Hoover: “Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of ‘emergency.’ It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And ‘emergency’ became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains.”
Are you going to stand for this, New York?
