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Notes -
Tulsi Gabbard, a former US congresswoman and presidential candidate, revealed that she and her husband were placed on a terror watch list and followed by government agents under the "Quiet Skies" program, almost completely uncovered in US media:
https://www.racket.news/p/american-stasi-tulsi-gabbard-confirms
I just read that story, too; since mods are asking for context, let me help out with that.
"Quiet skies" is a TSA program that's basically the kinder, gentler version of the Bush-era no-fly list. Instead of outright stopping suspected terrorists from getting on airplanes, now they send plainclothes air marshals to ride along and keep an eye on things, possibly with the aid of bomb-sniffing dogs, keeping all of this hidden from the suspect and other passengers. Here is a post from the official TSA blog from 2018 explaining it, and comparing it to the practice of having police officers hang around crime hotspots to cool things down: https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2018/08/22/facts-about-quiet-skies
Recently, some employees of this program have come forward with claims that Trump supporters, including but not limited to Tulsi Gabbard, were put on this list and monitored whenever they flew, for political reasons. This has not yet been reported in any mainstream publication as far as I can tell; all the Google results I got were from small-time independent sources and Twitter posts. It's also unclear exactly what criteria were used - it seems the list also included individuals who went to Washington on Jan 6 but were never charged with any crime.
I’m not sure what the point of that would be.
Like, if the point is to spy on Gabbard, you know she’s probably not jumping out of the plane, and you know where it’s going to land. You don’t need someone physically present to keep tabs on her location. And she’s probably not personally hijacking a plane.
Because the way things are might not be the way things stay. Sure, all being on that list now means is that an air marshal tails her as she flies. In the future that might escalate. Maybe it will be supplied as evidence to a FISA court to spy on all her private correspondence, which they then use to dig for further process crimes, for her, or people around her.
Maybe they assign a politically motivated air marshal to her that claims to see some shit that may in fact have never happened.
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