“It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat. The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all ‘doing something wrong’: political activity that threatened the prevailing order. The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as ‘national security threats’ or even ‘terrorists’ has repeatedly proven irresistible.”
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