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A Department of Homeland Security unit eliminated policies prohibiting personnel from conducting intelligence activities based solely on a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis posted an updated policy manual late last week that removes references to those characteristics in sections that set guardrails on gathering intelligence.

The revisions follow President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 directive to scrap policies and protections focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion across federal agencies.

  • Voroxpete
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    3 days ago

    Anyone trying to pretend this government isn’t pulling straight up Nazi shit has no excuse anymore.

    There is absolutely no justification for this, unless your long term plan is attacking people just for being trans, or queer. This is the precursor to the precursor to concentration camps. Whether or not it ever gets to concentration camps, it simply has no other conceivable long term goal.

    This is a fascist administration. They have made their goals absolutely clear and they will do whatever it takes to get there.

    • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      Yea they will go after LGBTQ folks first but everyone has an orientation and an identity so pretty much anyone can be subject to surveillance without any real cause or justification.

  • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Ya that’s right! Let’s have the Department of Homeland Security focusing on what’s in someone’s pants and not, you know. HOMELAND FUCKING SECURITY!?

    But in all seriousness. Why does that department even exists? I’m sure their work is covered by the FBI and CIA just fine.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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      3 days ago

      Why does that department even exists?

      9/11, fear, turrists, freedom fries, 'murica. Things in the early 2000s got weird.

      I am deeply sorry to gen-z and younger. They will never know what the US was like before the stupid times. For them, this is normal.

      • rigatti@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I’m squarely millenial and I don’t even really know what it was like before the stupid times.

        • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 days ago

          Imgaine if not everything and everywhere was 100% focused on tracking where you go who you talk to and what you do.

          Like that. But with lo-res games.

        • themadcodger@kbin.earth
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          3 days ago

          I walked into Canada without any ID. Boarder guards asked “You American?” I answered yup and they waved me through.

        • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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          3 days ago

          From a Canadian perspective:

          As a child (not even a teen), my friend and I would travel to the US alone, on a bus, with only our birth certificates and some hockey cards. We would walk to the arena and wait around to try to get autographs.

          As a teen/20’s we would pile in a car, drive across the border to bars or see concerts or afterhours clubs.

          There used to be 20,000 american kids every weekend coming across here because the drinking age is 19 vs 21 over there.

          Also, selfies and cellphones didn’t exist yet.

    • dualphasesaber@lemmy.world
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      In the wake of 9/11 it reported that the FBI/CIA/NSA all some information about the attacks before they happened, but no single one of them had enough of it to figure out what exactly was going to happen and when, and had no dedicated channels for coordinating on that sort of thing.

      DHS was then (theoretically) created to solve that problem.

      • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Sounds to me like poor leadership and communication from other departments. Creating a whole new department when emails, phone calls, meetings, and generally giving a shit would solve the problem is waste we can do something about.

        • dualphasesaber@lemmy.world
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          At the scale those agencies operate at that sort of coordination requires a level of bureaucracy, especially when you consider that we’re talking about intelligence agencies who are often, by the very nature of their jobs, looking at vague incomplete pictures of things.

          We’re not talking about 3 or 4 agencies here, we’re talking more like 25 so without some sort of centralized department even knowing who you may need to email about any one thing is easier said than done. (And that’s keeping in mind that with just a small bit of a picture that the thing you want to talk to someone about could be nothing.)

          That’s not to say that there’s no bloat in the US intelligence apparatus, but your comment feels like a wild oversimplification of the problem the agency was intended to address

          • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            If our intelligence agencies are too bloated to even communicate or form a joint task force to resolve basic issues like sharing information than the last thing we need is another agency/department. Yes it’s very complex but not on this issue. It’s there anything the DHS is doing that is unique or not already covered by another department?

      • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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        Well, those kill lists aren’t going to populate themselves, you know. Also, the creation of a permanent underclass is paramount to keeping the regular plebs in line in an authoritarian hellhole.