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L'articolo Caso Sarajevo, l’ex 007 bosniaco: “Il Sismi
Al via la Cop 30 in Brasile. Lula: “Dobbiamo sconfiggere i negazionisti”
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L'articolo Al via la Cop 30 in Brasile. Lula: “Dobbiamo sconfiggere i negazionisti” su Lumsanews.
La nuova intesa di Avio che rafforza il legame tra Roma e Washington
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Nel momento in cui le catene di fornitura della difesa occidentale cercano nuovi equilibri, Avio decide di investire ulteriormente oltreoceano per rafforzare la propria posizione. L’azienda italiana, specializzata nella propulsione spaziale e missilistica, ha siglato due intese con
Public records show DHS is deploying the "Homeland Security Information Network" at college protests and football games.#FOIA
DHS Is Deploying a Powerful Surveillance Tool at College Football Games
A version of this article was previously published on FOIAball, a newsletter reporting on college football and public records. You can learn more about FOIAball and subscribe here.Last weekend, Charleston’s tiny private military academy, the Citadel, traveled to Ole Miss.
This game didn’t have quite the same cachet as the Rebels' Week 11 opponent this time last year, when a one-loss Georgia went to Oxford.
A showdown of ranked SEC opponents in early November 2024 had all eyes trained on Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
Including those of the surveillance state.
According to documents obtained by FOIAball, the Ole Miss-Georgia matchup was one of at least two games last year where the school used a little-known Department of Homeland Security information-sharing platform to keep a watchful eye on attendees.
The platform, called the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN), is a centralized hub for the myriad law enforcement agencies involved with security at big events.
CREDIT: Ole Miss/Georgia EAP, obtained by FOIAball
According to an Event Action Plan obtained by FOIAball, at least 11 different departments were on the ground at the Ole Miss-Georgia game, from Ole Miss campus police to a military rapid-response team.HSINs are generally depicted as a secure channel to facilitate communication between various entities.
In a video celebrating its 20th anniversary, a former HSIN employee hammered home that stance.“When our communities are connected, our country is indeed safer," they said.
In reality HSIN is an integral part of the vast surveillance arm of the U.S. government.
Left unchecked since 9/11, supercharged by technological innovation, HSIN can subject any crowd to almost constant monitoring, looping in live footage from CCTV cameras, from drones flying overhead, and from police body cams and cell phones.
HSIN has worked with private businesses to ensure access to cameras across cities; they collect, store, and mine vast amounts of personal data; and they have been used tofacilitate facial recognition searches from companies like Clearview AI.
It’s one of the least-reported surveillance networks in the country.
And it's been building this platform on the back of college football.
Since 9/11, HSINs have become a widely used tool.
A recentInspector General report found over 55,000 active accounts using HSIN, ranging from federal employees to local police agencies to nebulous international stakeholders.
The platforms host what’s called SBU, sensitive but unclassified information, including threat assessments culled from media monitoring.According to aprivacy impact study from 2006, HSIN was already maintaining a database of suspicious activities and mining those for patterns.
"The HSIN Database can be mined in a manner that identifies potential threats to the homeland or trends requiring further analysis,” it noted.
In anupdated memo from 2012 discussing whose personal information HSIN can collect and disseminate, the list includes the blanket, “individuals who may pose a threat to the United States.”
A 2023 DHS “Year in Review” found that HSIN averaged over 150,000 logins per month.Its Connect platform, which coordinates security and responses at major events, was utilized over 500 times a day.
HSIN operated at the Boston Marathon, Lollapalooza, the World Series, and the presidential primary debates. It has also been used at every Super Bowl for the last dozen years.
DHS is quick to tout the capabilities of HSINs in internal communications reviewed by FOIAball.
In doing so, it reveals the growth of its surveillance scope. In documents from 2018, DHS makes no mention of live video surveillance.
But a 2019annual review said that HSINs used private firms to help wrangle cameras at commercial businesses around Minneapolis, which hosted the Final Four that year.
“Public safety partners use HSIN Connect to share live video streams from stationary cameras as well as from mobile phones,” it said. “[HSIN communities such as] the Minneapolis Downtown Security Executive Group works with private sector firms to share live video from commercial businesses’ security cameras, providing a more comprehensive operating picture and greater situational awareness in the downtown area.”
And the platform has made its way to college campuses.
Records obtained by FOIAball show how pervasive this technology has become on college campuses, for everything from football games to pro-Palestinian protests.
In November 2023, students at Ohio State University held several protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. At one, over 100 protesters blocked the entrance to the school president’s office.
Areport that year from DHS revealed the protesters were being watched in real-time from a central command center.
Under the heading "Supporting Operation Excellence," DHS said the school used HSIN to surveil protesters, integrating the school’s closed-circuit cameras to live stream footage to HSIN Connect.
“Ohio State University has elevated campus security by integrating its closed-circuit camera system with HSIN Connect,” it said. “This collaboration creates a real-time Common Operating Picture for swift information sharing, enhancing OSU’s ability to monitor campus events and prioritize community safety.”
“HSIN Connect proved especially effective during on-campus protests, expanding OSU’s security capabilities,” the school’s director of emergency management told DHS. “HSIN Connect has opened new avenues for us in on-campus security.”
While it opened new avenues, the platform already had a well-established relationship with the school.
According to aninternal DHS newsletter from January 2016, HSIN was utilized at every single Buckeyes home game in 2015.
“HSIN was a go-to resource for game days throughout the 2015 season,” it said.
It highlighted that data was being passed along and analyzed by DHS officials.
The newsletter also revealed HSINs were at College Football Playoff games that year and have been in years since. There was no mention of video surveillance at Ohio State back in 2015. But in 2019, that capability was tested at Georgia Tech.
There, police used “HSIN Connect to share live video streams with public safety partners.”
A2019 internal newsletter quoted a Georgia Tech police officer about the use of real-time video surveillance on game days, both from stationary cameras and cell phones.
“The mobile app for HSIN Connect also allows officials to provide multiple, simultaneous live video streams back to our Operations Center across a secure platform,” the department said.
Ohio State told FOIAball that it no longer uses HSIN for events or incidents. However, it declined to answer questions about surveilling protesters or football games.
Ohio State’s records department said that it did not have any documents relating to the use of HSIN or sharing video feeds with DHS.
Georgia Tech’s records office told FOIAball that HSINs had not been used in years and claimed it was “only used as a tool to share screens internally." Its communications team did not respond to a request to clarify that comment.
Years later, DHS had eyes both on the ground and in the sky at college football.
According to the 2023 annual review, HSIN Connect operated during University of Central Florida home games that season. There, both security camera and drone detection system feeds were looped into the platform in real-time.
DHSsaid that the "success at UCF's football games hints at a broader application in emergency management.”HSIN has in recent years been hooked into facial recognition systems.
A 2024report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that the U.S. Marshals were granted access to HSIN, where they requested "indirect facial recognition searches through state and local entities" using Clearview AI.
Which brings us to the Egg Bowl—the annual rivalry game between Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
FOIAball learned about the presence of HSIN at Ole Miss through a records request to the city’s police department. It shared Event Action Plans for the Rebels’ games on Nov. 9, 2024 against Georgia and Nov. 30, 2024 against Mississippi State.
It’s unclear how these partnerships are forged.
In videos discussing HSIN, DHS officials have highlighted their outreach to law enforcement, talking about how they want agencies onboarded and trained on the platform. No schools mentioned in this article answered questions about how their relationship with DHS started.
The Event Action Plan provides a fascinating level of detail that shows what goes into security planning for a college football game, from operations meetings that start on Tuesday to safety debriefs the following Monday.
Its timeline of events discusses when Ole Miss’s Vaught-Hemingway Stadium is locked down and when security sweeps are conducted. Maps detail where students congregate beforehand and where security guards are posted during games.
The document includes contingency plans for extreme heat, lightning, active threats, and protesters. It also includes specific scripts for public service announcers to read in the event of any of those incidents.
It shows at least 11 different law enforcement agencies are on the ground on game days, from school cops to state police.
They even have the U.S. military on call. The 47th Civil Support Team, based out of Jackson Air National Guard Base, is ready to respond to a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack.All those agencies are steered via the document to the HSIN platform.
Under a section on communications, it lists the HSIN Sitroom, which is “Available to all partners and stakeholders via computer & cell phone.”
The document includes a link to an HSIN Connect page.
It uses Eli Manning as an example of how to log in.
“Ole Miss Emergency Management - Log in as a Guest and use a conventional naming convention such as: ‘Eli Manning - Athletics.’”
On the document, it notes that the HSIN hosts sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Threat Analysis Documents.“Access is granted on a need-to-know basis, users will need to be approved prior to entry into the SitRoom.”
“The general public and general University Community is not permitted to enter the online SitRoom,” it adds. “All SitRooms contain operationally sensitive information and PII, therefore access must be granted by the ‘Host’.”
It details what can be accessed in the HSIN, such as a chat window for relaying information.
It includes a section on Threat Analysis, which DHS says is conducted through large-scale media monitoring.
The document does not detail whether the HSIN used at Ole Miss has access to surveillance cameras across campus.
But that may not be something explicitly stated in documents such as these.
Like Ohio State, UCF told FOIAball that it had no memoranda of understanding or documentation about providing access to video feeds to HSINs, despite DHS acknowledging those streams were shared. Ole Miss’ records department also did not provide any documents on what campus cameras may have been shared with DHS.
While one might assume the feeds go dark after the game is over, there exists the very real possibility that by being tapped in once, DHS can easily access them again.
“I’m worried about mission creep,” Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told FOIAball. “These arrangements are made for very specific purposes. But they could become the apparatus of much greater state surveillance.”
For Ole Miss, its game against Georgia went off without any major incidents.
Well, save for one.
During the second quarter, asquirrel jumped onto the field, and play had to be stopped.In the EAP, there was no announcer script for handling a live animal interruption.
Scoop: Inside DHS's vast college football surveillance effort
Documents obtained by FOIAball reveal how the feds surveil SEC, Big Ten games.David Covucci (FOIAball)
Moving From Windows to FreeBSD as the Linux Chaos Alternative
Back in the innocent days of Windows 98 SE, I nearly switched to Linux on account of how satisfied I was with my Windows experience. This started with the Year of the Linux Desktop in 1999 that started with me purchasing a boxed copy of SuSE Linux and ended with me switching to Windows 2000. After this I continued tinkering with non-Windows OSes including QNX, BeOS, various BSDs, as well as Linux distributions that promised a ‘Windows-like’ desktop experience, such as Lindows.
Now that Windows 2000’s proud legacy has seen itself reduced to a rusting wreck resting on cinderblocks on Microsoft’s dying front lawn, the quiet discomfort that many Windows users have felt since Windows 7 was forcefully End-Of-Life-d has only increased. With it comes the uncomfortable notion that Windows as a viable desktop OS may be nearing its demise. Yet where to from here?
Although the recommendations from the peanut gallery seem to coalesce around Linux or Apple’s MacOS (formerly OS X), there are a few dissenting voices extolling the virtues of FreeBSD over both. There are definitely compelling reasons to pick FreeBSD over Linux, in addition to it being effectively MacOS’s cousin. Best of all is not having to deal with the Chaos Vortex that spawns whenever you dare to utter the question of ‘which Linux distro?’. Within the world of FreeBSD there is just FreeBSD, which makes for a remarkably coherent experience.
Ghosting The Subject
Although FreeBSD doesn’t have distributions the way that Linux does due to it being a singular codebase rather than a duct-taped patchwork, you do get a choice as far as difficulty settings go. You can always pick plain FreeBSD with its functional but barebones installer, which dumps you into a command line shell and expects you to jump through some hoops to set up things like a desktop environment. This is generally fine if you’re an advanced user, or just want to set up a headless server system.
In case you’re more into the ‘just add water’ level of a desktop OS installation process, the GhostBSD project provides the ready to go option for a zero fuss installation like you would see with Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux and kin. Although I have done the hard mode path previously with FreeBSD virtual machines, to save myself the time and bother I opted for the GhostBSD experience here.
For this experiment I have two older-but-quite-usable systems at my disposal: one is a 2013-era Ivy Bridge Intel-based gaming laptop that’s a rebranded Clevo W370ET, the other a late-2015 Skylake PC with a Core i7 6700K, GTX 980 Ti and 32 GB of DDR4. To give both the best chance possible I also installed a brand new SATA SSD in both systems to run the OS from.
Down To Bare Metal
GhostBSD offers two images: the official Mate desktop version and the community XFCE version. Since I have always had a soft spot for XFCE, that’s the version I went with. After fetching the image, I used Rufus to create a bootable USB stick and made sure that the target system was set to boot from USB media. First I wanted to focus on the laptop, but this is where I ran into the first issue when the installer froze on me.
After a few hours of trying various things, including trying a known good Manjaro Linux installer which flunked out with a complaint about the USB medium, I figured I might as well give a Windows 10 installer a shot for fun. This actually got me a useful error code: 0x8007025D. While it broadly indicates ‘something’ being wrong along the USB-RAM-HDD/SSD path, it led me to a post about USB 3.0 being a potential issue as it changed some things compared to USB 2.0. The solution? Use a USB 2.0 port instead, obviously.
Long story short, this sort of worked: the GhostBSD installer still froze up once it entered the graphical section, but the Manjaro installer was happy as a clam, so now that laptop runs Manjaro, I guess.
A subsequent attempt to boot the GhostBSD installer on the 6700K system went much better, even while daringly using a USB 3.0 port on the case. Before I knew it GhostBSD was purring along with the XFCE desktop sparkling along at 1080p.
I’m not sure what GhostBSD’s issue was with the laptop. It’s possible that it found the NVidia Optimus configuration disagreeable, but now I have two rather capable gaming systems to directly compare Linux and FreeBSD with. There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.
Gaming The System
Since any open source software of note that runs on Linux tends to have a native FreeBSD build, the experience here is rather same-ish. Where things can get interesting is with things related to the GPU, especially gaming. These days that of course means getting Steam and ideally the GoG Galaxy client running, which cracks open a pretty big can of proprietary worms.
Annoyingly, Valve has only released a Steam client for Windows, MacOS and Linux, with the latter even only officially supporting some versions of Ubuntu Linux. This is no real concern for Manjaro Linux, just with the disclaimer that if anything breaks, you’re SOL and better start praying that it’ll magically start working again.
Unfortunately, for FreeBSD the userland Linux ABI compatibility isn’t quite enough as the Steam DRM means that it goes far beyond basic binary compatibility.
The two available options here are to either try one’s chances with the linuxulator-steam-utils workarounds that tries to stuff the Linux client into a chroot, or to go Wine all the way with the Windows Steam client and add more Windows to your OSS.
Neither approach is ideal, but the main question is whether or not it allows you to play your games. After initially getting the Linux tools setup and ready to bootstrap Steam, I got thrown a curveball by the 32-bit Wine and dependencies not being available, leading to a corresponding issue thread on the GhostBSD forums. After Eric over at the GhostBSD project resolved the build issue for these dependencies, I thought that now I would be able to play some games, but I was initially sorely disappointed.
For some reason I was now getting a ‘permission denied’ error for the chdir command in the lsu-bootstrap script, so after some fruitless debugging I had to give up on this approach and went full Wine. I probably could have figured out what the problem here was, but considering the limitations of the LSU Steam approach and me just wanting to play games instead of debug-the-FOSS-project, it felt like time to move on.
Watery Wine
As it turns out, the low-fuss method to get Steam and GoG Galaxy working is via the the Mizutamari Wine GUI frontend. Simply install it with pkg install mizuma or via the package center, open it from the Games folder in the start menu, then select the desired application’s name and then the Install button. Within minutes I had both Steam and the ‘classic’ GoG Galaxy clients installed and running. The only glitch was that the current GoG Galaxy client didn’t want to work, but that might have been a temporary issue. Since I only ever use the GoG Galaxy 1.x client on Windows, this was fine for me.
After logging into both clients and escaping from Steam’s ‘Big Picture Mode’, I was able to install a few games and play them, which went completely smoothly, except for the elevator scene in Firewatch where I couldn’t look around using the mouse despite it working fine in the menu, but that game is notoriously buggy, so that’s a question mark on the exact cause. Between buggy games, Wine, and the OS, there definitely are sufficient parties to assign blame to.
Similarly, while the Steam client was a bit graphically glitchy with flickering on the Store page, and trying to access the Settings menu resulted in it restarting, I was able to install and play Windows games like Nightmare Kart, so that’s a win in my book. That said, I can’t say that I’m not jealous of just punching in sudo pacman -S steam on the Manjaro rig to get the Steam client up in a minute or so. Someone please convince Gabe to compile the Steam client for FreeBSD, and the CD Projekt folk to compile the Galaxy client for FreeBSD and Linux.
It should be noted here that although it is possible to use alternative frontends for GoG instead of its Galaxy client, you need it for things like cloud saves. Hence me choosing this path to get everything as close to on par with the Windows experience and feature set.
Next Steps
Aside from gaming, there are many possible qualifications for what might make a ‘Windows desktop replacement’. As far as FreeBSD goes, the primary annoyance is having to constantly lean on the Linux or Windows versions of software. This is also true for things like DaVinci Resolve for video editing, where since there’s no official FreeBSD version, you have to stuff the Linux version into a chroot once again to run it via the Linux compatibility layer.
Although following the requisite steps isn’t rocket science for advanced users, it would simply be nice if a native version existed and you could just install the package. Based on my own experiences porting a non-trivial application like the FFmpeg- and SDL-based NymphCast to FreeBSD – among other OSes – such porting isn’t complicated at all, assuming your code doesn’t insist on going around POSIX and doing pretty wild Linux-specific things.
Ranting on software development aside, for my next steps on my FreeBSD/GhostBSD journey I’ll likely be giving approaches like this running of Linux software on FreeBSD another shot, barring finding that native video editors work well enough for my purposes.
Feel free to sound off in the comments on how to improve my experiences so far, as well as warn me and others who are embarking on a similar BSD journey of certain pitfalls.
Through the Spyglass: Thanks for Nothing
Do you know your neighbors?
How familiar are you with the person who lives next door to or above you? Down the street or down the hall? Across the street and kitty-corner from where you live?
Did they grew up in the town or city you both live in? Did you? Did they serve? Did you? Are they a U.S. citizen? Are you?
Are you sure?
Is the qualification “I was born here”? What if your parents weren’t? Did you come here legally? Are you white enough? Are you the right kind of Christian?
What if you’re not Christian? What if you’re something non-Abrahamic at all? Let’s pretend you’re a Sikh.
In fact, let’s pretend you are Bhagat Singh Thind.
So who are you? You’re Bhagat Singh Thind, born October 3rd, 1892 near Amritsar, Punjab in what is today modern day India. You come to the United States around just 20 years old and, just five years later, you’re recruited by the U.S. Army to fight in the Great War, the War to End All Wars, or as it has sadly become known, World War I.
Recruited in July, honorably discharged by December. Thank you for serving your country.
A week before your discharge, you receive your certificate of U.S. citizenship while wearing your U.S. Army uniform. Except, three days before your discharge, the federal government catches wind of the news and revokes it. After all, you’re a “Hindoo” (you’re not; you’re a Sikh) and not a “white man”, so no citizenship for you.
Thanks for nothing.
So you try again. You move from Washington to Oregon and you apply for citizenship around five months later. The federal official that revoked your citizenship the first time goes to the Oregon judge and tries to sabotage your chances.
The judge, taking into account your arguments for citizenship and your military record, grants you citizenship for the second time. Thank you for serving your country.
Not satisfied, the Bureau of Naturalization, who this whole time has been seemingly out to get you and refusing to let this be a precedent, appealed to the higher courts until landing before the Supreme Court.
Their task was to answer these two questions:
“Is a high caste Hindu of full Indian blood, born at Amritsar, Punjab, India, a white person within the meaning of Section 2169, Revised Statutes?”
(Again, you are Sikh.)
&
“Does the act of February 5, 1917 (39 Stat. L. 875, Section 3) disqualify from naturalization as citizens those Hindus, now barred by that act, who had lawfully entered the United States prior to the passage of said act?”
They find the answer to the first question is “No”, making the second question moot. You’re not white, so you cannot be naturalized. The Bureau of Nationalization strips you for a second time in 1926.
Thanks for nothing.
It wouldn’t be until the mid 1930s when Congress passed into law that all WWI veterans would be granted citizenship, regardless of race. For a third time, you seek citizenship.
This time, you finally get it. It’s the real thing, the Bureau of Nationalization isn’t breathing down your neck, and you are finally a U.S. citizen. Thank you for serving your country.
This all happened roughly 100 years ago, but the question of “what is a citizen” remains at large and, as was before, at the whim of the State. Bhagat Singh Thind was finally granted citizenship not because of a reversal of the Supreme Court’s decision, but because of a law by Congress that honored WWI veterans. Not goodwill, but a just reward for military service.
So what is a citizen? Is it someone who shows they are willing to die and kill for their country? Is it someone who won the “born under the right circumstances” lottery that did nothing otherwise to “earn” their citizenship? Is a citizen someone who pays taxes and nothing else? Is it who the State decides is worthy? Are you always going to just agree with what the State says?
If you take a step back, you might realize “Does any of that really matter?”. Someone like Bhagat Singh Thind, who served in the U.S. Army, had to jump through countless hoops to received that illustrious seal of approval from Uncle Sam. But if he was living next door to you, and he served your country, and he was shopping in the same stores and sent his kids to the same school. Would you care about his legal status? Or would you see him as your neighbor?
Bhagat Singh Thind was finally granted that citizenship as a thank you for serving in the Army during WWI. Not every immigrant in this country can or will put their life on the line for the whims of the U.S. government. Hell, there are people born in this country that won’t do that. Your commitment to the state apparatus nationwide shouldn’t matter in a local setting.
How committed are you to your neighbors? To me, that is the truest sense of community and belonging. The local stuff, the stuff that impacts you, matters far more than national narratives.
The United States Pirate Party preaches to anyone seeking office to “run locally” because “it is where the impact will be felt the most”. Service to your neighbors and community, where you rest your head at night, is a cause we champion. Our ideals are applied nationwide, but felt most locally.
The USPP also believes in the free movement of all Americans, from Greenland to Patagonia. We don’t believe the imaginary lines drawn on a map should be inhibiting of the people who share this great American continent.
So when people speak of “illegal immigrants” living in communities across the United States, it strikes me as ridiculous. Uncle Sam said my neighbor is illegal? Why? Didn’t come here the right way? Didn’t get your permission to cross an imaginary line and enter society as essentially a lower caste laborer?
If you are upset by the state narratives of “illegal immigration”, I ask you: what about them coming here bothers you? It doesn’t flatter you that they left everything behind to start a new life where you call home? Is it the taxes? You feel like your hard earned money is being taken and they somehow have it easy?
First of all, these migrants are all almost certainly renting. So the landlord would be paying taxes… with their money.
Second, if they aren’t paying income tax, is that because they aren’t receiving a check, since tax is automatically deducted? If they’re being paid income cash, who is to blame? Are they to blame for taking it, or do you point the figure at the business owner who gave a job to them and decided to pay them under the table.
That job wasn’t stolen, and certainly not by the immigrant. Can the so-called “job creator” really ever allow the jobs they create and give out to be “stolen”? Or did they willingly pay someone cheaper instead of someone in a position to demand more.
Do not let the State turn you against your neighbors when they are trying to live like you. Do not allow Uncle Sam to cause you to fail to see the humanity of your neighbors.
Don’t be terrorized and made fearful. They are human; they bleed like you.
As of writing, the United States of America has decided to unleash masked terrorists onto the streets of cities across the U.S. in order to corral and correct what it calls an “illegal immigrant problem”. This organization is named “ICE”.
Before continuing, I must affirm something to you, dear reader. Merriam-Webster defines “terrorism” as “the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion”. Further, they define “terror” as “violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion”.
Now, dear reader, consider what ICE is doing. Simply ask: is ICE using violence or the threat of violence as a weapon of intimidation or coercion?
It was recently Halloween, and kids were unable to peacefully Trick-or-Treat in certain Chicagoland locations due to ICE harassment, including tear-gassing.
ICE, in their raids and targeting, has arrested “legal” citizens. They have arrested parents in front of their children. They have made arrests in South Shore, Chicago, in the middle of the night via a warrant-less raid and informed the residents they’d “only be released if they had no outstanding warrants”.
The State decides whether or not you’re upstanding and “worthy”. It doesn’t matter if you go through all the proper rigmarole or serve the country. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re white enough. The State is the final authority in the matter.
But you know better. You know your neighbors are good people just trying to make an honest living. You know the crime of “falsifying” is a common one. You’ve seen kids use fake addresses to get into better school districts. You’ve had friends of friends not change their ID, despite not living in a specific state full time and instead continuing to pay to that state. You know the system isn’t followed to a T by everybody.
You know, deep down, this entire thing is bullshit.
Uncle Sam is a fickle dude with some skeletons in his closet. These skeletons are, unfortunately, in the front yard. He can decide you’re unworthy of citizenship if he so chooses.
When Washington D.C. tells you from thousands of miles away to turn on your back on your neighbor because they’re “not a citizen”, I want you to remember that they are still your neighbor.
And to the volunteer officers of ICE: thanks for nothing.
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