Motherboard reports that according to scientific research, official government documents and patent filings, the U.S. government is moving toward monitoring social media in a way to preempt anti-government protests. Pointing to Pentagon efforts to fund big data research into social media surveillance and Army-funded research on domestic civil unrest, the article reports that the amplified attention on U.S. social media surveillance happens alongside the Trump administration’s augmentation of the Pentagon’s role in homeland security, particularly as the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an updated doctrine on homeland defense earlier this year. St. Martin’s University Professor of Sociology and Anthropology David Price said, “shifts in homeland defense doctrine increasingly create possibilities for military and civilian intelligence agencies to engage in political surveillance and harassment,” adding that in the current administration, the concern lies in what the president may consider an “‘insurrection’ worth of massive military surveillance.”
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