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Based on the widely unpopular British “anti-terror” mass surveillance program, the FBI’s "Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools" guidelines, released in January, are almost certainly designed to single out and target Muslim-American communities, Sputnik News reported on Saturday.
However, in its caution to avoid the appearance of discrimination, the agency identifies risk factors that are so broad and vague that virtually any young person could be deemed dangerous and worthy of surveillance, especially if she is socio-economically marginalized or politically outspoken.
This overwhelming threat is then used to justify a massive surveillance apparatus, wherein educators and pupils function as extensions of the FBI by watching and informing on each other.
The FBI’s justification for such surveillance is based on McCarthy-era theories of radicalization, in which authorities monitor thoughts and behaviors that they claim to lead to acts of violent subversion, even if those people being watched have not committed any wrongdoing. This model has been widely discredited as a violence prevention method, including by the US government, but it is now being imported to schools nationwide as official federal policy.
The vast surveillance has angered Muslim activists in the United States and some of them are planning to hit back with lawsuits.
Anti-Islam rhetoric has also hit the US presidential election of 2016, with GOP candidate Donald Trump creating a furor in the country and around the world by proposing a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims" entering the US.
The billionaire real-estate mogul also called for a database to track Muslims across the United States, and said the US would have "absolutely no choice" but to close down mosques.
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