Your FBI: Every Day, All Day Long

You’ve perhaps seen this story:

FBI agents question woman over anti-Israel Facebook posts in viral video

'So we no longer live in a free country, and we can't say what we want?' Rolla Abdeljawad asked

Let’s be clear up front. The First Amendment doesn’t mean we get to say anything we want, any time, any place. Crowded theaters, and all that. Incitement to violence.

Still, the idea that the FBI, “every day, all day long,” is quizzing people about their social media posts? It does seem somehow un-American, doesn’t it?

What exactly happened?

FBI agents allegedly told an Oklahoma woman that the agency spends "every day, all day long" questioning people about their social media posts when they arrived at her house to ask about posts she made online.

Rolla Abdeljawad, of Stillwater, claims she was told by FBI agents who showed up at her home on Wednesday that Facebook had handed over screenshots of her posts. …

"Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent wearing a gray shirt was heard saying in the video.

This is after my time. My assumption is that Facebook runs some sort of search algorithm to sort out speech that they regard as a problem. I further assume that actual persons sort through this stuff before forwarding it to the FBI. At the FBI real people evaluate it before deciding to either ignore it or to assign agents to go out and talk to the authors. Under what authority? I’m not sure, but my guess is that, unless there’s a clear death threat or something of the sort, this is probably done as a Threat Assessment:

• The NSI Guidelines authorize three levels for the FBI's investigation of threats to the national security: threat assessments, preliminary investigations, and full investigations.

• Threat assessments. This level of investigative activity was not listed by the previous version of the Guidelines. The purpose of adding this level is early intervention and prevention of terrorist attacks. It allows the FBI proactively to use available information to identify terrorist threats and activities, with an eye towards preventing terrorism before it happens rather than waiting for leads to come in through the actions of others. Threat assessments also can be used when the FBI receives information or an allegation about possible terrorist activity, and the matter can be checked out promptly through relatively non intrusive techniques without opening a formal preliminary or full investigation.

• With the addition of the threat assessment level of investigative activity, the NSI Guidelines are similar to the revised general guidelines for FBI criminal investigations. The two levels of more formal investigative activity ("preliminary" and "full") also exist in both the NSI guidelines and the general guidelines for FBI criminal investigations.

So what caught the attention of the FBI in this case?

Abdeljawad replied, "So we no longer live in a free country, and we can't say what we want?"

"No, we totally do," another agent wearing a red shirt said. "That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything. We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will."

The woman then said, "All I've done is exercise my right as an American citizen on a public social media platform with my personal opinions."

It is unclear which posts caught the attention of the FBI, but Abdeljawad has made a series of posts in the past week expressing frustration about the ongoing war in Gaza between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists, including referring to Israel as "Israhell."

"Israhelli terrorist filth," she said in one post. "They think Ramadan is a weakness for Muslims not, realizing Ramadan is the strength. #FreePalestine May Allah destroy every single despicable zionist, their supporters and backers. Ameen."

Question number one: Since when was it the duty of the FBI to “make sure nobody has any ill will"? Anyone else see some problems with that concept?

But put that aside. How about this—is it a death threat?

“May Allah destroy every single despicable zionist, their supporters and backers. Ameen."

I don’t actually think so. And I can say that I have personally received communications expressing the wish that a more earthly organization than “Allah”—the Israeli Occupation Force—would destroy not merely all Hamas but all Palestinians—root and branch, men, women, and children. Full disclosure: I haven’t forwarded any of that stuff to the FBI. When it appears in comments or emails I delete it and ban the authors. No doubt Abdeljawad would also take issue with Fox’s characterization: “Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists.” My guess is that she regards the Israelis as the true terrorists. She does refer to Israelis as “terrorists” and, after all, the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel is engaged in probable genocide, so she has real arguments on her side. She’s not just venting without any basis. As a practical matter, I wouldn’t necessarily count on the responding agents being aware of the ICJ ruling. Be that as it may, it all seems to me like fair, if heated, commentary.

The whole issue seems to come down to the usual one in such cases. Who writes the algorithms? What is the basis for targeting some speech over other speech? Is there anything prejudiced or invidious in the targeting process? Does political pressure enter at any point into the policy formulation that lies behind the decisions we’re seeing every day, all day long? Is it part of a policy to intimidate certain demographics, or to chill them in the exercise of free speech? Where do we draw a line?

This is one more example of many we’ve seen for quite a few years of government policies that take on lives of their own. As a practical matter, and this is what’s so problematic in all this, it’s only action by the federal courts that serves as a check on government overreach in First Amendment matters. And we all know how long any court action will take, especially if the government pushes back.

Court action—or elections.