Resistance Works: How Small Groups Took on Great Powers

by David Vine and Tom Engelhardt | Jun 26, 2025 |

Originally published at TomDispatch.

At a time when many may feel that good news has gone the way of the dodo, look no further than the homeland of that long-extinct bird – Mauritius – for a dose of encouragement. There, among the islands of the Indian Ocean, news can be found about the power of resistance and the ability of small groups of people to band together to overcome the powerful.

Amid ongoing slaughter from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan and the Congo, the news also offers a victory for resolving conflicts through diplomacy rather than force. It’s a victory for decolonization and international law. And it’s a victory for Africa, the African diaspora, and indigenous and other displaced peoples who simply want to go home. To the shock of many, President Donald Trump actually played a role in making such good news possible by bucking far-right allies in the United States and Britain.

The news came in late May when the British government signed a historic treaty with Mauritius giving up Britain’s last African colony, the Chagos Islands, and allow the exiled Chagossian people to return home to all but one of them. The British also promised to pay an estimated £3.4 billion over 99 years in exchange for continuing control over one island, the largest, Diego Garcia. Though few in the U.S. even know that it exists, the Chagos Archipelago, located in the center of the Indian Ocean, is also home to a major U.S. military base on Diego Garcia that has played a key role in virtually every U.S. war and military operation in the Middle East since the 1970s.

Diego Garcia is one of the most powerful installations in a network of more than 750 U.S. military bases around the world that have helped control foreign lands in a largely unnoticed fashion since World War II. Far more secretive than the Guantánamo Bay naval base, Diego Garcia has been, with rare exceptions, off limits to anyone but U.S. and British military personnel since that base was created in 1971. Until recently, that ban also applied to the other Chagos Islands from which the indigenous Chagossian people were exiled during the base’s creation in what Human Rights Watch has called a “crime against humanity.”

While the victories the Chagossians, a group numbering less than 8,000, finally achieved last month are anything but perfect, they wouldn’t have happened without a more than half-century-long struggle for justice. A real-life David and Goliath story, it demonstrates the ability of small but dedicated groups to overcome the most powerful governments on Earth.

A History of Resistance

The story begins around the time of the American Revolution when the ancestors of today’s Chagossians first began settling on Diego Garcia and the other uninhabited Chagos islands. Enslaved at the time, they were brought from Africa, along with indentured laborers from India, by French businessmen from Mauritius who used the workers to build coconut plantations there.

Over time, the population grew, gaining its emancipation, while a new society emerged. First known as the Ilois (the Islanders), they developed their own traditions, history, and Chagossian Kreol language. Although their islands were dominated by plantations, the Chagossians enjoyed a generally secure life, thanks in part to their often militant demands for better working conditions. Over time, they came to enjoy universal employment, free basic health care and education, regular vacations, housing, burial benefits, and a workday they could control, while living on gorgeous tropical islands.

“Life there paid little money, a very little,” one of the longtime leaders of the Chagossian struggle, Rita Bancoult, told me before her death in 2016, “but it was the sweet life.”

“The Footprint of Freedom”

Chagos remained a little-known part of the British Empire from the early nineteenth century when Great Britain seized the archipelago from France until the 1950s when Washington grew interested in the islands as possible military bases.

Amidst Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and accelerating decolonization globally, U.S. officials worried about being evicted from bases in former European colonies then gaining their independence. Securing rights to build new military installations on strategically located islands became one solution to that perceived problem. Which is what led Stuart Barber, a U.S. Navy planner, to find what he called “that beautiful atoll of Diego Garcia, right in the middle of the ocean.” He and other officials loved Diego Garcia because it was within striking distance of a vast region, from southern Africa and the Middle East to South and Southeast Asia, while also possessing a protected lagoon capable of handling the largest naval vessels and a major air base.

In 1960, U.S. officials began secret negotiations with their British counterparts. By 1965, they had convinced the British to violate international law by separating the Chagos Islands from the rest of its colony of Mauritius to create the “British Indian Ocean Territory.” No matter that U.N. decolonization rules then prohibited colonial powers from chopping up colonies when, like Mauritius, they were gaining their independence. Britain’s last created colony would have one purpose: hosting military bases. U.S. negotiators insisted Chagos come under their “exclusive control (without local inhabitants)” – an expulsion order embedded in a parenthetical phrase.

U.S. and British officials sealed their deal with a 1966 agreement in which Washington would secretly transfer $14 million to the British government in exchange for basing rights on Diego Garcia. The British agreed to do the dirty work of getting rid of the Chagossians.

First, they prevented any Chagossians who had left on vacation or for medical treatment from returning home. Next, they cut off food and medical supplies to the islands. Finally, they deported the remaining Chagossians 1,200 miles to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the western Indian Ocean.

Both governments acknowledged that the expulsions were illegal. Both agreed to “maintain the fiction” that the Chagossians were “migrant laborers,” not a people whose ancestors had lived and died there for generations. In a secret cable, a British official called them “Tarzans” and, in a no less racist reference to Robinson Crusoe, “Man Fridays.”

In 1971, as the U.S. Navy started base construction on Diego Garcia, British officials and American sailors rounded up people’s pet dogs, lured them into sealed sheds, and gassed them with the exhaust from Navy vehicles before burning their carcasses. Chagossians watched in horror. Most were then deported in the holds of overcrowded cargo ships carrying dried coconut, horses, and guano (bird shit). Chagossians have compared the conditions to those found on slave ships.

In exile, they effectively received no resettlement assistance. When the Washington Post finally broke the story in 1975, a journalist found Chagossians living in “abject poverty” in the slums of Mauritius. By the 1980s, the base on Diego Garcia would be a multibillion-dollar installation. The U.S. military dubbed it the “Footprint of Freedom.”

An Epic Struggle

The Chagossians have long demanded both the right to go home and compensation for the theft of their homeland. Led mostly by a group of fiercely committed women, they protested, petitioned, held hunger strikes, resisted riot police, went to jail, approached the U.N., filed lawsuits, and pursued nearly every strategy imaginable to convince the U.S. and British governments to let them return.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chagossian protests in Mauritius won them small amounts of compensation from the British government (valued at around $6,000 per adult). Many used the money to pay off significant debts incurred since their arrival. Chagossians in the Seychelles, however, received nothing.

Still, their desire to return to the land of their ancestors remained, and hope was rekindled when the Chagos Refugees Group sued the British government in 1997, led by Rita Bancoult’s son, Olivier. To the surprise of many, they won. Over several tumultuous years, British judges ruled their expulsion illegal three times – only to have Britain’s highest court repeatedly rule in favor of the government by a single vote. Judges in the U.S. similarly rejected a suit, deferring to the president’s power to make foreign policy. The European Court of Human Rights also ruled against them.

A Strategic Alliance

Despite the painful defeats, Chagossian prospects brightened when the Chagos Refugees Group allied with the Mauritian government to take Britain to the International Court of Justice. Aided by Chagossian testimony about their expulsion, which an African Union representative called “the voice of Africa,” Mauritius won. In 2019, that court overwhelmingly ruled that Mauritius was the rightful sovereign in Chagos. It directed the U.K. to end its colonial rule “as rapidly as possible.” A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution ordered the British “to cooperate with Mauritius in facilitating the resettlement” of Chagossians.

Backed by the U.S., the British initially ignored the international consensus – until, in 2022, Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government suddenly began negotiations with the Mauritians. Two years later, a deal was reached with the support of the Biden administration. The deal recognized Mauritian sovereignty over Chagos but allowed Britain to retain control of Diego Garcia for at least 99 years, including the continued operation of the U.S. base. The Chagossians would be allowed to return to all their islands except, painfully, Diego Garcia and receive compensation.

The Chagos Refugees Group and other Chagossian organizations generally supported the deal, while continuing to demand the right to live on Diego Garcia. Some smaller Chagossian groups, especially in Britain (where many Chagossians have lived since winning full U.K. citizenship in 2002), opposed the agreement. Some still support British rule. Others seek Chagossian sovereignty.

Right-wing forces in Britain and the United States quickly tried to kill the deal. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brexit protagonist Nigel Farage, and then-Senator Marco Rubio campaigned for continued British colonial rule, often spouting bogus theories suggesting the agreement would benefit China.

Donald Trump’s election and the appointment of Rubio as secretary of state left many fearing they would kill the treaty. Instead, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Washington, Trump indicated his support. A finalized treaty was in sight.

An Imperfect Victory?

In the last hours, the deal was briefly blocked by a lawsuit that a judge later dismissed. “I’ve been betrayed by the British government,” Bernadette Dugasse, one of two Chagossians who brought the suit, said of the treaty. “I will have to keep on fighting the British government till they accept for me to settle” on Diego Garcia (where she was born).

Dugasse’s suit and plans for additional legal action are being funded by a shadowy “Great British PAC” that won’t disclose its donors. The group is led by right-wing political figures still trying, in their words, to “Save Chagos.” However, “saving Chagos” doesn’t mean saving Chagos for the Chagossians, but “saving” it from the end of British colonial control. In other words, right-wing figures are cynically using Chagossians to try to uphold the colonial status quo. (Even Dugasse fears she’s being used.)

On the other hand, the Chagos Refugees Group and many other Chagossians are celebrating, at least partially. For the first time in more than half a century of struggle they can go home to most of their islands, even if they, too, criticize the ban on returning to Diego Garcia and the shamefully small amount of compensation being offered: just £40 million earmarked for a Chagossian “trust fund” operated by the Mauritian government (with British consultation). Divided among the entire population, this could be as little as £5,000 per person for the theft of their homeland and more than half a century in exile. (People in car accidents get far more.)

“I’m very happy after such a long fight,” Sabrina Jean, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group U.K. Branch, told me. “But I’m also upset about how the U.K. government continues to treat us for all the suffering it gave Chagossians,” she added. “£40 million is not enough.”

The Mauritian government should benefit more unambiguously than the Chagossians: The treaty formally ends decolonization from Britain, reuniting Mauritius and the Chagos Islands. Mauritius will receive an average of £101 million in rent per year for 99 years for Diego Garcia plus £1.125 billion in “development” funds paid over 25 years.

“The development fund will be used to resettle” Chagossians on the islands outside Diego Garcia, said Olivier Bancoult, now the president of the Chagos Refugees Group, about a commitment he’s received from the Mauritian government. “They have promised to rebuild Chagos.”

Bancoult and other Chagossians insist they also should receive some of the annual rent for Diego Garcia. “Parts of it needs to be used for Chagossians,” he told me by phone from Mauritius.

The continuing ban on Chagossians living on Diego Garcia clearly violates Chagossians’ human rights as well as the International Court’s ruling and that U.N. resolution of 2019. Human Rights Watch criticized the treaty for appearing to “entrench the policy that prevents Chagossians from returning to Diego Garcia” and failing to acknowledge U.S. and British responsibility for compensating the Chagossians and reconstructing infrastructure to enable their return.

“We will not give up concerning Diego,” Olivier Bancoult told me. For those born on Diego Garcia and those with ancestors buried there, it’s not enough to return to the other Chagos islands, at least 150 miles away. “We will continue to argue for our right to return to Diego Garcia,” he added.

While U.S. and British officials have long used “security” as an excuse to keep Chagossians off the island, they could, in truth, still live on the other half of Diego Garcia, miles from the base, just as civilians live near U.S. bases worldwide. Civilian laborers who are neither U.S. nor British citizens have lived and worked there for decades. (Chagossians will be eligible for such jobs, although historically they’ve faced discrimination getting hired.)

That the U.S. military has ended up a winner in the treaty could explain Donald Trump’s surprising support. The treaty secures base access for at least 99 years and possibly 40 more.

Which means the treaty is a setback for those Mauritians, Americans, and others who have campaigned to close a base that has cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars and has been a launchpad for catastrophic wars in the Middle East, which a certain president claimed to oppose.

While many Chagossians are privately critical of the base that caused their expulsion and occupies their land, most have prioritized going home over demanding its closure. The campaign to return has been hard enough.

Ultimately, I’m in no position to decide if the Chagos treaty is a victory or not. That’s for Chagossians and Mauritians to decide, not a citizen of the country that, along with Great Britain, is the primary author of that ongoing, shameful crime.

Let me note that victories are rarely, if ever, complete, especially when the power imbalance between parties is so vast. Chagossians, backed by allies in Mauritius and beyond, are continuing their struggle for the right to return to Diego Garcia, for the reconstruction of Chagossian society in Chagos, and for full, proper compensation. The Mauritian and British governments can correct the treaty’s flaws through a diplomatic “exchange of letters.”

“We are closer to the goal” of full victory, Olivier assured me. “We are very near.”

Having won the right to return to most of their islands after 50 years of struggle, Olivier has been thinking a lot about his mother, longtime leader Rita Bancoult. “I would like that my mom would be here, but I know if she would be here, she would be crying,” he said, “because she always believed in what I do, and she always encouraged me to go until the destination, the goal.”

For now, inspired by the memory of his mother and too many Chagossians who will never see a return to their homeland, Olivier told me, “lalit kontin.” The struggle continues.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

David Vine, a TomDispatch regular, is the author most recently of The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. He is also the author of of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, and, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, part of the American Empire Project. and professor of anthropology at American University, is the author most recently of The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. He is also the author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, part of the American Empire Project.

Copyright 2025 David Vine

 

Violence in Costa Rica and the Rush to Blame Nicaragua

The Politics of Accusation

by Kelly Nelson and Roger D. Harris / June 26th, 2025

Traditionally regarded as safe for visitors, Costa Rica has recently become Central America’s second most dangerous country, with 400 homicides recorded so far this year. The violence is attributed to an epidemic of drug-related crime, as the country has become a major staging post for narcotics smuggled to Europe. Costa Rica just detained a former security minister and ex-judge for drug trafficking following a US extradition request. Even the US State Department warns of the danger of “armed robbery, homicide, and sexual assault” in Costa Rica.

This month the violence claimed a Nicaraguan victim, Roberto Samcam, one of several Nicaraguans killed in Costa Rica in recent years. Costa Rica has a large Nicaraguan community of half a million, established through decades of steady economic migration. Samcam was shot by an unknown assailant who entered his upscale residence at a time when his usual armed guards were absent. Local police have given no indication of the motive for the crime.

Samcam was a minor figure among opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, many of whom live in exile in Costa Rica. He relocated there in 2018 after the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua that year, in which he was heavily implicated. In June 2020, he was convicted in absentia of organizing armed roadblocks in the Carazo region, where several police officers and government sympathizers were killed, some after being tortured. Local people testified that he had distributed weapons used in the attacks.

Rush to judgment based on no evidence

 Nicaraguan opposition media almost instantaneously blamed the Samcam murder on the Sandinista government, with prominent spokesperson Félix Maradiaga calling it a “political assassination.” The claim was echoed by corporate media.

These outlets exhibited little regard for the broader context of Costa Rica’s raising violence with an average of at least two murders daily. This background was ignored while media instead repeated his wife’s assertion that Samcam worked to “expose human rights violations” in his homeland, as if that were the motive for the murder.

The Guardian headlined “Critic of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega shot dead in Costa Rica,” while CNN en Español’s headline also labelled him as a “critic” of Nicaragua’s President Ortega. Focusing on his “fierce criticism” of the Nicaraguan government, France 24 made no mention of his violent past. More coverage followed on similar lines when a group of right-wing former Latin American presidents directly accused President Ortega of involvement in the assassination; their well-known political hostility to Ortega was unmentioned.

Once again, these media were quick to blame a horrifically violent incident on Nicaragua’s government, ignoring context and without any hard evidence, only the clamor of the opposition’s unsupported claims.

These allegations were soon echoed by a “Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua,” appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. This group has been strongly criticized, including by human rights lawyers, for one-sided reporting and unquestioning acceptance of testimony from violent opponents of the Ortega government.

History of dubious accusations

 The prejudicial handling of the Samcam murder is just one of a series of such misleadingly spun events in Nicaragua during and since the failed 2018 coup attempt.

For example, on June 16, 2018, masked youths threw Molotov cocktails into an occupied house in Managua killing a family of six. The opposition outlet La Prensa had no doubt who did it: “Ortega mobs burn and kill a Managua family,” ran its headline. The New York Times dutifully alleged that this was part of a government-led terror campaign. The Guardian, making a similar allegation, highlighted the “tiny coffins” in which some of the victims were buried. Yet investigative journalists Dick and Miriam Emanuelsson later revealed the area was under armed opposition control at the time, making government involvement implausible.

Another example is the July 8, 2018, shooting of police officer Faber López Vivas. Amnesty International claimed he was killed by his own colleagues, based on flimsy evidence. His widowed partner gave a detailed interview, refuting this accusation. Amnesty refused to respond to complaints that its accusation was unfounded and opposition media continued to repeat it.

Yet another case was the so-called “Mother’s Day massacre” on May 30, 2018. While the New York Times noted that six police officers were injured (the real figure was 20), its report attributed the deaths to the government. A subsequent forensic reconstruction of several killings, commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), found fundamental errors and omissions, rendering its conclusions deeply suspect. Subsequent protests to the IACHR were summarily dismissed.

Finally, an Indio Maiz Reserve forest fire in April 2018 was also blamed on the government in international media. The BBC reported that the fire in a remote roadless area was “out of control,” while the Guardian blamed the government for rejecting aid from Costa Rica, without explaining the area’s inaccessibility. The fire was successfully tackled some days later, partly with helicopters sent from El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico, and also with technical help from the US. Regardless, blaming the government for the fire prefigured the coup attempt later that month.

These are just a few of the more egregious examples where violent incidents were immediately – and politically – blamed by opposition media on the Nicaraguan government. In these and many other cases, corporate media amplified the opposition’s narrative without scrutiny or evidence.

The real reason for Samcam’s demise?

 No one yet knows why Samcam was killed, but one possible explanation for his gangland-style murder involves drug trafficking. According to now-deleted articles in La Nación, CR Hoy, and Confidential, Samcam was under investigation by Costa Rican authorities for money laundering and suspected links to drug networks in Limón, a known cocaine-smuggling zone. He was allegedly connected to individuals later arrested in Operation Titan, a major anti-narcotics effort. While not convicted, some pro-government sources claim that Costa Rica’s Organismo de Investigación Judicial identified him in intelligence reports related to narcotics activity in Limón. Opposition reports dispute that he was ever investigated.

The truth of the case is hard to ascertain. What is clear is that the accusations against the Nicaraguan government rely on circular logic: the “Ortega-Murillo dictatorship” is evil, therefore is must be behind political assassinations. Regardless of the speculation, there is no evidence that the current Nicaraguan authorities have ever engaged in deliberate extra-judicial assassination in Nicaragua – let alone in another country.

Moreover, the accusation fails the cui bono test of who benefits. The regime-change opposition stands to gain far more by using the incident to demonize the Sandinistas than would the government gain from silencing one of simply many critical voices abroad, especially a figure who had been mostly forgotten. If anything, the incident amplifies criticism rather than suppressing it.

In short, the accusations are driven by political animosity regardless of the facts at hand. Whatever the truth behind Roberto Samcam’s death, it has become one more pretext to attack Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

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Kelly Nelson is a Nicaragua-based journalist. Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas and the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition. Read other articles by Kelly Nelson and Roger D. Harris.

Insufficient Press Coverage of Big Data Surveillance

Corporate Media Erodes the Public’s Right to Know

by Mischa Geracoulis / June 26th, 2025

As the second Trump administration is dispatching its minions to stalk US streets, smashing citizens’ First Amendment rights, in partnership with unregulated Big Tech, it also surveils online, helping itself to citizens’ personal identifiable information (PII).

In the age of surveillance capitalism, information is a hot commodity for corporations and governments, precipitating a multi-billion-dollar industry that not only profits from the collection and commodification of citizens’ PII, but also puts individuals, businesses, organizations, and governments at risk for cyberattacks and data theft.

Social security numbers, location details, health information, student loan and financial data, purchasing habits, library borrowing and internet browsing history, and political and religious affiliations are just some of the personal information that data brokers buy and sell to advertisers, banks, insurance companies, mortgage brokers, law enforcement and government agencies, foreign agents, and even spammers, scammers, and stalkers. Over time, that information often ends up changing hands again and again.

As an example, and to the alarm of civil liberties experts, the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), “a shady data broker” owned by at least eight US-based commercial airlines, including Delta, American, and United, has been collecting US travelers’ domestic flight records and selling them to Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Homeland Security; and as part of the deal, government officials are forbidden to reveal how ARC sourced the flight data.

Online users should know that many data brokers camp out on Facebook and at Google’s advertising exchange, drawing from such sources as credit card transactions, frequent shopper loyalty programs, bankruptcy filings, vehicle registration records, employment records, military service, and social media posting and web tracking data harvested from websites, apps, and mobile and wearable biometric devices to “craft customized lists of potential targets.” Even when gathered data is de-identified, privacy experts warn that this is not an irreversible process, and the risk of re-identifying individuals is both real and underestimated.

Government’s misuse and abuse of citizens’ privacy

Many Americans do not realize that the United States is one of the few advanced economies without a federal data protection agency. If the current administration continues on its path of eroding citizen privacy, the scant statutory protections the United States does have may prove meaningless.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) of 1970 was enacted to protect consumers from government overreach into personal identifiable data, and has been promoted as the primary consumer privacy protection. However, in 2023, attorney and internet privacy advocate Lauren Harriman warned how data brokers circumvent the FCRA, for instance, “pay[ing] handsome sums to your utility company for your name and address.” Data brokers then repackage those names and addresses with other data, without conducting any type of accuracy analysis on the newly formed dataset, before then selling that new dataset to the highest third-party bidder.

Invasion of the data snatchers

Though the “gut-the-government bromance” between the president and Elon Musk appears to be on the rocks just six months into Trump 2.0, the Department of Government Efficiency’s unfettered access to data is concerning, especially after the June 6, 2025, Supreme Court ruling that gave the Musk-led DOGE complete access to confidential Social Security information irrespective of the privacy rights once upheld by the Social Security Act of 1935. The act prohibits the disclosure of any tax return in whole or in part by officers or employees of the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Nevertheless, DOGE has commandeered the Social Security Administration (SSA) and Department of Health and Human Services systems and those of at least fifteen other federal agencies containing Americans’ personal identifiable information without disclosing “what data has been accessed, who has that access, how it will be used or transferred, or what safeguards are in place for its use.”

Since DOGE infiltrated the Social Security Administration, the agency’s website has crashed numerous times, creating interruptions for beneficiaries. In June, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden issued a letter to the SSA’s commissioner, detailing their concerns about DOGE’s use of PII. Warren told Wired that “DOGE staffers hacking away Social Security’s backend tech with no safeguards is a recipe for disaster…[and] risks people’s private data, creates security gaps, and could result in catastrophic cuts to all benefits.”

Likewise, the Internal Revenue Code of 1939 (updated in 1986) was enacted to ensure data protection, prohibiting—with rare exceptions—the release of taxpayer information by Internal Revenue Service employees. According to the national legal organization Democracy Forward, “Changes to IRS data practices—at the behest of DOGE—throw into question those assurances and the confidentiality of data held by the government collected from hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Equally troubling is that Opexus, a private equity-owned federal contractor, maintains the IRS database. Worse still is that two Opexus employees—twin brothers and skilled hackers with prison records for stealing and selling PII on the dark web—Suhaib and Muneeb Akhter, had access to the IRS data, as well as to that of the Department of Energy, Defense Department, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

In February 2025, approximately one year into their Opexus employment, the twins were summoned to a virtual meeting with human resources and fired. During that meeting, Muneeb Akhter, who still had clearance to use the servers, accessed an IRS database from his company-issued laptop and blocked others from connecting to it. While still in the meeting, Akhter deleted thirty-three other databases, and about an hour later, “inserted a USB drive into his laptop and removed 1,805 files of data related to a ‘custom project’ for a government agency,” causing service disruptions.

That investigations by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies are underway does little to quell concerns about the insecurity of personal identifiable information and sensitive national security data. And although the Privacy Act of 1974, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 were all established to protect PII, the June Supreme Court ruling granting DOGE carte blanche data access dashes all confidence that laws will be upheld.

Americans don’t know what they don’t know

Perhaps most disconcerting in this whole scenario is that too few citizens realize just how far their online footprints travel and how vulnerable their private information actually is. According to internet culture reporter Kate Lindsay, citizen ignorance comes not only from a lack of reporting on how tech elites pull government strings to their own advantage, but also from fewer corporate news outlets covering people living with the consequences of those power moves. Internet culture and tech, once intertwined topics for the establishment press, are now more separately focused on either AI or the Big Tech power players, but not on holding them to account.

The Tech Policy Press argues that the government’s self-proclaimed need for expediency and efficiency cannot justify flouting data privacy policies and laws, and that the corporate media is largely failing their audiences by not publicizing the specifics of how the government and its corporate tech partners are obliterating citizens’ privacy rights. “To make matters worse, Congress has been asleep at the switch while the federal government has expanded the security state and private companies have run amok in storing and selling our data,” stated the senator from Silicon Valley, Ro Khanna.

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of Americans’ views on data privacy found that approximately six in ten Americans do not bother to read website and application policies. When online, most users click “agree” without reading the relevant terms and conditions they accept by doing so. According to the survey, Americans of all political stripes are equally distrustful of government and corporations when it comes to  how third parties use their PII. Respondents with some higher education reported taking more online privacy precautions than those who never attended college. The latter reported a stronger belief that government and corporations would “do the right thing” with their data. The least knowledgeable respondents were also the least skeptical, pointing to an urgent need for critical information literacy and digital hygiene skills.

Exploitation of personal identifiable information

After Musk’s call to “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), approximately 1,400 staff members were fired in April, emptying out the agency that was once capable of policing Wall Street and Big Tech. Now, with the combined forces of government and Big Tech, and their sharing of database resources, the government can conduct intrusive surveillance on almost anyone, without court oversight or public debate. The Project on Government Oversight has argued that the US Constitution was meant to protect the population from authoritarian-style government monitoring, warning that these maneuvers are incompatible with a free society.

On May 15, 2025, the CFPB, against the better judgment of the ​​Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and wider public, quietly withdrew a rule, proposed in 2024, that would have imposed limits on US-based data brokers who buy and sell Americans’ private information. Had the rule been enacted, it would have expanded the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) data protections for citizens. However, in February, Russell Vought, the self-professed White nationalist and Trump 2.0 acting director of the Office of Management and Budget and the CFPB, demanded its withdrawal, alleging the ruling would have infringed on financial institutions’ capabilities to detect and prevent fraud. Vought also instructed employees to cease all public communications, pending investigations, and proposed or previously implemented rules, including the proposal titled “Protecting Americans from Harmful Data Broker Practices.”

The now-gutted CFPB lacks both the resources and authority needed to police the widespread exploitation of consumers’ personal information, says the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the privacy rights advocacy agency.

Double standards for data privacy

Although the government’s collection of PII has always been a double-edged sword, with Big Tech on the side of Trump 2.0, data surveillance of law-abiding citizens has soared to worrying heights. Across every presidency since 9/11, government surveillance has become increasingly more extensive and elaborate. Moreover, Big Tech is all too willing to pledge allegiance to whichever party happens to be in power. According to investigative journalist Dell Cameron, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, and Customs and Border Protection are among the largest “federal agencies known to purchase Americans’ private data, including that which law enforcement agencies would normally require probable cause to obtain.”

Meanwhile, it’s a Big Tech and data broker free-for-all. DOGE’s and the feds’ activities are shrouded in secrecy, often facilitated by the Big Tech lobbying money that seeks to replace legitimate privacy laws with “fake industry alternatives.” Banks, credit agencies, and tech companies must adhere to consumer privacy laws. “Yet DOGE has been granted sweeping access across federal agencies—with no equivalent restrictions,” said business reporter Susie Stulz.

Know your risks

Interpol has warned that scams known as “pig butchering” and “business email compromise” and those used for human trafficking are on the rise due to an increase in the use of new technologies, including apps, AI deepfakes, and cryptocurrencies. Hacking agents, humans, and bots are becoming more sophisticated, while any semblance of data privacy guardrails for citizens has been removed.

Individual choices matter. At minimum, when using technology, consider if a website or app’s services are so badly needed or wanted that you are willing to give up your personal identifiable information. Standard advice to delete and block phishing and spam emails and texts remains apropos, but only scratches the surface of online protection.

Privacy advocates assert that DOGE’s access to personal identifiable information escalates the risk of exposure to hackers and foreign adversaries as well as to widespread domestic surveillance. Trump’s latest contract with tech giant Palantir to create a national database of Americans’ private information raises a big red flag for civil rights organizations, “that this could be the precursor to surveillance of Americans on a mass scale.” Palantir’s involvement in government portends to be the last step “in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence,” wrote constitutional law and human rights attorney John W. Whitehead.

A longtime J.D. Vance financial backer, Palantir’s Peter Thiel, the South African, White nationalist billionaire and right-wing donor, is credited with catapulting Vance’s political career. Unsurprisingly, the Free Thought Project reported that since Trump’s return to the White House, “Palantir has racked up over $100 million in government contracts, and is slated to strike a nearly $800 million deal with the Pentagon.” Palantir, incidentally, is also contracted with the Israeli government, as is Google.

Know your rights

The right to privacy is enshrined in Article 12 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Article 17 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights asserts the same, and in 1992, the United States ratified the treaty, thereby consenting to its binding terms.

But is privacy actually a protected civil right in the United States? According to legal scholars Anita Allen and Christopher Muhawe, the history of US civil rights law shows limited support for conceptualizing privacy and data protection as a civil right. Nonetheless, civil rights law is a dynamic moral, political, and legal concept, and if privacy is interpreted as a civil right, privacy protection becomes a fundamental requirement of justice and good government.

Protection from surveillance needs to be top-down through legal and policy limits on data collection, and bottom-up by putting technological control of personal data into the hands of consumers, i.e., the targets of surveillance.

As long as the public is uninformed and the corporate press remains all but silent, the more likely it is that these unconstitutional practices will not only continue but will become normalized. Until the United States is actually governed by and for the people, we the people can start practicing surveillance self-defense now. Although constitutional lawyers are typically considered the first responders to assaults on the Constitution and privacy rights, a constellation of efforts over time is required to, as much as possible, keep private data private.

Ultimately, though, the safeguarding of data cannot be left to the government or corporations, or even the lawyers. For that reason, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s tips and tools for customizing individualized digital security plans are made available to everyone. By implementing such plans and possessing strong critical media and digital literacy skills, civil society will be better informed and more empowered in the defense of privacy rights.

• Original publication at Project Censored Dispatch.

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Mischa Geracoulis is the Managing Editor at Project Censored? and The Censored Press, contributor to Project Censored’s State of the Free Press yearbook series, Project Judge, and author of Media Framing and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage (2025)?. Her work focuses on human rights and civil liberties, journalistic ethics and standards, and accuracy in reporting. Read other articles by Mischa.