juliaangwin.com
Investigative journalist. New York Times Contributing Opinion Writer. Founder, Proof News, The Markup. Priors: ProPublica, WSJ. Fellow at Harvard Shorenstein Center. Signal: Julia.368
Sign up for my newsletter: https://buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin
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So true. I’ve noticed this in the difference between the NY-DC Acela crowd and the regular train on the same route. People are so much nicer on the regular train — and because we have shitty trains in US, it’s not a huge difference in time or comfort.
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Not at all! I'm a big believer in hope. Recently did a 'lil treatise on it, in fact.
www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...
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Yes, but it can take some time.
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Omg thank you for doing this!! I’ve been trying to think through threat modeling for authoritarianism. This will be immensely helpful as I build this out.
Current state of my thinking:
buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin/...
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As @bankston.bsky.social so eloquently says:
“This is what we were always scared of. The infrastructure for turnkey totalitarianism is there for an administration willing to break the law.”
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If ever there was a moment where we saw how Congress' explicit intentions were being failed -- this is it.
Its urgent that we update the Federal Privacy Act to add greater fines and enforcement, and establish a data protection agency -- just like nearly every other nation has already done.
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There are currently dozens of lawsuits against DOGE, many of them alleging Privacy Act violations. But while these wend through court, DOGE keeps grabbing data.
Most recently a brave whistleblower came forward to reveal how DOGE is taking sensitive labor data:
www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...
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But the Privacy Act lacks enforcement heft.
✔️ It doesn't establish a data protection agency to enforce the law.
✔️ Enforcement is left to the courts, but they don't have the investigatory power of an agency.
✔️ It has very small $$ fines.
✔️ Remedies are mostly about correcting inaccurate data.
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Amazingly, the publics' dread of building a centralized database killed the plan (oh for the days when popular opinion swayed Congress).
Congress scuttled the plan and passed the Federal Privacy Act of 1974, which was specifically designed to prevent cross-agency data sharing.
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A centralized database will be "ill-equipped to correct errors, allow for extenuating circumstances, or bring facts up to date," warned Vance Packard. "The notion of the possibility of redemption is likely to be incomprehensible to a computer."
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On the front page of the New York Times on January 7, 1968 -- you will see a story about the Johnson Administration's attempt to create exactly this type of master database.
The article warns of the privacy perils of putting all this data in one place:
timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine...
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DOGE is assembling a master database of personal data from across the government -- including tax records, social security files, immigration dossiers etc.
This cross-agency master database is exactly what Congress tried to prevent when it passed the Federal Privacy Act of 1974.
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I didn’t know CL had a barter section?!
Congratulations on achieving crossword immortality!
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archive.ph/Bhnj3
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Sorry, New Yorker doesn’t have gift links but I did summarize a bunch of it in my newsletter buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin/...
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Yep that’s me!! Thanks for amplifying.
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Indeed they do! And you will help lead us there :-)
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Couldn’t agree more!! I did do a little summary in my newsletter: buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin/...
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Reporting this story was so inspiring. It's dark times, but the people we talked to are fighting back with hope, joy and community.
I hope you will also be inspired by their stories in our practical guide to courage in Trump's age of fear:
www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...
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Lesson 5: Community. The best defense against authoritarianism is solidarity. People who stick together cannot as easily be oppressed.
“They want us to be so afraid. The only way to counter fear is with joy,” @keyachatterjee.bsky.social told us.
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Your technology can betray you, too. So having trustworthy and less trustworthy devices can help limit the data that might get swept up in an investigation.
@jmbooyah.bsky.social has a useful guide on how to prep a device for a border crossing:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
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Lesson 4: Compartmentalization. Authoritarian regimes rely on snitches. So keep your mouth shut with people you don’t trust fully.
As one dissident in exile told us: “Don’t brag about your activism. I've seen so many guys bragging and now they're in jail.”
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Lesson 3: Compliance. Authoritarians will use minor infractions to persecute enemies. So comply with tax laws, traffic laws, annoying paperwork etc.
Investigations are part of the regime’s strategy to “never talk about the substance of the issues,” Hungarian dissident Sandor Lederer told us.
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Lesson 2: Clean-Up Your Life. Authoritarians use minor scandals to discredit opponents. You can make it harder for them by:
✔️Deleting Old Social Media Posts.
✔️Using Encrypted and Disappearing Messaging.
✔️Removing your Data from Data Brokers.
cyd.social
www.consumerreports.org/electronics/...
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Lesson 1: It Can Be Done. Authoritarianism can be toppled by just 3.5% of the population.
“All power holders, even the most ruthless and corrupt, rely on the consent and cooperation of ordinary people,” @mariajstephan.bsky.social told us. We must not cooperate.
www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...
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So @amifieldsmeyer.bsky.social and I began interviewing foreign dissidents, domestic activists, and scholars who study pro-democracy movements.
We asked them what we needed to know about how to stay safe while opposing authoritarianism.
Here’s what we found:
buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin/...
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Honored to have informed in any small part your fabulous work!
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Current status: crying in a coffee shop while reading this ❤️
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Hope we can be cell-mates! 😭
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I loathe turnips. At one of my first journalism jobs, I barely made enough to pay my rent and made a root vegetable stew every Sunday to get me through the week.
After a year of this, I broke down crying one Sunday, threw away the stew, and went out for chorizo tacos. I’ve never looked back.
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I agree that abuse is not manageable. But I do think a natural response to it is to try to find some agency in the situation.