Authorities- funded research says Students for Life is’ criminal’ business
Two violence experts questioned a University of Maryland agency’s naming of a pro- life team as a “terrorist” business.
The former personnel of the Department of Justice and Homeland Security spoke to The College Fix , about the school’s research database,” Information of Individual Radicalization in the United States”, or PIRUS.
Created by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Reactions to Terrorism, or START, the task apparently tracks “ideologically determined legal exercise” and known “extremists” through 2021.
Two Students for Life of America people who were detained for writing “black pre-born lives issue” on a street in 2020 are originally reported to have been logged into PIRUS. This puts them among white nationalists, ideology parties, and other threats.
Also, SFLA appears under a” Terrorist_Group” brand in the raw data.
When asked if START’s naming was correct, national security analyst Elizabeth Neumann firmly replied,” No”.
In a telephone interview with The Fix, Neumann said,” They made an error and they should resolve it.
Prior to joining the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Neumann ( pictured ) worked for President George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Council, where she assisted federal agencies in developing methods for reporting threats.
She afterwards joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2017 and served as terrorism and risk prevention’s assistant director from 2018 to 2020.
Neumann resigned from the Trump Administration in 2020 and accused it of failing to act against local violence, mainly “right- aircraft radicals”, in the terms of , Politico. She has criticized President Donald Trump and supported Joe Biden in 2020.
She told The Fix , that START’s representation of pro- lifers does hardly match how the DHS usually views “radicalization” in any social station.
” We did n’t have a great definition, so we wanted to clear it up. What we were trying to prevent, which was harsh believe”, she said. An act of “vandalism” by school pupils would not have been a problem, she told The Fix.
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During her name, Neumann claimed the DHS monitored violent extremism on “both edges” of the abortion debate. START’s review, however, has “anti- pregnancy fanaticism” as a group with no pro- abortion equivalent.
Neumann claimed that the students ‘ charges were dropped, another reason why they should n’t be in that database.
Another law professor who contributed to the DOJ’s counterterrorism policy felt that START’s wording was too large.
Previous Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote in an email that “researchers of course you create and implement any description of’terrorism’ they like.” ” But if they want to be taken seriously, they may use something like the U. S. administration’s definition”, according to Yoo, who served in his position from 2001 to 2003.
” For domestic terrorism, the FBI says it is’ Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature,'” the University of California Berkeley Law professor ( pictured ) told The Fix.
Writing emails in pencil on the road does not appear to fit this definition, Yoo wrote. If so, there are far more extremists on the pavements of Berkeley than the FBI is aware of.
In addition to two more questions sent last week to three different workplaces, UMD has not responded to any of the inquiries about the investigation. The Fix questioned why PIRUS includes pro-life individuals who have been cleared of costs but not for crimes connected to Black Lives Matter from the same time.
In March, SFLA stated that its “attorneys are looking into this program.”
Kristi Hamrick, a spokesperson for the government, told the Fix,” We are really concerned about government-funded programs that attempt to insinuate that there may be harms from peaceful pro-life people.”
The DHS created START in 2005 as one of several” Centers of Excellence” at universities and often shares its data with “homeland security professionals”, according to its website.
The study center is now attempting to increase the PIRUS repository with additional funding from the DOJ.
” There’s a price for civil society to better know extremism”, Neumann said. She recalled a lack of” good information options” on domestic violence in the DHS, but warned that START’s procedures must be “very clear”.
They must be very open about how they make decisions if they are using public money and their function is supposed to benefit the general public, according to Neumann.
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IMAGES: University of California Berkeley, ElizabethNeumann. nonprofit
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