<
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-bondi-memo-s-quiet-rewriting-of-domestic-terrorism-rules>
"The Dec. 4 Bondi memo—leaked earlier this month—is confusing when you first
read it.
On the surface it looks familiar: another directive on “Countering Domestic
Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” sprinkled with the right statutory
citations and the usual disclaimers about respecting First Amendment rights.
But taken together with Trump’s executive order designating Antifa as a
domestic terrorist organization,
National Security Presidential Memorandum 7
(NSPM-7), and a string of European “Antifa cell” designations, the memo does
something more serious. It quietly turns domestic terrorism authorities into a
standing program for targeting one broad ideological camp while the
administration’s own
National Security Strategy claims, almost in the same
breath, to reject “ideological monitoring” and “pretextual” uses of power.
That contradiction has real consequences. It signals that the formal rules that
grew out of the Church Committee era—the rules that resulted in things such as
the
Privacy Act, the
Attorney General’s Guidelines, and the
Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) —are now being hollowed out from within.
For 10 years, I served as counsel for Domestic Terrorism in the National
Security Division. Before that, I worked in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel
and as an Army judge advocate. My work was to help the government stop genuine
threats without slipping into domestic intelligence work that treats belief
itself as the problem.
I left when I could no longer tell myself that line still held.
Domestic terrorism investigations and prosecutions are inherently fraught. The
line between protected speech and association as well as true threats and acts
of violence is vanishingly thin, so every step carries real civil liberties
risks. The system functioned, roughly, because the government had rails to run
on: the
Attorney General’s Guidelines, the
Domestic Investigations and
Operations Guide, FISA, the
Privacy Act, and lessons taken from the Church
Committee. Those guardrails stood for a simple proposition: investigate and
prosecute conduct tied to crime or violence, not ideas and beliefs.
The Bondi memo takes that settlement and bends it."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Cybersecurity: December 16, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-16-145963544
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
