Elon’s Plans for Your Personal Information

[00:00:08] Patron says Fam, this is the Mess Imara’s guide to our political hellscape. And that’s me. I’m imara. Welcome back. I’m so glad that you are here, as I’m always glad that you’re here to help us unpack and sort through all of the mess and the shenanigans that are going on into our politics. And even though it’s getting harder and harder to do so with each passing day to try to find glimmers of hope and all of the darkness that’s going on and to just put an upside down smile emoji on all of the absurdity as we try to move through this really difficult and perilous moment for our community and for our country. If you’re hearing this, it means that you are a trans subscriber or considering buying one. Just move from the consideration to actually being one. It doesn’t cost that much and you know that. So just go ahead and make it happen. Your support really means a lot to me and everyone else. That translation helps support everything that we do. So again, just check the box, make it happen. And if you are already a translation camp describer, then encourage people around you to mimic and mirror your swagger ish leaders behavior. Okay. Today on the Message, I’m going to tackle the threat posed by Elon Musk to his growing access to sensitive information possessed by the United States government. The investigation by the US Department of Education into trans affirming school policies in Virginia, or just nondiscriminatory policies and the removal of the word transgender from the National Park Services Web page about Stonewall. And just a heads up, as we always advise you, this show is recorded a day or so before you’re hearing it. And in this wild world of politics where every day seems like a month, things may have changed. So if so, you’ll know why. Okay, with that, let’s get messy. 

[00:02:11] Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has requested access to the iris data system. It contains the personal tax information for millions of Americans. The system used by the IRS to review taxes, issue notices to taxpayers and also update records. 

[00:02:26] That was from ABC seven. Now, IRS information, as everyone should know, is sweeping it in nature. Not only does it include your name, Social Security number and all your bank accounts and your addresses, but if you have kids, all of the relevant information about your kids and a whole host of other really important information as well. So this is not a small thing. This this is not a few data points. This is a sweeping information on more than 100 million Americans in order to be able to have some real intimate information about everything that’s going on. And what’s fascinating and in a terrible way and terrifying way is that it’s not really clear what Elon Musk wants to do with this information. We know that in addition to the IRS, that there has also been a similar hoovering of information about veterans and at the Social Security Administration, you name it. So they’re going to have a massive dataset. And one of the ideas for having all of this type of information at separate departments in the government is so that you couldn’t create a unified database on Americans, which Elon Musk now has the power to do. So why is Elon Musk trying to get all this information? Well, we know that Elon Musk has an affinity for a Chinese style social credit system. What’s that? It’s essentially where the government is able to monitor your life. 360 from where you’re where you move in society, where you work all of your bank transactions and essentially give you what they call a social credit score. And that is a score by the government on your worthiness as a citizen in order to get certain home loans, in order to be able to live in certain places. It’s even used in getting certain types of jobs. And it comes out of the government. And if that sounds like authoritarianism, sort of techno authoritarianism, then that’s exactly what it is. And it’s one of the ways that the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, has been able to maintain its control over a country of a billion people, even though they’re not elected. Terrifying. There’s possibly even more of a sinister aspect to all of this, and that is that it gives the ability to be able to, through these unified databases, figure out who people are and to target them. It will give them the ability to be able to see across the board who might likely be transgender due to differences in various documents and markers that they may have across the government. You may have changed your gender marker with Social Security Administration, for example. But you haven’t done that with the IRS or your name change in that case. And so that could flag you. And so it allows the government to immediately begin to segment and target a group of people. And we all know from history that that’s terrifying because that puts you on the road to be able to isolate people from society physically, for example, such as internment camps, which are a part of American history reservations as well, or even digitally, as we’ve described before. And to essentially have control, to be able to do whatever you want with people because you have access to this vast data set of information. And that’s why airlines moves to Hoover up. All of this information for trans people is absolutely terrifying. And I’ve used that word a couple of times because that’s exactly what it is, because we know that the person in possession of this views themselves is above the law. We know that they detest trans people and we know that they are part of an administration which is virulently anti-trans and trying to do everything that they can to essentially make trans people, second class citizens and to be the target of derision and revulsion across the society. So Elon’s hoovering up of all of this information across the society can have no good end. It has nothing to do with government efficiency. It is not about trying to find which government workers are working harder than others. This is about being able to easily target Americans, and that should have us all sitting up straight and paying wide attention to exactly what’s happening and that it’s just a data set mess. I. Next up is an inversion of what we have historically meant by civil rights. And that’s specifically taking place in Virginia, where the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education not to be confused with the one in the Justice Department. Those are two different departments in two different offices, but at the same name. I know you know, government efficiency and bureaucratic confusion, but we’re talking about the Office of Civil Rights. And the Department of Education has launched an investigation into five counties in Northern Virginia, which are heavily Democratic and adjacent to Washington, D.C., for violations of Title nine. If you have listened to this podcast before, you know what Title nine is because we’ve talked about it a lot. Title nine is essentially a provision within the existing education statute of the United States, which says that you cannot discriminate on the basis of gender. And indeed there has to be gender parity, and it allows for there not to be discrimination based upon gender. That’s its historic function. It was so successful, for example, that it’s what led to the explosion of sports for women and girls at all levels of education. So if you see a women’s sports team, it’s exactly the result of Title nine. Now, Title nine has been interpreted recently before Trump and, you know, also by the Biden administration, although they didn’t fully implement their finding to cover trans people, also during the Obama administration, to cover trans people, to say that schools had to be safe for trans kids because trans kids are covered by Title nine. So you had to make them safer. Trans kids, trans kids could participate in sports because of Title nine can’t discriminate based upon gender. Well, now that barring of discrimination is being turned on its head with the announcement of this investigation by Trump’s Department of Education, they’re saying that trans affirming policies actually constitute gender discrimination and create a hostile environment for women and girls and also are in violation of Trump’s executive order, which says that the government strictly defines gender based upon sex and sex, as was conceived in the womb, not developed in the womb. And as we’ve said before, that’s kind of a misnomer because everyone starts out as female in the womb and then nature does lickety black and then, you know, divisions occur accordingly. So it’s even misnamed, but it basically says your gender at conception. And we know that they mean rigidly what they would call sort of male and female. So they’re saying that Title nine has to reflect that. And so we have this rule and the education statute, which has historically been used for the past 50 years to expand participation, to be able to expand the human rights of people in schools away from those identified as male, given disproportionate amount of resources and you name it, to now say that it is the basis for discrimination against people. And they are making that argument and they are targeting these school districts. And what we’re going to see is a growing weaponization of our statutes across the country that have been used since the 1960s to expand human rights and access, as I have said, to basically roll that back, a total inversion, a total misappropriation, a total elimination of everything that so much that people fought and died for. And we just have to prepare ourselves. It also is why people should be paying very close attention as to what’s happening in your school district, your local school districts, your local school districts are kind of ground zero for democracy in America and also ground zero for anti-trans politics and policies in America. So if you’re not aware of what’s happening in your school and school districts, if you’ve never gone to a school board meeting to see what’s happening, you might want to begin to do that, because how these school districts respond is going to be a part of the story. Are they just going to naturally sort of agree with what the Trump administration is doing and therefore provide the precedent that all school districts to do this? Or are they going to come together and perhaps resist? And if they resist, that would be the basis of a lawsuit. And there could be all sorts of opportunities to delay overturn this action. And so it’ll send a signal to other school boards and school districts across the country for how to behave with this type of hijacking of what civil rights is. So make sure that you pay attention and make sure that you plug in. But whatever you do, this is a see spot run mess. I. Last up today is trans erasure at Stonewall. I know, I know. It doesn’t make any sense when you hear it. So last week, the National Park Service, in a bid to comply with Trump’s series of anti-trans executive orders, scrubbed its website from any mention of transgender and from its website. I mean all Park Service related websites. Well, since the Obama administration stonewall the Stonewall and where the 1969 riot, which is broadly credited with starting the modern LGBTQ rights movement, has been administered by the National Park Service because it’s been declared a national monument, something that is worthy of preservation of the country’s history as such. So it got that elevated status largely to the cheers and embrace of community. Well, in order to comply with this executive order, that place where trans women helped to initiate the first couple of nights of the riots, which ultimately led to the explosion and the LGBTQ rights movement, the proliferation of LGBTQ organizations across the country, the creation of a lot of LGBTQ organizations which are still in existence. They basically said that that history has to be erased. So not only did they scrub the word transgender and take out transgender and queer from the website, but they also ended up literally removing the historical pages that told the story of Master P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and the other trans people that participated in Stonewall, which means that you literally are changing the history, changing the definition of what happened to Stonewall in order to comply with Trump’s executive orders. You are inverting history. You are saying that things which happened didn’t happen solely because of the whims of the person in power. And it’s not even clear that these things are actually illegal. They are still being litigated, but they are still happening. Consequently, not surprisingly, the community responded with and essentially 24 hours creating a protest that drew over a thousand people to stonewall, to speak up, and to say that this was a right. 

[00:14:06] For trans people have always existed. We will continue to exist in. 

[00:14:13] The moment They start getting rid of one and try to separate all of us. And they’re just going to continue coming for us. And there’s just has to be a stand. And that’s how it was from Pix11 News. So you can see the passion that people displayed. And I think that what’s really important about this is not only with kind of the upside down, authoritarian down, right. Fascist approach to scrubbing a history, telling you to believe things that didn’t happen and to believe things which didn’t happen. We know all about that from history, and that never goes well. And it’s a part of changing your mindset and your worldview so that they can co-opt you to do anything that they say because they convinced you to believe whatever they say is true, even if it’s not true. Okay, So we all know that. But it’s also the case that I think that you’re beginning to see what we didn’t see at the beginning of the Trump administration, which is growing protest. Right. People beginning to become aware of what’s at stake. Beginning to become aware of the danger and beginning to respond with protest. And we saw it not only around Stonewall, but also there were big protests on President’s Day in New York City and Denver and all across the country. Sort of the beginning of the momentum to say that, you know, it’s important for people to speak up and speak out, and that just because there was an election and people were elected, that they don’t get to do whatever they want to do. And people being reminded of the fact that in a democracy, as I’ve said many, many, many times, that in a democracy, the people ultimately who are the guarantor of democracy are the people. It is not the government, it is not the institutions. And so I think that there is a growing sense that that’s the case and people are beginning. It seems to understand that. Right. And to understand their role in preserving the democracy that they want and or creating one that’s even better and more equitable and more fair. So I think that we have to watch that. And if anything, that’s always a good thing, right? It’s always good when people understand that they have to participate. And if they want to protect a democracy, if they want to protect a country where the people ultimately get to speak, that that’s something that everyone has to guarantee. And that’s in the spirit of M.P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and all of the others at Stonewall. And so I think we can just call this a brick throwing mess. I. Thank you so much for listening. Even though it’s not hard, you made it through and you listening is a part of you figuring out what’s best for you and your community and how you’re going to respond. So keep listening and keep hanging in there. And thank you for being a trans dashcam subscriber and for sorting through all of the mess that’s going on. If you like the show, we want you to go right now. Don’t delay. Pick up your phone or tablet or go to your computer. And leave us a review right now on Apple Podcasts. You might just hear me read it out on the show and I’ll be back in your feet either way. Even if you take the time or don’t. In a couple of weeks, to sort through all of the shenanigans that come up between now and then. And we know that it will be what an Elon Musk sized full one. I’m your host, Imara Jones. The show is produced by Aubrey Calloway. Xander Adams is our senior sound engineer and contributing producer. And this episode was engineered by Lucy Little, Oliver-Ash Klein oversees production as the director of podcasts at TransLash Media. This show gets to your ears with the help of our social media team, including Morgan Asprey. And of course, this show is made possible by TransLash subscribers like you. Thanks for listening. See you soon. And take care of yourselves.