Permanent Chains: When Surveillance Becomes Guilt

How “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” is rewriting American justice…

I’m not just worried; I’m enraged. We’re watching our system of government being systematically, step-by-step refashioned into a surveillance-fueled engine of political vengeance.

Even worse, the same chilling logic that ruled Stalin’s courts — “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” — has become this administration’s sinister operating principle. It retrofits guilt to the target, not justice to evidence.

That phrase isn’t hyperbole. It’s rooted in dark history. It was popularized in the Soviet Union, attributed to figures like Soviet jurist Andrey Vyshinsky or the notorious secret police chief (and Putin’s hero) Lavrentiy Beria. The sentiment is unmistakable: Arrest or investigate the person first, cook up the criminal case later.

History proves the simple fact that nobody’s invulnerable to this. Everybody has made some sort of error, a typo or mistake on a tax or mortgage form, possession of federally-criminal marijuana, a protest post on social media that could be spun as a “threat.” With a thorough enough investigation — like what they’re doing to John Bolton right now — most any of us could be hauled before a court on trumped-up charges. Particularly now that various forms of speech (like criticizing Netanyahu or calling for boycotting Israel) are being functionally criminalized.

One 1940 Soviet transcript even has Molotov telling Juozas Urbšys that suspects should be “arrested and brought before the court, and the articles will be found,” a precise blueprint for manufacturing guilt.

Before that, 18th-century Scottish jurist Lord Braxfield said, “Let them bring me prisoners, and I will find them law,” and Russian proverbs like “if there’s a neck, there’s a collar” delivered the same moral decay: justice shaped by authority, not truth. This isn’t ancient lore; it’s the root of state-constructed guilt.

Now that ancient horror is pulsing through our institutions at the insistence of Donald Trump and his lickspittles in the DOJ and DHS.

Case in point: Kilmar Abrego García — a father and husband of an American citizen, living in Maryland, protected by law, with three young U.S. citizen children and official permission to remain in the United States — was illegally deported to El Salvador. The administration called it a simple “clerical error” in March 2025, but public outcry and legal filings revealed something far more grotesque: Abrego was imprisoned in a dictator’s notorious “no exit” concentration camp famous for its harrowing conditions, was tortured, and then — so Trump’s people could save face — then re-arrested when he returned successfully.

He now faces human smuggling charges from 2022, based on testimony from a convicted criminal who was offered leniency in exchange for it, only after he challenged the deportation. Worse, ICE is plotting to send him not to Costa Rica — where he might be safe — but to Uganda, a country he has no ties to and where few speak Spanish. His lawyers paint it as vindictive prosecution, as, apparently, did a federal judge yesterday, a punishment for daring to fight back.

This is not legal enforcement. It’s political vengeance masquerading as justice: identify the man first, find or define the crime later.

Look at John Bolton. Months after any plausible need for urgency, the FBI raided his home, dredging up classified material cases that were long dormant. The kickoff? He ended up on the 60-plus-names enemies list now-FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.”

That’s “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” in its most classic form.

But this malignant logic is no longer confined to political elites or contested legal cases; it’s sweeping across everyday dissent. Post the wrong meme on Facebook or X, show up at a rally with your face captured on camera — even once — and you can be flagged just like in China, Hungary, and Russia.

Big Brother is now AI, drones, and facial recognition systems feeding centralized dossiers and giant data companies working with government police agencies.

Law enforcement and federal agents are actively using surveillance cameras, social media mining, facial recognition, and geolocation tools to identify demonstrators, and — when Trump tries to steal an election or some other outrage and people pour into the streets — that power can be turned on anyone who dares to dissent.

Take StingRays, those cellphone spoofing devices. These bogus cell towers trick your phone into thinking you’re connected to a real cell tower (they pass through calls and data) but once connected they can read pretty much everything useful to the police that’s on your phone without your knowledge.

They’re now routinely used at protests and public events to harvest data on everyone nearby, not just criminal suspects. In one recent anti-ICE protest, researchers noticed anomalies in signal patterns, evidence of IMSI-catcher StingRay deployment. Yet law enforcement usually refuses to comment, denies their use, or hides behind national security secrecy, even as thousands of these devices have now been deployed to police and federal agencies across the country.

Imagine: you’re at a peaceful protest, you post a live stream or an update to Facebook or X. A drone snags your face, surveillance cameras tag you on the edges of the crowd, your phone pings to a StingRay, or your social media post is scraped and now you’re “the man.” The system is primed to “discover” the crime once it has your name.

Fed into the federal or state machines, that record becomes a justification for visa revocation, job termination, or even criminal charges, all not because you committed a crime, but because you dared challenge Dear Leader’s growing police state. Because you exercised your First Amendment right to protest.

As I wrote in “The Hidden History of Big Brother in America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy,” this is 21st century authoritarianism with digital tools: identity becomes guilt, data becomes indictment, dissent becomes criminal. This is authoritarian policing in the digital age: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

And it’s happening all across the country. ICE used AI-generated lists — scraped from sites like the shadowy pro-Netanyahu Canary Mission — to target student protesters. Visas have been revoked and people deported over minor infractions like speeding tickets and “trespassing” on university or city property.

One student was detained on campus and imprisoned for weeks with no warrant ever shown; another, a green card holder, had their status threatened because of political views in clear violation of the Bill of Rights. Others lost their scholarships or were thrown out of universities.

And it’s not just the students or protestors; they’re now going after institutions they see as not sufficiently compliant with their fascist agenda. In an echo of Hungary and Russia shutting down or cowing independent universities, Harvard had its $2.3 billion funding frozen because it wouldn’t capitulate to political demands.

All anchored in the same twisted logic: identify the person, then dig deep into their past to find something, anything, they may have done wrong. “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Another example are how the Trump police state is going after California Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Fed Governor Lisa Cook for checking the wrong box on mortgage applications; all are now looking at years in prison because Trump labeled them enemies and his toadies “found the crime.”

You could be next. Or your neighbor or best friend.

This is not speculation or hyperbole. Our institutions are bending to politics in ways that echo the way Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Lukashenko, Putin, and Orbán successfully crushed dissent. Neutral, professional civil servants were replaced with loyalists, their versions of the Department of Justice independence were gutted, universities were cowed, airwaves surveilled, and, like here, their phones are “read” when they show up at a demonstration. Democracy is unraveling under the weight of fear and retribution.

If this doesn’t spur us into action, nothing will.

Democratic leaders must not treat this as partisan theater; it is existentially dangerous. We must:

• Demand full transparency on surveillance tools and facial recognition programs.

• Ban law enforcement’s use of StingRays and IMSI-catchers without warrants and full public reporting.

• Prohibit facial recognition against legal demonstrators.

• Require social media privacy and end secret algorithms and back-door deals with federal police when it comes to demonstrators and protestors.

• Restore DOJ and civil service independence from the White House.

• Safeguard visa rights and immigrant protections.

• Elevate Abrego García’s and John Bolton’s cases to national moral action, making them impossible to ignore.

• Hold hearings, issue subpoenas, defund institutions that weaponize law against dissent, and highlight this threat in every forum from state and federal House and Senate chambers to the streets.

We cannot allow the old Soviet (and modern Russian) slogan—“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” — to become the default of American governance.

What’s happening to Bolton, Clapper, Comey, Cook, James, Schiff, Taylor, et al — and student protestors across the country — is a crime against our Constitution and traditional American values. To go along with it is to accept Trump’s assertion that protest is culpability, dissent is danger, and democracy is a relic.

We must fight now, or what’s left of our democracy will slip into permanent chains.

Louise’s Daily Song: “Show Me the Man and I’ll Show You the Crime”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink comes out soon and is now available for pre-order.
You can follow me on Blue Sky here: https://bsky.app/profile/thomhartmann.bsky.social