An FBI counterintelligence operation was exposed for monitoring radical Islamic speech on Facebook, where an FBI agent admitted to sifting through speech "every day, all day long."
FBI agents knocked on the door of Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad to question her about anti-Israel comments made on Facebook, Reason reported.
Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the FBI visit, hoping to shed light on Americans' rights when in the same situation in the future.
"Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," an FBI agent says in the video posted by the lawyer, according to the report.
"So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" Abdeljawad replied, refusing to speak to the FBI agents.
"No, we totally do," a second agent said in the video. "That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything: We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will."
Shibly admitted a lawsuit would be challenging for his client, because the FBI has the authority to investigate Americans, but the case does suggest free speech is under surveillance and scrutiny by the U.S. government, regardless of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
"It's unfortunately normal behavior for the FBI to target the community like this," Shibly told Reason.
"It's wrong what they did. Realistically, with where the community's at, I don't know if we have the bandwidth to go after them for it. More so, it's, OK, continue to exercise your rights. If they do contact you again, they're going to be hearing directly from us. We're going to deal with it. We're going to put them in check."
When reached for comment on the situation by Reason, a representative for the FBI's Oklahoma City's office, Kayla McCleery, declined to comment, but after publication of the story sent a statement, suggesting the FBI visit to Abdeljawad was related to something more than just the anti-Israel Facebook posts.
"Every day, the FBI engages with members of the public in furtherance of our mission, which is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States," McCleery wrote in the statement. "We can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity. The FBI is committed to ensuring our activities are conducted with a valid law enforcement or national security purpose, while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans."
In the video, the FBI told the target it had received the messages from Facebook, suggesting it did more than just view her publicly posted comments that were readily available online.
In Abdeljawad's Facebook posts, she called Israel "Israhell" and warned about government surveillance she was ultimately subjected to.
"Don't fall for their games," she wrote. "Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up.
"If you're Muslim and/or pro-pal consider all your media accounts, Google searches, mail, messenger, local mosques & political events monitored. #NYC #usa #PoliceState #FreePalestine."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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