The federal government’s digital crusade against anyone who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, ushered in a new era of Big Tech weaponization that continues to accelerate.

While many Americans look at modern Britain and thank their lucky stars that freedom of speech has not sunk as low as it has across the pond, the truth is that being hunted down, arrested, put in solitary confinement, or even killed for your posts or nonviolent protests is a reality in Biden-Harris America. In fact, as this article will explain, even “doing journalism while not being progressive” has become a crime in modern America.

The January 6 response unleashed a three-way relationship of freedom destruction aimed at citizens who failed to play by the rules: enormous federal budgets and access to cutting-edge technology, combined with eager citizens and private companies willing to actively support the government in its efforts to inflict maximum punishment on a group primarily guilty of wrongdoing.

The latest excesses of digital nanny-state tyranny can be traced to the fanatical federal response following January 6, which culminated in the largest FBI operation in history, resulting in more than 1,200 arrests and 700 convictions. An estimated 3,000 people entered the Capitol, most without committing violent acts. But the dragnet that followed was like nothing America has ever seen, tracking every move of the “insurrectionists” and destroying their lives and futures to the greatest extent humanly and extrajudicially possible.

The “laser-like” search for everyone who entered the Capitol was conducted using a variety of tools. These tools included tracking geolocation phone records, accessing private banking information, extensive combing of social media profiles, sophisticated facial recognition technology, and the extensive use of enthusiastic citizen informants. The liberal media glorified these sleuths as “sedition hunters.” They spent many days of unpaid labor tracking down the men and women who entered the Capitol on January 6 and the small number of individuals who committed violent acts that day. They even developed their own J6 tracking app. More than 200,000 tips were received by the FBI in the first few days after the official investigation began.

One of those caught up in the J6 witch hunt is Blaze News investigative journalist and correspondent Steve Baker. On January 6, Baker was working as a freelancer to cover the protests and was one of more than five dozen members of the media who documented the day’s events.

Baker explains: “I didn’t submit my story to the right publication, so I got arrested.”

Video footage shows Baker acting calmly, without violence or provocation, and leaving when ordered to do so by law enforcement. Later that night, however, Baker called Nancy Pelosi a “bitch” on camera, which authorities used to retrospectively accuse his time at the Capitol of participating in the actions of “the mob.” They subsequently charged him with four misdemeanors.

“We can point to literally hundreds of protests and riots that have caused far more damage, where people have died, and the perpetrators have not been prosecuted, their cases have been dropped or they have not been charged at all,” Baker noted.

According to Baker, the difference is that the non-left party has made only one major mistake.

“The big difference was that January 6th was our only event. They’ve collected hundreds of them over decades. We finally did one and they lost their minds, and they activated the largest investigation — FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice — dragnet in the history of the country because our people messed up once.”

A digital war against dissent

Dragnet is far from an exaggeration. Court documents show that Google responded to thousands of government location requests, effectively issuing a “mass injunction” against those in and around the Capitol on the grounds that they may have committed or “witnessed” a crime and therefore were not subject to privacy protections in their data and location. Long story short, Stasi-like tactics and reasoning are commonplace among the upper echelons of the U.S. security apparatus.

As Rachel Weiner and Drew Harwell note, “Since 2016, law enforcement has been using geofence permissions to obtain information from smartphone owners using ‘Google Location History,’ which regularly records an individual’s location using a combination of cell tower, Internet Protocol, wireless, GPS, and Bluetooth data.”

The January 6 response unleashed a three-way relationship of freedom destruction aimed at citizens who failed to play by the rules: enormous federal budgets and access to cutting-edge technology, combined with eager citizens and private companies willing to actively support the government in its efforts to inflict maximum punishment on a group primarily guilty of wrongdoing.

This multi-faceted witch hunt helped the government track down many of the “domestic terrorists,” as Biden called them, along with helping the mainstream corporate media promote countless false narratives. This included breathtaking media platforming of serial rapists like Harry Dunn and David Lazarus, who told a version of events that aligned with the narrative peddled by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic establishment.

“We’ve seen in trials the FBI brag about their ability to follow someone all the way from Texas, all the way through Arkansas, all the way to the Capitol,” Baker said.

“Spent the night in Virginia. Cross the river the next day. You can see that they literally entered the Capitol here. Very accurate, especially considering we had no cell phone reception that day.”

As for the technology on the ground, it is clear that this was also important.

“We know that there were — and this is typical of any crowd — it’s not just related to January 6th. But the various federal agencies had surveillance teams deployed into the crowd and they’re using very specific technologies,” Baker explained.

“We have no doubt that they were using real-time facial recognition technology to identify threats. This is not a ‘bad’ thing or something shady in and of itself. But we also know that they were tracking innocent people.”

Research is also ongoing regarding the technology used in public.

“We also believe that there were assets in the crowd that had jamming technology. There are portable units that are used by our special forces and IC that are very effective at jamming very long distances, both backpack-sized and smaller.”

Baker points to “the most high-profile cases and some of the unknown and really tragic, sad cases,” adding that “these people are being lied about, their lives are being ruined, and it doesn’t happen to the other side. It never happens. It just doesn’t happen.”

While Kathy Griffin held up a bloodied mannequin of Donald Trump’s head in a widely shared post with no legal consequences and violent rioters incited by a false narrative set cities ablaze during the Summer of Love, conservatives were faced with a very different reality. Left-wing celebrities and anti-Trump activists routinely issue death threats with little fanfare and few consequences (not to mention street-level violence), but when conservatives get out of line, they’re often swiftly jailed or killed. Just ask Craig Robertson.

Journalists in the spotlight

Blaze News Investigative Journalist Steve Baker in Handcuffs

Baker highlights the horrific abuse of process against Florida journalist JD Rivera.

“He was 100% professional. He didn’t sing, he didn’t sing along. He didn’t wear any political paraphernalia. He had all the professional photo and video equipment. … He was taken by over 20 officers. The crazy thing is the warrant was only for the four predicate offenses, and they took him. They put red lights on his wife, his kids, him, at 6:30 in the morning.”

Rivera refused to lie and accepted an offer to plead guilty. He was convicted on all four counts and sentenced to eight months in prison, with the first 60 days in solitary confinement.

“It turns out JD’s crime wasn’t what he did that day. It was the fact that he was an activist for the Latinos for Trump movement.”

In the case of Baker, who could face a prison sentence for not being a left-wing politician and yet reporting on January 6, a plea deal is still possible. But he wants to know why other journalists don’t have to be checked.

“This trial is disrupting my life and my job tremendously. If I were offered a plea deal, we would negotiate, of course. I would negotiate to the point where I didn’t have to lie. If I was offered a plea deal that said I had entered a restricted area and I had, fine. I did that.