When the Watchers Are Watching Each Other: The Bondi Binder Debacle
There’s something deeply unsettling about watching the people who are supposed to be investigating serious crimes get caught up in what looks like political surveillance theater. The recent photos of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s binder showing search histories of Congress members looking through unredacted Epstein files has me thinking about just how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone when it comes to privacy, power, and who’s watching whom.
The whole situation is a mess of contradictions that would be almost comical if it weren’t so serious. On one hand, we’ve got lawmakers accessing sensitive documents on government systems—systems that are, by design, monitored. That’s not exactly shocking. Anyone who’s worked in IT (and I’ve spent enough years in the trenches) knows that everything you do on a work computer is logged. Every search, every file access, every email. It’s Security 101.
But here’s where it gets murky. Just because the data exists doesn’t mean it should be weaponized for political point-scoring. The fact that someone compiled these searches into a binder and then carelessly (or perhaps deliberately) had it photographed during a hearing suggests this wasn’t just routine security monitoring. This looks like deliberate tracking of political opponents.
The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife. The same party currently crying foul about privacy violations has an active lawsuit seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars for metadata pulled from their government phones during the January 6 investigation. They argued then that their communications were protected. Now? Apparently, it’s perfectly fine to track what congressional members are searching for in sensitive documents.
Someone online made a good point about working in state government—yes, everything is cataloged and monitored, but there’s supposed to be an independent oversight process. Political actors shouldn’t have direct access to these logs to use as ammunition. That separation exists for a reason. It’s the difference between appropriate security monitoring and creating a surveillance state within our own government.
What bothers me most is the normalization of this behavior. We’ve reached a point where government officials casually display evidence of tracking other government officials, and half the country shrugs while the other half only cares when it’s their team being watched. This isn’t a partisan issue—or at least, it shouldn’t be. The erosion of privacy protections and the weaponization of surveillance tools against political opponents should concern everyone, regardless of which party you vote for.
The technical reality is that Congress members accessing the Epstein files should be using search functions—the files are reportedly a disorganized mess with massive duplication. How else would you navigate thousands of pages? But that practical necessity doesn’t justify creating a political dossier about who searched for what. There’s a vast difference between keeping security logs for legitimate oversight and compiling them to intimidate or embarrass political rivals.
This whole mess reminds me of why I got interested in privacy issues in the first place. Technology gives us incredible capabilities to track, monitor, and analyze behavior. But just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. Every new surveillance capability we normalize, every erosion of privacy protections we accept because it’s happening to people we disagree with, becomes precedent for the next abuse.
The Epstein case itself involves serious allegations about powerful people exploiting vulnerable victims. That investigation deserves to be handled with integrity and professionalism, not turned into a political circus where the focus shifts from seeking justice to scoring points against opponents. The victims in all of this deserve better than having their trauma become another tool in partisan warfare.
Look, I’m not naive about government surveillance. The systems are there, the monitoring happens, and in many cases it’s necessary for security. But we need clear boundaries and independent oversight to prevent abuse. When those boundaries dissolve and surveillance becomes just another political weapon, we’ve lost something fundamental about how democracy is supposed to function.
Maybe what we need is a serious conversation about data access protocols in government, independent oversight mechanisms, and consequences for misusing surveillance capabilities for political purposes. That conversation needs to happen regardless of which party is in power, because today’s political advantage becomes tomorrow’s tool of oppression when the pendulum swings the other way.
The mess we’re in didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t be fixed quickly. But we can start by demanding better—from all sides. Privacy protections shouldn’t be conditional based on political affiliation. Government surveillance tools shouldn’t be weapons in partisan warfare. And maybe, just maybe, we can remember that some principles matter more than temporary political victories.
Otherwise, we’re all just waiting for our turn in someone’s binder.