Time & Perspective Quote by Sherman Austin

There is a blunt, almost weary calm in Austin's delivery: the shock has already been spent. Saying he "wasn't the slightest bit surprised" after "over 100 hits from the Department of Defense" frames state surveillance not as an extraordinary scandal but as background radiation for dissent. The intent is twofold: to document a pattern and to normalize the expectation of being watched, which is its own indictment.

"Hits" is doing a lot of cultural work here. It's a plain, early-internet metric that sounds technical and harmless, the kind of thing you might brag about in a marketing meeting. Paired with "Department of Defense", it becomes eerie: traffic as a trace of power, a digital footprint that hints at intimidation without ever needing a knock on the door. Austin's specificity (a number, an agency, a duration) functions like receipts, but the tone refuses melodrama. That restraint is strategic. It makes the surveillance feel routine, bureaucratic, scalable - less spy thriller than spreadsheet.

The context, especially for activists operating online, is the post-90s reality where platforms became public squares and evidence lockers at once. Austin is signaling that the state doesn't just react to activism; it pre-reads it. Monitoring "for a very long time" implies a presumption of guilt, a posture in which political speech is treated as potential threat. The subtext is a warning to peers: your audience isn't only supporters and opponents, it's institutions with budgets, mandates, and patience. And if you're not surprised, it's because the system has taught you not to be.