However, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with technology. Like we've seen this summer with local police using military hardware, there will always be the urge to inappropriately deploy military-grade technologies in a civilian setting.
There was a mix of terrorists, insurrectionists, rioters, hooligans and protesters in the crowd. Those who entered the Capitol were no longer protesters. Those damaging or stealing property were more than hooligans. Those aiming to disrupt the election count were more than rioters. And those with aims on harming members of Congress were more than incompetent insurrectionists.
The truth is it's all mixed. I look at this also as a failure for a movement to generate leaders with a clear strategic vision that in turn guides participants with consistent boundaries. When, instead, the feeling is simply "anger" without a specific plan for channeling it usefully, you get people doing their own thing, others following along, etc.
What would you call the people who entered the Capital building and stayed inside the red velvet ropes, who took selfies and made videos like they were on a tour?
This technology was of course also used to identify those laying siege to various federal buildings over the summer, but I guess it’s okay now. This is to say that the context in which this technology is used obviously matters a lot and is directly related to who holds the reigns of cultural power. Yay.
Somewhere on an older hard-disk I have a copy of all the terrorist incidents starting from the 1960s up to 2006 or so (web-scrapped at the time when that data was still partially open), no-where in there had I seen this type of events, there were mostly bombings, airplane kidnapping and the like. What you are describing falls though under the "insurrection" label, heck, we were saying the same thing about Ceausescu in December 1989 and thankfully no-one branded us as terrorists (I'm from Romania).
