Joseph writes: "The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the
Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson,
Missouri last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The
Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request."
Black Lives Matter protest. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Protesters Since Ferguson
By George Joseph, The Intercept
25 July 15
The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives
Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri
last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Intercept
through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Securitys Office of
Operations Coordination, indicate that the department frequently collects
information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from
public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even
for events expected to be peaceful. The reports confirm social media
surveillance of the protest movement and ostensibly related events in the
cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and New York.
They also show the department watching over gatherings that seem benign and
even mundane. For example, DHS circulated information on a nationwide series
of silent vigils and a DHS-funded agency planned to monitor a funk music
parade and a walk to end breast cancer in the nations capital.
The tracking of domestic protest groups and peaceful gatherings raises
questions over whether DHS is chilling the exercise of First Amendment
rights, and over whether the department, created in large part to combat
terrorism, has allowed its mission to creep beyond the bounds of useful
security activities as its annual budget has grown beyond $60 billion.
The surveillance cataloged in the DHS documents goes back to August of last
year, when protests and riots broke out in Ferguson the day after the
shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. According to two August
11th, 2014 reports, a DHS FEMA WatchOps officer used information from
Twitter and Vine to monitor the riots and reproduced a map, originally
created by a Reddit user, of conflict zones.
Data showing social media activity with Black Lives Matter. (photo: The
Intercept)
This sort of information gathering was not confined to Ferguson. A few days
after rioting and protests there, a DHS email forwarded another message
reporting on the National Moment of Silence, nationwide silent vigils
planned in response to the shooting. The original email listed the cities
with planned vigils and noted that they were being spread on social media
with the hashtag #NMOS14. It also mentioned that NYPDs counterterrorism
intelligence organization would be monitoring the situation. The DHS email
forwarding that information said the data was provided for your situational
awareness.
An April 2015 FEMA memo also shows that the DHS appears to have gathered
information on anti-police-brutality protests in Philadelphia organized by
members of the Philly Coalition for Real Justice and in New York on May Day
at Foley Square, start time 1700
Independent factions are being solicited
to join in on a full day of demonstration through various open source social
media sites, fliers, posters.
In an email to The Intercept, DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee wrote: The Department
of Homeland Security fully supports the right of individuals to exercise
their First Amendment rights and does not provide resources to monitor any
specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or public gathering. The DHS
National Operations Center statutory authority (Section 515 of the Homeland
Security Act (6 U.S.C. § 321d(b))) is limited to providing situational
awareness and establishing a common operating picture for the federal
government, and for state, local, tribal governments as appropriate, in the
event of a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster,
and ensures that critical terrorism and disaster-related information reaches
government decision-makers.
Baher Azmy, a legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights,
however, argues that this providing situational awareness is just another
word for surveillance and that creating this body of knowledge about
perfectly legal events is a problem in and of itself. What they call
situational awareness is Orwellian speak for watching and intimidation,
said Azmy. Over time theres a serious harm to the associational rights of
the protesters and its an effective way to chill protest movements. The
average person would be less likely to go to a Black Lives Matter protest if
the government is monitoring social media, Facebook, and their movements.
Although Lee says in his email that the department does not provide
resources to monitor any specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or
public gathering, some of the documents show that the DHS has produced
minute-by-minute reports on protesters movements in demonstrations.
In response to The Intercepts FOIA request, for example, last month the
DHSs Office of Operations Coordination released over 40 pages of documents
(archive 1, archive 2) detailing live updates and Google Maps images of
Black Lives Matter protestors movements during an April 29th protest in
Washington, DC.
The Watch Desk of the DHSs National Capital Region, FEMA branch compiled
this real-time information despite the fact that an FBI joint intelligence
bulletin shared among several DHS officials the day before noted that there
was no information suggesting violent behavior is planned for Washington,
DC and that previous anti-police brutality protests in the wake of Ferguson
have been peaceful in nature. The bulletin also said that for unspecified
reasons we remain concerned that unaffiliated individuals could potentially
use this event to commit acts of violence in the Chinatown area.
This surveillance of the April 29th protest, which the bulletin explicitly
refers to as a First Amendment-protected event, raises questions about the
potentially compromised state of protesters civil liberties a worry that
also surfaced after it was revealed in 2012 that the DHS was monitoring
Occupy Wall Street.
It is concerning that the government would be diverting resources towards
surveilling citizens who are assembling and expressing their First Amendment
rights, says Maurice Mitchell, an organizer with Blackbird, a group that
helps support activism against police violence in communities across the
country. The fact that our government is doing this I can only assume to
disrupt us is pretty alarming
Directly after 9/11, people said, if
youre not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Well, now
were fighting back against police brutality and extrajudicial killings, yet
they are using this supposedly anti-terrorist infrastructure against us.
Participants, some dressed as robots, march down T street during the annual
DC Funk Parade,
on May, 02, 2015 in Washington, DC. (photo: The Intercept)
An April 29th email from the DHS National Operations Center also mentions
planned surveillance of three seemingly innocuous events, two of which were
associated with historically black neighborhoods. According to the email,
the DHS-funded DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency decided to
conduct a limited stand-up
to monitor a larger than expected Funk Parade
and two other mass gathering events in case any Baltimore-related civil
unrest occurs. It appears that the only Funk Parade in DC occurs in the
historically black neighborhood of U Street. The other two events, according
to another report, produced by the DHS National Capital Regions Information
Collection and Coordination Center, were a community parade in Congress
Heights, a predominantly black neighborhood, and the Avon 39-Walk to End
Breast Cancer.
The documents also elaborate on DHSs response to riots and militant
protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old
African American man who in April died from injuries sustained while in
police custody. DHS deployed officers on the ground and at intelligence
centers. As VICE reported last month, the DHS Federal Protective Service
placed more than 400 officers on duty in Baltimore after Grays death. In
response to the anti-police backlash in Baltimore, DHS agencies also
integrated representatives into two local intelligence centers, the
Governor of Marylands Operations Center and the Mayors Emergency
Operations Center. The documents state the DHSs Federal Protective Service
and Office of Infrastructure Protection worked in close coordination with
State and Local partners to monitor the situation in Baltimore and helped
prepare for a large demonstration that Saturday.
Brendan McQuade, a visiting assistant professor at DePaul University who
researches the DHSs intelligence-gathering fusion centers, believes that
the DHS and its affiliated counterterror organizations monitor Black Lives
Matter to such a exacting degree because the terrorist threats they were
created to stop are exceedingly remote. Fusion centers were set up for
counterterrorism, but it became all crimes, all threats, all hazards
because terrorism isnt a real threat. You are four times more likely to be
struck by lighting than killed by a terrorist, says McQuade. Even at their
moment of emergence it was clear that counterterrorism wasnt going to be
enough.
Raven Rakia, a journalist who investigates state surveillance and policing,
said that the DHS decision to monitor Black Lives Matter is hardly
surprising, given the federal governments well documented history of spying
on and suppressing black social movements and groups like the Black
Panthers. Theres a long history of the federal agencies, especially the
FBI, seeing black resistance organizations as a threat to national
security, says Rakia.
Indeed, the documents provided to The Intercept by DHS may well represent a
small fraction of state surveillance against Black Lives Matter. Over the
last few years, small bits of evidence have trickled out indicating that
other counterterror intelligence organizations like the FBIs Joint
Terrorism Task Force and state police intelligence groups have been involved
in monitoring and apprehending Black Lives Matter activists.
Mitchell, the Blackbird activist, says that this continuing surveillance
serves not only to keep tabs on black activists, but also to deter them from
pushing forward. Surveillance is a tool of fear. When the police are
videotaping you at a protest or pulling you over because youre a well known
activist all of these techniques are designed to create a chilling effect
on peoples organizing. This is no different. The level of surveillance,
however, isnt going to stop us. After all, we organize because our lives
depend on it.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Black Lives Matter protest. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/24/documents-show-department-home
land-security-monitoring-black-lives-matter-since-ferguson/https://firstlook
.org/theintercept/2015/07/24/documents-show-department-homeland-security-mon
itoring-black-lives-matter-since-ferguson/
Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Protesters Since Ferguson
By George Joseph, The Intercept
25 July 15
he Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives
Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri
last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Intercept
through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Securitys Office of
Operations Coordination, indicate that the department frequently collects
information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from
public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even
for events expected to be peaceful. The reports confirm social media
surveillance of the protest movement and ostensibly related events in the
cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and New York.
They also show the department watching over gatherings that seem benign and
even mundane. For example, DHS circulated information on a nationwide series
of silent vigils and a DHS-funded agency planned to monitor a funk music
parade and a walk to end breast cancer in the nations capital.
The tracking of domestic protest groups and peaceful gatherings raises
questions over whether DHS is chilling the exercise of First Amendment
rights, and over whether the department, created in large part to combat
terrorism, has allowed its mission to creep beyond the bounds of useful
security activities as its annual budget has grown beyond $60 billion.
The surveillance cataloged in the DHS documents goes back to August of last
year, when protests and riots broke out in Ferguson the day after the
shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. According to two August
11th, 2014 reports, a DHS FEMA WatchOps officer used information from
Twitter and Vine to monitor the riots and reproduced a map, originally
created by a Reddit user, of conflict zones.
Data showing social media activity with Black Lives Matter. (photo: The
Intercept)
This sort of information gathering was not confined to Ferguson. A few days
after rioting and protests there, a DHS email forwarded another message
reporting on the National Moment of Silence, nationwide silent vigils
planned in response to the shooting. The original email listed the cities
with planned vigils and noted that they were being spread on social media
with the hashtag #NMOS14. It also mentioned that NYPDs counterterrorism
intelligence organization would be monitoring the situation. The DHS email
forwarding that information said the data was provided for your situational
awareness.
An April 2015 FEMA memo also shows that the DHS appears to have gathered
information on anti-police-brutality protests in Philadelphia organized by
members of the Philly Coalition for Real Justice and in New York on May Day
at Foley Square, start time 1700
Independent factions are being solicited
to join in on a full day of demonstration through various open source social
media sites, fliers, posters.
In an email to The Intercept, DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee wrote: The Department
of Homeland Security fully supports the right of individuals to exercise
their First Amendment rights and does not provide resources to monitor any
specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or public gathering. The DHS
National Operations Center statutory authority (Section 515 of the Homeland
Security Act (6 U.S.C. § 321d(b))) is limited to providing situational
awareness and establishing a common operating picture for the federal
government, and for state, local, tribal governments as appropriate, in the
event of a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster,
and ensures that critical terrorism and disaster-related information reaches
government decision-makers.
Baher Azmy, a legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights,
however, argues that this providing situational awareness is just another
word for surveillance and that creating this body of knowledge about
perfectly legal events is a problem in and of itself. What they call
situational awareness is Orwellian speak for watching and intimidation,
said Azmy. Over time theres a serious harm to the associational rights of
the protesters and its an effective way to chill protest movements. The
average person would be less likely to go to a Black Lives Matter protest if
the government is monitoring social media, Facebook, and their movements.
Although Lee says in his email that the department does not provide
resources to monitor any specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or
public gathering, some of the documents show that the DHS has produced
minute-by-minute reports on protesters movements in demonstrations.
In response to The Intercepts FOIA request, for example, last month the
DHSs Office of Operations Coordination released over 40 pages of documents
(archive 1, archive 2) detailing live updates and Google Maps images of
Black Lives Matter protestors movements during an April 29th protest in
Washington, DC.
The Watch Desk of the DHSs National Capital Region, FEMA branch compiled
this real-time information despite the fact that an FBI joint intelligence
bulletin shared among several DHS officials the day before noted that there
was no information suggesting violent behavior is planned for Washington,
DC and that previous anti-police brutality protests in the wake of Ferguson
have been peaceful in nature. The bulletin also said that for unspecified
reasons we remain concerned that unaffiliated individuals could potentially
use this event to commit acts of violence in the Chinatown area.
This surveillance of the April 29th protest, which the bulletin explicitly
refers to as a First Amendment-protected event, raises questions about the
potentially compromised state of protesters civil liberties a worry that
also surfaced after it was revealed in 2012 that the DHS was monitoring
Occupy Wall Street.
It is concerning that the government would be diverting resources towards
surveilling citizens who are assembling and expressing their First Amendment
rights, says Maurice Mitchell, an organizer with Blackbird, a group that
helps support activism against police violence in communities across the
country. The fact that our government is doing this I can only assume to
disrupt us is pretty alarming
Directly after 9/11, people said, if
youre not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Well, now
were fighting back against police brutality and extrajudicial killings, yet
they are using this supposedly anti-terrorist infrastructure against us.
Participants, some dressed as robots, march down T street during the annual
DC Funk Parade,
on May, 02, 2015 in Washington, DC. (photo: The Intercept)
An April 29th email from the DHS National Operations Center also mentions
planned surveillance of three seemingly innocuous events, two of which were
associated with historically black neighborhoods. According to the email,
the DHS-funded DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency decided to
conduct a limited stand-up
to monitor a larger than expected Funk Parade
and two other mass gathering events in case any Baltimore-related civil
unrest occurs. It appears that the only Funk Parade in DC occurs in the
historically black neighborhood of U Street. The other two events, according
to another report, produced by the DHS National Capital Regions Information
Collection and Coordination Center, were a community parade in Congress
Heights, a predominantly black neighborhood, and the Avon 39-Walk to End
Breast Cancer.
The documents also elaborate on DHSs response to riots and militant
protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old
African American man who in April died from injuries sustained while in
police custody. DHS deployed officers on the ground and at intelligence
centers. As VICE reported last month, the DHS Federal Protective Service
placed more than 400 officers on duty in Baltimore after Grays death. In
response to the anti-police backlash in Baltimore, DHS agencies also
integrated representatives into two local intelligence centers, the
Governor of Marylands Operations Center and the Mayors Emergency
Operations Center. The documents state the DHSs Federal Protective Service
and Office of Infrastructure Protection worked in close coordination with
State and Local partners to monitor the situation in Baltimore and helped
prepare for a large demonstration that Saturday.
Brendan McQuade, a visiting assistant professor at DePaul University who
researches the DHSs intelligence-gathering fusion centers, believes that
the DHS and its affiliated counterterror organizations monitor Black Lives
Matter to such a exacting degree because the terrorist threats they were
created to stop are exceedingly remote. Fusion centers were set up for
counterterrorism, but it became all crimes, all threats, all hazards
because terrorism isnt a real threat. You are four times more likely to be
struck by lighting than killed by a terrorist, says McQuade. Even at their
moment of emergence it was clear that counterterrorism wasnt going to be
enough.
Raven Rakia, a journalist who investigates state surveillance and policing,
said that the DHS decision to monitor Black Lives Matter is hardly
surprising, given the federal governments well documented history of spying
on and suppressing black social movements and groups like the Black
Panthers. Theres a long history of the federal agencies, especially the
FBI, seeing black resistance organizations as a threat to national
security, says Rakia.
Indeed, the documents provided to The Intercept by DHS may well represent a
small fraction of state surveillance against Black Lives Matter. Over the
last few years, small bits of evidence have trickled out indicating that
other counterterror intelligence organizations like the FBIs Joint
Terrorism Task Force and state police intelligence groups have been involved
in monitoring and apprehending Black Lives Matter activists.
Mitchell, the Blackbird activist, says that this continuing surveillance
serves not only to keep tabs on black activists, but also to deter them from
pushing forward. Surveillance is a tool of fear. When the police are
videotaping you at a protest or pulling you over because youre a well known
activist all of these techniques are designed to create a chilling effect
on peoples organizing. This is no different. The level of surveillance,
however, isnt going to stop us. After all, we organize because our lives
depend on it.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
