7 ms·

US homeland security surveilling journalists covering Portland protests

24 points by oftenwrong 6y ago

DuskStar 6y ago
Just a thought experiment - if there were reporters from "the boogaloo times" wandering around protests, would it make sense for the police to keep track of them? If your conception of the protests/riots is that they're largely driven by the media (both traditional and social), then trying to get ahead of the news would make sense when trying to end the riots/protests. And tracking the relevant journalists would help with that.
- sukilot 6y ago
  The Rwandan genocide was led by "the media": Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM)
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    To be fair, it was also partly government (or government-leader) sponsored, so not really the sort of situation where the government keeping tabs on the "media" might have helped.
sukilot 6y ago
The Guardian and WaPo are pushing a misleading narrative. By their own admission, the so-called "surveillance" is collecting, analyzing, and disseminating published news reports about the government, especially reports that included leaked confidential information. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dhs-compiled-intelligence-reports-on-journalists-who-published-leaked-documents/2020/07/30/5be5ec9e-d25b-11ea-9038-af089b63ac21_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dhs-compile...
- Kednicma 6y ago
  WaPo wasn't the only recipient of the leak. The other, Lawfare, covered this as well [0]. "I&A personnel are permitted to engage in physical surveillance, the use of mail covers, and the use of monitoring devices," as long as they can justify it as 'counterintelligence'. They need to have a justification first, but LEOs are great at coming up with empty ad-hoc justifications. [0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/dhs-authorizes-domestic-surveillance-protect-statues-and-monuments https://www.lawfareblog.com/dhs-authorizes-domestic-surveill...
roenxi 6y ago
This article is surreptitiously evidence-lite. One of the links suggest that the 'surveillance' involved 'summarizing tweets written by two journalists'. Technically they used a reporting system that was supposed to be for terrorists. This is useful evidence for people who still believe that 'the terrorists' is something other than a euphemism for 'anyone a government department doesn't like today'. But there aren't any surprises here.

24 points by oftenwrong 6y ago

Just a thought experiment - if there were reporters from "the boogaloo times" wandering around protests, would it make sense for the police to keep track of them? If your conception of the protests/riots is that they're largely driven by the media (both traditional and social), then trying to get ahead of the news would make sense when trying to end the riots/protests. And tracking the relevant journalists would help with that.

sukilot 6y ago
The Rwandan genocide was led by "the media": Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM)
- DuskStar 6y ago
  To be fair, it was also partly government (or government-leader) sponsored, so not really the sort of situation where the government keeping tabs on the "media" might have helped.

sukilot 6y ago

The Guardian and WaPo are pushing a misleading narrative. By their own admission, the so-called "surveillance" is collecting, analyzing, and disseminating published news reports about the government, especially reports that included leaked confidential information. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dhs-compiled-intelligence-reports-on-journalists-who-published-leaked-documents/2020/07/30/5be5ec9e-d25b-11ea-9038-af089b63ac21_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dhs-compile...

Kednicma 6y ago
WaPo wasn't the only recipient of the leak. The other, Lawfare, covered this as well [0]. "I&A personnel are permitted to engage in physical surveillance, the use of mail covers, and the use of monitoring devices," as long as they can justify it as 'counterintelligence'. They need to have a justification first, but LEOs are great at coming up with empty ad-hoc justifications. [0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/dhs-authorizes-domestic-surveillance-protect-statues-and-monuments https://www.lawfareblog.com/dhs-authorizes-domestic-surveill...

roenxi 6y ago

This article is surreptitiously evidence-lite. One of the links suggest that the 'surveillance' involved 'summarizing tweets written by two journalists'. Technically they used a reporting system that was supposed to be for terrorists. This is useful evidence for people who still believe that 'the terrorists' is something other than a euphemism for 'anyone a government department doesn't like today'. But there aren't any surprises here.