An investigation details Operation Safety Net, a sprawling surveillance program in Minnesota to track protesters and journalists after George Floyd's murder
Minnesota law enforcement agencies that fed Operation Safety Net now face documented evidence that they tracked journalists alongside protesters, exposing them to public records scrutiny, litigation risk, and legislative oversight.
Journalists and protesters identified through the program — including via Intrepid Response's cross-agency photo sharing — gain a documented basis to demand records, challenge the program's legality, and seek removal of their data.
Second-order effects
Other police departments running similar protest-monitoring efforts, of the kind documented in Portland and via Dataminr's police feeds, face pressure to disclose or defend their own programs now that a named model has been exposed in detail.
Vendors supplying surveillance tooling to police — the app layer like Intrepid Response, the social-media firehose layer like Dataminr — can expect procurement reviews and contract challenges as cities reassess these tools.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, protest surveillance consolidates from scattered ad hoc monitoring into named, multi-agency programs with shared tooling, which raises the stakes for state-level regulation — and, as New Orleans' secretly run camera network shows, local ordinances alone have proven insufficient to stop it.
The documented targeting of journalists points toward a structural collision between protest-policing surveillance and press-freedom protections, likely to shape future litigation and public-records law around law-enforcement data sharing.
The trend: Protest policing is shifting from ad hoc social-media monitoring toward formalized multi-agency surveillance programs with shared tooling, with investigative journalism and local ordinances so far the main counterweights.
This is exactly what people are talking about when they say “defund the police”. It's not your neighbourhood traffic cop. It's the trappings of a police state that need to go. The militarisation of police and the targeted surveillance of peaceful activists and journalists! https:…
We live in a police state, and our city's leadership is unwilling or unable to control it. There has to be accountability for these agencies who publicly spy on Americans and violate their First Amendment rights. If we can condemn this elsewhere, we must condemn it here, too. htt…
Shout out to everyone working to explode funding for surveillance programs like these across the country under the guise of “fund the police” when in fact police budgets are already at some of their highest levels in US history across the country. 🤗 no facts, just vibes https://t…
I also think it's important to add that this surveillance isn't anything new for Minnesota activists, and it wasn't just in Minneapolis. Even last year, the Northern Lights Task Force was doing just as deep, and much more violent, surveillance of Line 3 protestors.
Police state: repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular, publicly known legal procedures. https://twitter.com/...
We found evidence of a complex engine of surveillance tailor-made for keeping close tabs on protesters and sharing that information among local and federal agencies, regardless of whether the subjects were suspected of any wrongdoing
The first in a series covering Operation Safety Net and the police response to protest and civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd. The latest from me and @TateRyMo based on thousands of documents and dozens of interviews: https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
Taken together, they reveal how advanced surveillance techniques and technologies employed by the state have changed the nature of protest in the United States, effectively bringing an end to Americans' ability to exercise their First Amendment rights anonymously in public spaces
Documents unearthed as part of this investigation shine a light on secretive surveillance programs, new technology vendors, murky supply chains used to arm riot police, and several watch lists, as well as other previously unreported information.
No activists will find anything shocking about this report. But more people should be aware just how far the police, local, state, and federal governments are going in terms of surveillance of legal activism. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
Big story out @techreview this morning: How police created a surveillance machine in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Great investigation from @TateRyMo and @MinneapoliSam https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
Our investigation shows that federal support for OSN was extensive, involving the US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At least six FBI agents served in executive and intelligence roles for the program
Big new investigation out today from @TateRyMo & @MinneapoliSam into the secretive surveillance infrastructure put into place in Minneapolis to track protestors and journalists https://t.co/yrHMh4qMUw