Surveillance

Max Blumenthal: Why Did The Feds Question Me?

February 27, 2025 Max Blumenthal, Consortium News. Educate! Journalists, Max Blumenthal, National Security State, Surveillance

As I approached the customs line at Dulles International Airport early on the morning of Feb. 24, a man called out to me, “Mr. Blumenthal?” He identified himself as an officer with Customs and Border Protection, and led me into a cavernous secondary screening room, where he treated me to a strange and disconcerting questioning session. I had just returned from a leisurely trip to Nicaragua with my family during which I participated in no political activities. But the agent’s line of questioning suggested federal authorities had little interest in my visit to Nicaragua, a country that happens to be controlled by a socialist-oriented government on Washington’s hit list.

Campus Police Using Israeli Spy Tech To Crack Down On Students

February 25, 2025 Tara Goodarzi, Truthout. Educate! Campus Movement, Free Speech and Assembly, Israel, Palestine, Repression, Student Activism, Surveillance

In the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump announced he would be “fighting anti-Semitism” on college campuses by prosecuting and revoking visas for certain students deemed to be “Hamas sympathizers.” In a fact sheet accompanying an executive order with “measures to combat anti-Semitism,” Trump threatens students: “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” The order itself states that the Department of Education will seek to familiarize institutions of higher education with these goals, so that universities may “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead … to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

Burying The CIA’s Assange Secrets

February 19, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Legal System, Surveillance

A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit pursued by four American attorneys and journalists, who alleged that the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo spied on them while they were visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy. “The subject matter of this litigation,” Judge John Koeltl determined, “is subject to the state secrets privilege in its entirety.” Any answer to the allegations against the CIA would “reveal privileged information.” Few publications followed this case as closely as The Dissenter. It unfolded at the same time that the U.S. government pursued the extradition of Assange, making any outcome potentially significant.

Malcolm X, Black Nationalism And The Cold War

February 19, 2025 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Black America, Black Liberation, COINTELPRO, Malcolm X, Surveillance

During his stay in prison in the state of Massachusetts between 1946-1952, Malcolm X began to reflect seriously on his life’s mission. He would join the Nation of Islam (NOI) after being urged to do so by four siblings, a fact documented in a series of letters archived in his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files which contained tens of thousands of pages. In extensive letters written to his brothers he strongly stated that his future career would be preaching the religious beliefs enunciated by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.

The Militia And The Mole

January 11, 2025 Joshua Kaplan, Pro Publica. Educate! Donald Trump, Militias, Right wing extremism, Surveillance

John Williams kept a backpack filled with everything he’d need to go on the run: three pairs of socks; a few hundred dollars cash; makeshift disguises and lock-picking gear; medical supplies, vitamins and high-calorie energy gels; and thumb drives that each held more than 100 gigabytes of encrypted documents, which he would quickly distribute if he were about to be arrested or killed. On April 1, 2023, Williams retrieved the bag from his closet and rushed to his car. He had no time to clean the dishes that had accumulated in his apartment.

Cellphone Seizures And The Courts

December 24, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Electronics, Privacy, Surveillance, TSA

After years of conflicting decisions by federal district courts across the country on whether Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents can search your cell phone and laptop at ports of entry, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that, “the routine inspection and search of a traveler’s electronics, or for that matter, any other type of property, at the border may be conducted without a warrant, probable cause, or even individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.” In reaching the decision, the court agreed with several other circuit courts, but put itself at odds with others and many (lower) federal district courts around the country.

How Chicago Organizers Managed To Rid The City Of ShotSpotter

December 9, 2024 Noah Berlatsky, Next City. Organize! Chicago, Gun violence, Illinois, Police, ShotSpotter, Surveillance

In September, the city of Chicago stopped using ShotSpotter, a sensor system designed to detect gunshots and alert police and first responders. During his 2023 campaign for Mayor, Brandon Johnson promised to end the use of the expensive technology, which he has referred to as “walkie-talkies on a stick.” Johnson’s decision to end ShotSpotter was not popular with the Chicago City Council. Alderman Silvana Tabares issued an inflammatory statement declaring that “every gunshot victim left bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worthy sacrifice in the eyes of the mayor for his radical agenda.”

Cleveland Police Commission Pushes Through Drone Policy

November 30, 2024 Catherine Henchek, Liberation News. Resist! Cleveland, Drones, Ohio, Police, State Repression, Surveillance

Community members packed Cleveland’s Community Police Commission meeting on Nov. 20 to oppose a new police drone policy. The policy, spearheaded by Commissioner Piet van Lier, included sections which provide Cleveland police arguments to use drones over protests under the guise of other police operations. After public outrage and a contentious meeting, two authorized drone uses in the policy which could target protesters were removed. However, the policy that was approved by the Commission still included concerning language, such as the following in the Operational Procedures...

Chris Hedges Report: Surveillance Education

November 24, 2024 Chris Hedges, Consortium News. Resistance Report Education, Military Industrial Complex, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

Surveillance tools have become ubiquitous in schools and universities. Technologies, promising greater safety and enhanced academic performance, have allowed Gaggle, Securly, Bark, and others to collect detailed data on students. These technologies, however, have not only failed to deliver on their promises, but have eviscerated student privacy. This is especially true in poor communities, where there is little check on wholesale surveillance. This data is often turned against students, especially the poor and students of color, accelerating the school-to-prison pipeline. When students and teachers know they are being watched and monitored it stifles intellectual debate, any challenging of the dominant narrative and inquiry into abuses of power.

The High-Tech War On Working Class Black Atlantans

November 21, 2024 Tunde Osazua, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Atlanta, militarism, Police, Surveillance

Modern technologies like facial recognition, predictive policing, and expansive surveillance networks are not mere tools of public safety; they are instruments of militarization, deeply embedded in the war against Black communities in Atlanta, the most surveilled city in the U.S. These technologies target Black poor and working class neighborhoods disproportionately, enforcing capitalist exploitation and reinforcing racial hierarchies. Surveillance in Atlanta operates as a militarized extension of policing, transforming Black neighborhoods into domestic battlefields.

Organizations Call For An End To AI Use In Immigration Decisions

September 6, 2024 Hannah Zhao and Matthew Guariglia, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Resist! Artificial Intelligence, Detention Centers, Human Rights, Immigration, Surveillance

EFF, Just Futures Law, and 140 other groups have sent a letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the immigration system. For years, EFF has been monitoring and warning about the dangers of automated and so-called “AI-enhanced” surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border. As we’ve made clear, algorithmic decision-making should never get the final say on whether a person should be policed, arrested, denied freedom, or, in this case, are worthy of a safe haven in the United States. The letter is signed by a wide range of organizations, from civil liberties nonprofits to immigrant rights groups, to government accountability watchdogs, to civil society organizations.

AI Surveillance As A Tool Of State Repression

August 31, 2024 Michigan People's Defense Committee, Scalawag. Educate! Artificial Intelligence, State Repression, Surveillance, Systemic Racism

AI technology poses a significant threat to communities that are struggling for liberation. The technology is used to create large surveillance networks accessible to police, military, and private companies. Frequently this technology is installed without the consent or knowledge of the people it surveils. In the United States, AI technology is used to surveil Black and Brown communities and target people for arrest. Abroad it is used for bombing campaigns and genocide. In August 2023, a GPS tracker was found on a vehicle registered to one of the codefendants known as the Traverse City 3, a trio of queer activists.

US Won’t Comply With Investigation Into CIA Operation Targeting Assange

August 1, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Spain, Surveillance

The United States government notified a Spanish criminal court that it still will not comply with requests from Spanish investigators, who are trying to uncover details about an espionage operation that targeted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. As the Spanish newspaper El País reported on July 29, Courtney E. Lee, a trial attorney in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, claimed that providing information to Spain’s national high court would “interfere” with “ongoing U.S. litigation.” Assange was the target of an unprecedented political prosecution that was globally condemned as a threat to press freedom. The case ended in a plea deal in late June after U.S. prosecutors feared that Assange might win his appeal against extradition.

US Postal Service’s Attack On Privacy

June 29, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Constitution, Surveillance, US Postal Service, USPS

I've written in the past about the U.S. Postal Service’s so-called Mail Cover Program. It allows postal employees to photograph and send to federal law enforcement organizations (F.B.I., Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service, etc.) the front and back of every piece of mail the Post Office processes. It also retains the information digitally and provides it to any government agency that wants it — without a warrant. I’m not an attorney, of course. But I’m also not an idiot. And that policy strikes me as a violation of Americans’ civil liberties. The Mail Cover Program has been known publicly for quite some time.

Leaked Docs Reveal British Intelligence’s Exploitation Of Palestinian Refugees

May 16, 2024 Kit Klarenberg, MintPress News. Educate! Israel, Palestine, Refugees, Surveillance, United Kingdom (UK)

Leaked files obtained by MintPress News detail the intensive interest taken in Palestinians both within and without the country by British intelligence operatives and Foreign Office-funded and directed cutouts over many years. Collectively, the material leaves little room for doubt that the British government has long sought to covertly surveil, infiltrate, and manipulate Palestinians for malign ends while exploiting their suffering to serve London’s geopolitical objectives. Throughout the Syrian proxy conflict, British intelligence ran expansive psychological warfare programs, targeting the local population and Western citizens.

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