COINTELPRO IS NOT DEAD

Yes, folks. This is the same FBI that is now trying to influence the election towards Trump.

...This October, reports revealed that 500 law enforcement agencies used Geofeedia, a site that collects data, to sift through and gather social media posts. While the data compiled was meant for advertisers, it is being used to surveil and monitor Movement for Black Lives protesters and actions. In 2015, The Intercept obtained documents, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, demonstrating that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and state and local law enforcement agencies began routinely surveilling and sharing information about protests as early as August 2014 after the police killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked the movement.

...Reports also describe how the New York Police Department, the Metropolitan Transit Authority's counterterrorism unit and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force coordinated efforts to surveil protests against police violence in New York. In July 2016, activists and community organizers in Cleveland were visited by DHS and FBI agents prior to the Republican National Convention. In short, the federal government is using counterterrorism tactics and measures employed for national security purposes to surveil a movement that was in part a response to violent policing and surveillance of Black people.

...The ongoing mass surveillance of legal protest activity by and for Black people raises serious constitutional and moral concerns. On October 20, Color of Change, along with my organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a complaint in federal court under FOIA against the FBI and DHS, seeking to expose this ongoing aggressive government surveillance of Movement for Black Lives activists, organizers and protests. The public deserves to know what the federal government is doing to silence and "destroy" protests against police violence, criminal justice and racial inequity.

Anti-Black #Surveillance Did Not End With COINTELPRO, writes @Steph_Llanes https://t.co/GHDsbdFlj0 #BlackLivesMatter

— Truthout (@truthout) 1 November 2016