SpyVeillance: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Fri Apr 1 14:53:17 PDT 2022


> Zuboff describes in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
> Zuboffs book and another called Black Box Society


https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/03/1046676/police-surveillance-minnesota-george-floyd/

The secret police: Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in
Minnesota after George Floyd’s murder

An investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals a sprawling,
technologically sophisticated system in Minnesota designed for closely
monitoring protesters.

By
    Tate Ryan-Mosley
    Sam Richards

March 3, 2022

Law enforcement agencies in Minnesota have been carrying out a
secretive, long-running surveillance program targeting civil rights
activists and journalists in the aftermath of the murder of George
Floyd in May 2020. Run under a consortium known as Operation Safety
Net, the program was set up a year ago, ostensibly to maintain public
order as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin went on trial for
Floyd’s murder. But an investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals
that the initiative expanded far beyond its publicly announced scope
to include expansive use of tools to scour social media, track cell
phones, and amass detailed images of people’s faces.

Documents obtained via public records requests show that the operation
persisted long after Chauvin’s trial concluded. What’s more, they show
that police used the extensive investigative powers they’d been
afforded under the operation to monitor individuals who weren’t
suspected of any crime.

MIT Technology Review’s investigation includes thousands of documents
and more than two dozen interviews with Minnesota state employees,
policing experts, and activists. Taken together, they paint a picture
of a state operation intent on identifying participants through
secretive surveillance operations. Though it was undertaken by
nonmilitary governmental agencies using public funds, large swaths of
its inner workings have gone undisclosed. 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.

Operation Safety Net (OSN) was announced in February 2021, a month
before Chauvin’s trial was set to begin. At a press conference also
attended by Hennepin County sheriff David Hutchinson, Medaria
Arradondo, then Minneapolis’s police chief, described the effort as a
unified command that would enable law enforcement officials to mount a
regional response in case protests turned violent.

Publicly, OSN acknowledged that federal agencies would assist in
monitoring for threats of violence and activity by out-of-state
extremist groups, and that an “intel team” would be established to
help share information surrounding these threats. Our investigation
shows that federal support for OSN was in fact 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.

According to OSN’s website, which was shut down on January 19, the
program’s mission was to “preserve and protect lawful First Amendment
nonviolent protests and demonstrations before, during, and after the
trial of Chauvin, who was charged in George Floyd’s death.” The site
added, “Operation Safety Net is also dedicated to preventing violent
civil disturbances, assaultive actions, property damage, fires, and
looting to government buildings, businesses, and critical
infrastructure.”

OSN hasn’t tweeted, posted on Facebook, or held a press conference
since the week Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict was issued in April
2021. At that time, officials told the public that the program was
“ramping down,” apart from weekly coordination meetings and
preparations for future trials. “We are already starting to maneuver,
move people off of property protection details,” Major General Shawn
Manke of the Minnesota National Guard said at the time. “We’re
preparing those soldiers and airmen to leave the Twin Cities metro
area and head back to their locations.”

In an email to MIT Technology Review in October 2021, spokesperson
Doug Neville wrote that OSN is “not an ongoing operation.”

However, according to emails obtained and reviewed as part of our
investigation, the operation does appear to be actively ongoing, with
regular planning meetings of the executive and intelligence
teams—where it has been referred to as “OSN 2.0”—and sharing of
intelligence documents. No information about the goals or extent of
the new engagement has been publicly disclosed and officials contacted
about the program denied it had been formally renewed.

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. Taken together, they reveal
how advanced surveillance techniques and technologies employed by the
state, sometimes in an extra-legal fashion, 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. The Supreme Court has consistently
upheld the right to anonymous free speech as a core tenet of the First
Amendment, particularly when it comes to unpopular speech.

An email to reporter Sam Richards on October 25, 2021 from
spokesperson Doug Neville asserting that OSN is not an ongoing
operation.

The operation

When Operation Safety Net was announced on February 17, 2021,
Chauvin’s trial was looming. It had been nine months since the
Minneapolis Police Department’s third precinct headquarters had been
burned down amid tumultuous protest, and many feared that tensions
could flare again. During the press conference—flanked by local and
state law enforcement leadership, including the National Guard—Chief
Arradondo laid out the program’s plan. He explained, “The focus and
concentration will be in and around our downtown plaza corridor … This
will be a unified command. It will allow all of us to be able to
respond metro and region-wide if needed.”

At the same press conference, Sheriff David Hutchinson of Hennepin
County, which includes Minneapolis, spoke about how he would use
county resources to protect the courthouse where Chauvin’s trial would
be held. Hutchinson explained the main role of the sheriff’s office:
“Court security. Our job is to ensure the integrity of the court
proceedings and the safety of everybody who’s a part of it … I’m
confident together we can ensure the court proceedings take place with
no disruptions.” Each law enforcement leader who spoke promised that
protests would be allowed. Some claimed they were encouraged. John
Harrington, commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, said: “We
are going to protect people’s constitutional rights and we are going
to protect people’s property.”

The city of Minneapolis also planned to pay local influencers to
communicate on the city’s behalf in an effort to “de-escalate” and
“fight misinformation.” After much criticism, these plans were later
canceled.

    To support MIT Technology Review's journalism, please consider
becoming a subscriber.

Operation Safety Net was designed to have four phases, according to
police officials. According to slides from the initial press
conference, phase one involved preliminary planning, and phase two was
meant for any protests that arose during jury selection. Chauvin’s
trial began on March 29, 2021, in Minneapolis. Phase three was to
start when the trial reached the closing arguments and a verdict, and
Arradondo told residents to expect a “visual” ramp-up of police
presence at that point. According to the operational plan outlined in
the first press conference, this phase was to usher in the “full
deployment of law enforcement and the national guard.” Armored
vehicles, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear
gas, as well as drones and other aircraft, were all features of phase
three.
Colonel Matthew Langer at the kickoff press conference. “This is a
joint effort between the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and the
state of Minnesota, as well as the Metro Transit, Ramsey County, and
other local jurisdictions. Agencies that are part of the effort
include Minneapolis Police, Metro Transit Police, Hennepin County
Sheriff’s Office, Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, the Minnesota State
Patrol, the Minnesota National Guard, and other entities.” The FBI and
DHS were also key partners in the program.

But Operation Safety Net would enter phase three on the morning of
April 12—a week before closing arguments and eight days before the
verdict in Chauvin’s case was delivered. Its focus would turn from the
trial to protests in Brooklyn Center, a suburb north of Minneapolis,
where a police officer had shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright
during a traffic stop the day before.

The night of April 11, activists gathered outside the Brooklyn Center
Police Department in defiance of a curfew. The police station was
quickly fortified by fencing and barriers. Police made liberal use of
tear gas over several nights of protests; it wafted into apartment
buildings surrounding the police station and injured several
residents. The lights on the station were turned off in an effort to
make it harder for protesters to see and target officers. News reports
estimated that 100 protesters encountered hundreds of police officers,
as well as approximately 100 National Guard members. Around 30 arrests
were made.

Related Story
Inside the rise of police department real-time crime centers

Police departments want to know as much as they legally can. But does
ever-greater surveillance technology serve the public interest?

The next day, school was canceled. In response to the chaos of the
previous night, the Brooklyn Center City Council hurried to pass a
resolution banning aggressive police tactics such as rubber bullets,
tear gas, and “kettling,” in which groups of protesters are blocked
into a confined space. A curfew was also put into effect from 7 p.m.
to 6 a.m. The council’s resolution went into effect by nightfall on
the 12th, but police continued using the banned tactics and munitions.
That night, approximately 20 businesses in the area were broken into.

As part of the operation, Minneapolis Police also summoned helicopters
from Customs and Border Protection (part of the US Department of
Homeland Security). The presence of circling aircraft would become a
hallmark of Operation Safety Net. During the peak of the protests, the
helicopters came and went from a difficult-to-access industrial area
near the Mississippi River between Brooklyn Center and Minneapolis,
flying at high altitudes to avoid detection.

On at least two nights during the height of the protests, which
spanned nearly 10 days, law enforcement briefly detained and took
detailed photographs of credentialed members of the press who were
covering the events.

The ACLU of Minnesota, along with pro bono lawyers from private law
firms Fredrikson & Byron P.A., the law office of Kevin Riach and
Apollo Law, recently settled a class action lawsuit against the
Minnesota State Patrol over its treatment of journalists during the
protests. The settlement requires the State Patrol to pay $825,000 to
injured journalists, and a federal judge ordered an injunction lasting
six years that prohibits the State Patrol and jointly responding
agencies from attacking and arresting journalists, or ordering them to
disperse from the scene of a protest. (Similar allegations are still
being pursued against the city of Minneapolis and several officials.)

On April 15, more than 75 community organizations, including the ACLU,
issued a joint statement calling for the state to end OSN. “The
state’s use of force against Minnesotans exercising their First
Amendment rights in Brooklyn Center and militarization of our cities
in response to police violence is wrong, traumatizing, and adding to
the public health crisis of COVID, police brutality, and systemic
racism,” the statement read. It called out the “continued use of
militaristic tools of oppression to intimidate and halt peaceful, if
justifiably angry, protest.” The NAACP also called for a stop to
Operation Safety Net via Twitter.

The Minneapolis Legislative Delegation, a group of state legislators,
sent a letter to Minnesota governor Tim Walz condemning OSN and asking
for a “reevaluation of tactics.” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar also
criticized OSN, likening it to “a military occupation” and calling on
Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey to “stop terrorizing people who
are protesting the brutality of state sanctioned violence.” On April
22, the US Department of Justice announced an investigation into the
Minneapolis Police Department, citing a possible pattern of excessive
use of force including in response to protests. The investigation is
ongoing.

All told, the operation cost tens of millions of public dollars, paid
by the participating agencies. The Minnesota State Patrol alone paid
$1,048,946.57, according to an email sent to MIT Technology Review,
and the Minnesota National Guard estimated that its role cost at least
$25 million.

Despite the public costs, the detentions, and the criticism, however,
most details of OSN’s attempts to surveil the public remained secret.

Surveillance tools

As part of our investigation, MIT Technology Review obtained a watch
list used by the agencies in the operation that includes photos and
personal information identifying journalists and other people “doing
nothing more than exercising their constitutional rights,” Leita
Walker, a lawyer representing journalists arrested in the protests who
has examined the list, wrote in court documents. It was compiled by
the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s
Office—one of the groups participating in OSN—and included people
arrested by the Minnesota State Patrol, another participant.

The Minnesota State Patrol and Minneapolis Police Department both told
MIT Technology Review in an email that they were not aware of the
document and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office did not reply to
multiple requests for comment.

OSN also used a real-time data-sharing tool called Intrepid Response,
which is sold on a subscription basis by AT&T. It’s much like a Slack
for SWAT: at the press of a button, images, video (including footage
captured by drones), geolocations of team members and targets, and
other data can be instantly shared between field teams and command
center staff. Credentialed members of the press who were covering the
unrest in Brooklyn Center were temporarily detained and photographed,
and those photos were uploaded into the Intrepid Response system.

Although the State Patrol denied numerous records requests from MIT
Technology Review regarding the detention and photographing of
journalists, photojournalist J.D. Duggan was able to obtain his
personal file—a total of three pages of material. The information
Duggan obtained illuminates the extent of law enforcement’s efforts to
track individuals in real time: the pages include photos of his face,
body, and press badge, surrounded by time stamps and maps showing the
location of his brief detention.

An image from the website of Intrepid Response, a data-sharing tool
that OSN used to store photos of protesters and journalists.

Previous reporting has shown that policing agencies participating in
OSN also had access to many other technological surveillance tools,
including a face recognition system made by the controversial firm
Clearview AI, cell site simulators for cell-phone surveillance,
license plate readers, and drones. Extensive social media intelligence
gathering was a core part of OSN as well.

Drones were also used during the earlier protests following Floyd’s
murder, when a Predator operated by US Customs and Border Patrol—a
technology typically used to monitor battlefields in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and elsewhere—was spotted flying over the city. Interestingly,
the drone flight and two National Guard spy plane flights revealed
that the aerial surveillance technology the police already owned was
actually superior. In a report, the inspector general of the US Air
Force said, “Minnesota State Police transmitted their helicopter
images … and noted the police imagery was much better quality” than
that provided by the RC-26 spy planes the military operated over
Minneapolis in the first week of June 2020. Police also issued a
warrant to obtain Google geolocation information of people involved in
the protests in May 2020.

The intelligence teams

In total, OSN would require officers from nine agencies in Minnesota,
120 out-of-state supporting officers, and at least 3,000 National
Guard soldiers. The surveillance tools were managed by several
different intelligence groups that collaborated throughout the
operation. The structure of these intelligence teams, the personnel,
and the extent of the involvement of federal agencies have not
previously been reported.

In the same area where helicopters from federal agencies were
surreptitiously taking off and landing is a facility known as the
Strategic Information Center. The SIC, as it’s called, was a central
planning site for Operation Safety Net and also functions as an
intelligence analysis hub, known as a “fusion center,” for the
Minneapolis Police Department. The facility contains the latest
technology and is plugged into citywide camera feeds and data-sharing
systems. The SIC featured prominently in documents reviewed for this
investigation and was used routinely by OSN leaders to coordinate
field operations and intelligence work.

Emails obtained through public records requests shed light on an
“intel team” within Operation Safety Net. It was made up of at least
12 people from agencies including the Minneapolis and St. Paul police,
the Hennepin County sheriff, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety
and Metro Transit, and the FBI. The intel team used the Homeland
Security Information Network (HSIN), run by the US Department of
Homeland Security, to share information and appears to have met
regularly through at least October 2021. The network offers access to
facial recognition technology, though Bruce Gordon, director of
communications at the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, told MIT
Technology Review in an email that the state Bureau of Criminal
Apprehension’s (BCA) fusion center “does not own or use facial
recognition technology.”

Our investigation shows clear and substantial involvement of federal
agencies at the highest level of Operation Safety Net, with four FBI
agents included in the executive team of operation in addition to the
two on the intel team. Federal agents had also been deployed to
several cities, including New York and Seattle, during the 2020 Black
Lives Matter protests. In Portland, Oregon, the FBI launched a
months-long surveillance operation which involved covertly filming
activists. On June 2, 2020, the deputy director of the FBI David
Bowdich released a memo encouraging aggressive surveillance of the
activists, calling the protest movement “a national crisis.” The
Department of Homeland Security also deployed around 200 personnel to
cities around the US, with most reporting to Portland.

Kyle Rudnitski, listed as an operations manager at the BCA fusion
center in his email signature, acted as the administrator of HSIN for
the intel team and the host for planning meetings. Rudnitski appeared
to also be responsible for managing account permissions for the team.

An email regarding the "OSN - Intel Team" monthly check-in sent from
the operations manager at the BCA fusion center with access to the
Homeland Security Information Network. Obtained via public records
request.

The BCA’s fusion center is the primary data-sharing center for
Minnesota, but there are several operated by other law enforcement
entities throughout the state. The facility is staffed by criminal
intelligence analysts and others who run a constellation of
intelligence-gathering tools and reporting networks.

Fusion centers are intelligence-sharing and analysis hubs, spread
throughout the country, that bring together intelligence from local,
state, federal, and other sources. These centers were widely set up in
the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks to consolidate intelligence and
more rapidly assess threats to national security. According to the
Department of Homeland Security’s website, these centers are intended
to “increase collaboration” between agencies through data sharing. The
centers are staffed by multiple police agencies, federal law
enforcement and National Guard personnel, and sometimes contractors.
The proliferation of these centers has come under intense scrutiny for
raising the risk of abusive policing practices.

“Instead of looking for terrorist threats, fusion centers were
monitoring lawful political and religious activity. The Virginia
Fusion Center described a Muslim get-out–the-vote campaign as
‘subversive,’” reads a 2012 report from the Brennan Center, a law and
policy think tank. “In 2009, the North Central Texas Fusion Center
identified lobbying by Muslim groups as a possible threat. The DHS
dismissed these as isolated episodes, but a two-year Senate
investigation found that such tactics were hardly rare. It concluded
that fusion centers routinely produce ‘irrelevant, useless, or
inappropriate’ intelligence that endangers civil liberties.”

“Anonymity is a shield”

In February 2022, policing in Minnesota again became a focus for
protests after Minneapolis police shot and killed Amir Locke, a
22-year-old Black man who appeared to be sleeping on a couch when
officers executed a no-knock warrant as part of a homicide
investigation. Locke was not a suspect in the homicide, as initial
police press releases about the incidents falsely claimed.

Despite public statements that OSN was in “phase four” as of April 22,
2021—the final phase, in which the operation would “demobilize,”
according to statements given during the initial press conference—it
appears that the program was still ongoing when Locke was killed.
Documents obtained by MIT Technology Review show that regular planning
meetings, secured chat rooms, and the sharing and updating of
operation documents remained in effect through at least October.

The emails also contained details about a meeting on October 26, 2021,
for the “OSN 2.0 Executive Team” that included among its agenda items
“Potter Trial,” referencing the trial of Kim Potter in December, and
“March 2022.” The FBI was included in the OSN 2.0 Executive Team
emails.

This agenda for "OSN 2.0 Executive Team Meeting" was attached to an
email sent by the executive assistant to the chief of Minneapolis
police. The email, obtained via public records request, was sent to
over 30 people across OSN member groups, including federal agencies.

“There never has been, nor is there now, an ‘OSN 2.0,’” Gordon told
MIT Technology Review in email. “Any reference was an informal way of
notifying state, local and federal partners that planning would take
place … the Minnesota Fusion Center continues to share threat
assessment information with law enforcement agencies in keeping with
its mission. This was not unique to the time during which OSN
existed.” Gordon also disputed the characterization that OSN itself
amounted to large-scale surveillance activity.

On Thursday, February 24, the three other officers on the scene when
Chauvin murdered George Floyd were found guilty of federal crimes for
a violating Floyd’s civil rights, though they still await a state
trial.

The events in Minnesota have ushered in a new era of protest policing.
Protests that were intended to call attention to the injustices
committed by police effectively served as an opportunity for those
police forces to consolidate power, bolster their inventories,
solidify relationships with federal forces, and update their
technology and training to achieve a far more powerful, interconnected
surveillance apparatus. Entirely new titles and positions were created
within the Minneapolis Police Department and the aviation section of
the Minnesota State Patrol that leverage new surveillance technologies
and methods, which will be explained in detail in this investigative
series.

Anonymity is an important though muddy tenet of free speech. In a
landmark 1995 Supreme Court case, McIntyre v. Ohio, the court declared
that “anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.” Clare
Garvie, a senior associate with the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy &
Technology, says the case established that “to hold an unpopular
speech and to be free to express that necessarily requires a degree of
anonymity.” Though police do have the right to do things like take
photographs at protests, Garvie says, “law enforcement does not have
the right to walk through a protest and demand that everybody show
their ID.”

But a wild proliferation of technologies and tools have recently made
such anonymous free speech nearly impossible in the United States.
This story is the first in a series that will provide a rare glimpse
behind the curtain during a transformative time for policing and
public demonstration in the US.

Correction: The original version of this story said that the ACLU had
settled a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis. The settlement was
against Minnesota State Patrol. A similar action against the city is
still ongoing.


More information about the cypherpunks mailing list