
US homeland security surveilling journalists covering Portland protests - oftenwrong
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/31/dhs-intelligence-reports-journalists-portland-protests
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sukilot
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-
compile...](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)

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Kednicma
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-
surveill...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/dhs-authorizes-domestic-surveillance-
protect-statues-and-monuments)

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roenxi
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.

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DuskStar
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
The Rwandan genocide was led by "the media": Radio Télévision Libre des Mille
Collines (RTLM)

~~~
DuskStar
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.

