[News] The FBI Spends a Lot of Time Spying on Black Americans
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Oct 29 12:19:06 EDT 2019
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/29/fbi-surveillance-black-activists/
The FBI Spends a Lot of Time Spying on Black Americans
Alice Speri - October 29, 2019
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_The FBI has_ come under intense criticism after a 2017 leak
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/06/the-fbi-has-identified-a-new-domestic-terrorist-threat-and-its-black-identity-extremists/>
exposed that its counterterrorism division had invented a new, unfounded
domestic terrorism category it called “black identity extremism
<https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/>.”
Since then, legislators have pressured the bureau’s leadership to be
more transparent about its investigation of black activists, and a
number of civil rights groups have filed public records requests to try
to better understand who exactly the FBI is investigating under that
designation. Although the bureau has released hundreds of pages of
documents, it continues to shield the vast majority of these records
from public scrutiny.
The sheer volume of documents those surveillance efforts have produced
is troublesome, advocates say. The latest batch
<https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bie-foia-responsive-docs-aug-28-2019>
of FBI documents
<https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bie-foia-responsive-docs-sept-30-2019>
— obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and the racial justice
group MediaJustice and shared with The Intercept — reveals that between
2015 and 2018, the FBI dedicated considerable time and resources to
opening a series of “assessments” into the activities of individuals and
groups it mostly labeled “black separatist extremists.” This designation
was eventually folded
<https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/under_=>
into the category of “black identity extremism.” Earlier this year,
following an onslaught of criticism from elected officials, civil
liberties advocates, and even some law enforcement groups, the FBI
claimed that it had abandoned
<https://theintercept.com/2019/06/08/white-supremacist-domestic-terrorism-fbi-justice/>
the “black identity extremism” label, substituting it for a “racially
motivated violent extremism. ” Critics say that this designation
conveniently obscures the fact that black supremacist violence, unlike
white supremacist violence, does not actually exist.
Although the FBI has frequently changed its labels and terminology, the
surveillance of black Americans has continued. As The Intercept has
reported, following the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in
Ferguson, Missouri, the FBI began spying on Ferguson activists and
tracking their movements
<https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/black-lives-matter-fbi-surveillance/>
across states, warning local law enforcement partners that Islamic State
group supporters
<https://theintercept.com/2019/04/08/black-protesters-terrorism-threat-isis/>
were “urging” protesters to join their ranks. The FBI also drafted a
mysterious “race paper
<https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/black-lives-matter-fbi-surveillance/>,”
the contents of which remain secret even though the bureau has disowned
it. And as the Young Turks reported
<https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKagy0oyMA/mnzAKMpdtiZ7AcYLd5cRR>, the
bureau has established a program dubbed “Iron Fist” targeting so-called
black identity extremists with undercover agents.
The latest documents were turned over to the ACLU and MediaJustice after
the groups sued the FBI last March over its failure to comply with a
public records request. While the bureau is expected to release more
documents in the coming months, what it has turned over so far is so
heavily redacted that it is largely incomprehensible. In addition to
removing entire paragraphs and all geographical and other identifiers
from the documents, the FBI simply withheld hundreds of pages in full.
“These documents suggest that since at least 2016, the FBI was engaged
in a national intelligence collection effort to manufacture a so-called
‘Black Identity Extremist’ threat,” Nusrat Choudhury, deputy director of
the ACLU Racial Justice Program, told The Intercept. “They are spending
a lot of energy on this and they are clearly reaching out to other law
enforcement.”
“We are troubled about the fact that so much information is not being
made available to the public,” she added. “We just know that the
government is likely redacting information that should be disclosed to
the public — it frequently does.”
A bureau spokesperson wrote to The Intercept in a statement that “every
activity that the FBI conducts must uphold the Constitution and be
carried out in accordance with federal laws.”
“Investigative activity may not be based solely on the exercise of
rights guaranteed by the First Amendment,” the spokesperson added. “The
FBI’s investigative methods are subject to multiple layers of oversight,
and we ensure that our personnel are trained on privacy, civil rights,
and civil liberties.”
Baseless Assessments
Most of the newly released documents are investigative files that show
the FBI has opened a number of what bureau guidelines refer to as
“assessments,” primarily into the activities of individuals it calls
“black separatist extremists.” Assessments differ from full-blown
investigations — or “predicated investigations,” in the bureau’s lingo —
because they do not need to be predicated on a factual basis. That means
the bureau needs no evidence of criminality or a national security
threat in order to open an assessment. Assessments need only to be
authorized for a specific purpose, such as recruiting new informants.
As a new report
<https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-dissent/>
by the civil liberties group Defending Rights & Dissent notes, when
choosing targets for an assessment, agents are allowed to use ethnicity,
religion, or speech protected by the First Amendment as a factor, “as
long as it is not the only one.” As the report notes, “Even though the
standards for opening an assessment are extraordinarily low, the FBI is
allowed to use extremely intrusive investigative techniques in
performing them, including physical surveillance, use of informants, and
pretextual interviews.”
During pretextual interviews, FBI agents are not required to disclose
their status as federal officials and can lie about the purpose of the
interview in order to elicit incriminating statements. Agents can open
an assessment without a supervisor’s approval for a period of 30 days,
after which a supervisor must sign off on an extension. After 90 days,
an assessment must be reauthorized. Assessments can be reauthorized an
unlimited number of times, which means that the FBI can surveil
law-abiding citizens posing no national security threat for years.
document-01-1572357675
Heavily redacted FBI documents show the bureau opened a series of
assessments to investigate black groups and individuals despite no
evidence that they were committing crimes or posing a security threat.
Document: FBI via ACLU and MediaJustice
Many of the new documents obtained by the ACLU and MediaJustice suggest
that the FBI repeatedly reauthorized assessments beyond their initial
duration periods. Because of the heavy redactions, however, it is not
clear whether the bureau has opened many different assessments or
whether the same handful of assessments have been extended multiple
times. While some of the assessments refer to a particular geographic
“area of responsibility,” others do not include such a designation,
suggesting that they may refer to nationwide assessments of certain
groups or organizations.
The reauthorization requests released by the FBI include a series of
questions about the objective of the assessment, whether it was
fulfilled, and any investigative techniques deployed. Because the
answers are fully redacted, however, it’s impossible to tell whether the
assessments had plausible justifications. It’s also unclear whether any
robust review led to each reauthorization or whether supervisors merely
rubber-stamped extension requests, Choudhury said. “Unfortunately
they’re just redacting the parts of these that would give us an
objective check on how they’re making decisions.”
Working With Police
In addition to paperwork relating to its multiple assessments, the new
documents include reports of “liaisons” with organizations outside of
the FBI and electronic communications suggesting active FBI
collaboration with other law enforcement agencies. The bureau’s memos
refer to a number of “strategy meetings” involving local law
enforcement, including in the days before the first anniversary of
Brown’s killing in Ferguson, which reignited protests. In another
exchange, law enforcement partners were asked to contribute to
“collecting better intelligence on possible Black Separatist Extremists.”
The documents also refer to the FBI’s work with “Joint Terrorism Task
Forces,” which bring together agents with officers from hundreds of
state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies. Because JTTFs are
run by the FBI, they operate under FBI guidelines, which provide fewer
protections for speech, privacy, and civil liberties than the rules
governing local police and other law enforcement.
But while federal and other law enforcement cooperation is routine,
involving local police in vague and sweeping political surveillance
efforts is deeply problematic, critics say. In fact, threat assessment
reports such as the one on “black identity extremism” pose a particular
challenge to local law enforcement, said Mike German, a former FBI agent
and vocal critic of the bureau.
“What is it telling law enforcement officers to do?” German told The
Intercept. “Most of [these assessments] just say, ‘Be very afraid of
this new threat,’ and they don’t give any practical advice for how to
identify that threat, or how to distinguish that threat from legitimate
protest, or nonviolent civil disobedience, or other First
Amendment-protected activity that might promote some similar ideas, but
isn’t violence. So then the solution for these police departments that
receive it is to treat all of them as if they are potential threats.”
To activists already concerned with police violence and a lack of
accountability, police collaboration with the FBI’s surveillance efforts
is particularly troubling.
“This is happening at the same time when jurisdictions across the
country, our police departments, are actively acquiring surveillance
tools in really secretive ways, without any sort of oversight and
regulation,” said Myaisha Hayes, an organizer with MediaJustice, in an
interview. “And it makes me worry that those tools can be used against
activists given the sort of environment that the FBI is creating around
criminalizing dissent.”
Throughout the documents, the FBI repeats boilerplate warnings that some
“indicators” of domestic terrorism “may constitute the exercise of
rights guaranteed by the First Amendment” and reminds agents that “the
FBI is prohibited from engaging in investigative activity for the sole
purpose of monitoring the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Even so, the documents suggest that the bureau did in fact target
protected speech as part of its surveillance activities, at some point
monitoring the October 2015 “Million Man March” in Washington, D.C.
While most of the memo concerning the march is redacted, the document
does refer to the “violent rhetoric and nature” of the event — even
though the march was in fact a nonviolent demonstration that drew tens
of thousands
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/10/16/20-years-after-the-million-man-march-how-the-post-covered-it/>
to the capital to commemorate the original 1995 event and protest a
series of high-profile police killings of black men.
While the FBI has a long history of targeting black Americans — most
notably when it infiltrated and sought to disrupt the civil rights
movement as part of its COINTELRPO political policing campaign — the
bureau has in recent years shifted its target from those espousing
“separatist” views to the much larger group of those protesting police
violence. As The Intercept has reported
<https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/>,
in an internal email exchange obtained by the government transparency
group Property of the People, Michael F. Paul, an official with the
FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, wrote to colleagues that the bureau had
updated its definition of “black separatist extremism” in order “to
broaden it beyond simply those seeking ‘separatism.’” Paul added: “The
threat or movement has simply evolved, and many are seeking more
than/other than separation.”
In fact, what those in the targeted “movement” say they are seeking is
simply an end to police violence, as well as greater justice and
government accountability.
“The Black Lives Matter movement, black-led organizations that are
focused around policing and police brutality have not had a single
incident of violence associated with their activist work,” Hayes told
The Intercept. “That tells me that what the FBI is looking for is
opportunities to basically disrupt organizing that challenges and
threatens the status quo.”
--
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