[News] Minnesota Law Enforcement Agency Blocks Release of Public Records About Surveilling Pipeline Opponents

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2021/08/07/minnesota-pipeline-line-3-public-records/>
Minnesota
Law Enforcement Agency Blocks Release of Public Records About Surveilling
Pipeline Opponents
Ken Klippenstein, Ryan Grim — Aug. 5, 2021
------------------------------

*Following critical stories* about the policing of anti-pipeline activists,
a Minnesota law enforcement agency barred a federally affiliated body from
releasing documents through the state’s public records laws, according to
documents obtained by The Intercept.

The Minnesota Fusion Center, a police intelligence-sharing partnership
affiliated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is sidestepping
the state’s freedom of information law by citing security concerns, though
it had in the past released records related to its policing of pipeline
opponents. The fusion center is refusing to release any public records
pertaining to activities, including surveillance, against opponents of the
energy firm Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline until after it is
constructed, according to one of the documents
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21037819-minnesota-bca-determination-of-classification-and-authorization-for-sharing-of-data-related-to-the-line-3-replacement-project>
.

“It is a little unprecedented for a police agency to refuse to disclose
records concerning its activities like this with respect to one specific
construction project.”

The unusual policy came after The Intercept and other media outlets
published stories documenting law enforcement surveillance and coordination
with private security during protests against Line 3, part of a trend in
which aggressive policing against pipeline opponents across the
U.S. was reported by media. Many of the news stories concerning Minnesota
police activities were based on records provided under the Minnesota Data
Practices Act and reporting on anti-pipeline struggles in other states has
relied on similar public transparency laws.

“It is a little unprecedented for a police agency to refuse to disclose
records concerning its activities like this with respect to one specific
construction project,” said Freddy Martinez, a transparency law expert and
policy analyst for the group Open the Government. “I’ve never seen
something quite like this.”

Big Wind, a Northern Arapaho tribal member opposing the pipeline said
police are attempting to cover up their activities because freedom of
information requests have exposed damaging and embarrassing information
about them that has helped further the struggle against the pipeline.

“Freedom of information requests are how lots of things came to light about
the police working with private mercenaries during Standing Rock, and also
about how Enbridge is paying the police here in Minnesota,” said Big Wind,
who is affiliated with the anti-pipeline Namewag Camp. “We know there is
still a lot of information about what Enbridge and the police are doing to
us here that they don’t want to be revealed.”

The policy enacted
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21037819-minnesota-bca-determination-of-classification-and-authorization-for-sharing-of-data-related-to-the-line-3-replacement-project>
by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which oversees the fusion
center, asserts that it is withholding Line 3-related records to prevent
“terrorists,” “criminals,” and “those who would create public safety
hazards” from having access to them, according to a document obtained by
The Intercept through a public records request.
<https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/21037819-minnesota-bca-determination-of-classification-and-authorization-for-sharing-of-data-related-to-the-line-3-replacement-project>

The bureau did not respond to requests for comment about whether previous
public records disclosures had led to any security concerns or incidents.
Bureau spokesperson Jill Oliveira provided only a brief comment by email:
“The security declaration is made in accordance with Minnesota state law,”
she wrote.

The policy, which was first reported by the media group Unicorn Riot
<https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/line-3-fusion-center-data-declared-secret/>,
designates
certain records as being related to “security” issues, including “[d]ata
captured during surveillance operations in support of Line 3 Replacement
Project-related security operations,” as well as information concerning the
operations of private security entities employed by Enbridge as well as
information provided by other external entities.

The policy, enacted through a “security declaration” signed by Minnesota
Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington, the “public
safety liaison” for the Line 3 project, simultaneously greenlighted the
sharing of surveillance data with other law enforcement agencies and the
military as well as with private entities involved in Line 3’s
construction. News reports have relied on public records to establish the
kind of public-private surveillance dragnet that has seen police work
closely with pipeline builder Enbridge.

“It’s outrageous to think that we don’t have access to any of the
information police are collecting about us,” said Big Wind, the pipeline
opponent, “but that a private corporation that is causing so much harm to
our communities does.”

*As the Indigenous-led* movement — whose members call themselves water
protectors — to halt the pipeline has sought to block Line 3’s construction
through northern Minnesota this year, members have faced an escalating
police response. Law enforcement agencies have monitored water protectors
using drones and flyovers. Hundreds of activists have been arrested and
charged with crimes, including dozens on felony charges for nonviolent
actions that include locking themselves to construction equipment.

On July 29, police used pepper spray, mace, and rubber bullets on water
protectors attempting to prevent the pipeline from being drilled under a
delicate water ecosystem on the Red Lake River in north-central Minnesota —
the most violent law enforcement response so far in the Line 3 struggle.

At the same time, significant aspects of the police operation — including
the ways in which Enbridge and police are gathering, collecting, and
storing intelligence on water protectors — remain shielded from public view.

Established after the September 11 attacks to share intelligence among
federal agencies, local police departments, and the private sector —
ostensibly for the purpose of so-called counterterrorism — fusion centers
have been coming under increasing scrutiny for their expanded role in
routine police work. Last year, the release of a trove of data hacked from
fusion centers around the country, known as BlueLeaks
<https://theintercept.com/collections/blueleaks/>, shined a critical light
on fusion center activities.

In January 2019, The Intercept reported
<https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-minnesota/>
that the Minnesota Fusion Center was receiving information on Line 3
opponents from numerous police entities across three states, as well as
private security firms hired by Enbridge. One sheriff’s analyst described
the fusion center as “the keepers of information for the Enbridge
protests.” Much of the reporting for the Intercept story was based on
documents obtained through a Minnesota Government Data Practices Act
request to the fusion center.

Fusion centers in other states have previously engaged in intrusive
monitoring of Indigenous-led struggles against pipelines. In North Dakota
<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/standing-rock-documents-expose-inner-workings-of-surveillance-industrial-complex/>,
the state’s fusion center helped orchestrate surveillance of Dakota Access
pipeline opponents in 2016 and 2017. In Oregon
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/02/oregon-pipelines-protests-monitoring-police-anti-terror-unit>,
a fusion center helped set up a multi-agency police task force to monitor
opponents of the Jordan Cove Energy Project, a proposed pipeline and liquid
natural gas export project that has since been canceled in response to
grassroots organizing.

Fusion center officers have also shared information on pipeline opponents
across state lines. A North Dakota fusion center officer who developed
files on individual Dakota Access pipeline opponents and attempted to
analyze links between them later offered to share those files
<https://twitter.com/willparrishca/status/1095443945214029824?lang=en> with
Minnesota police officials who are responding to Line 3 protests, public
records acquired by Unicorn Riot showed.

“This form of increasing secrecy around energy infrastructure is troubling,
particularly given the government’s history of treating environmental
protests as domestic terrorists.”

Martinez, from Open the Government, said that the Minnesota Fusion Center’s
Line 3 policy reflects a growing tendency for governments to restrict the
release of information about “critical infrastructure,” including fossil
fuel installations, on national security grounds. Public agencies may then
use these policies as a justification for withholding records related to
political opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure.

For example, the Senate’s new draft infrastructure bill requires all states
to adopt an “energy security plan” to guard against vulnerabilities to that
state’s energy supply, and it would also forbid federal and state entities
from releasing records related to the “security” of such infrastructure —
including pipelines.

“This form of increasing secrecy around energy infrastructure is troubling,
particularly given the government’s history of treating environmental
protests as domestic terrorists,” Martinez said. “It’s a trend that’s
happening everywhere, but it’s very troubling to see it happening as
explicitly as it is in Minnesota.”
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