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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/29/fbi-surveillance-black-activists/">https://theintercept.com/2019/10/29/fbi-surveillance-black-activists/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The FBI Spends a Lot of Time Spying on
Black Americans</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Alice Speri - October 29,
2019<br>
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<p><u>The FBI has</u> come under intense criticism after
a <a
href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/06/the-fbi-has-identified-a-new-domestic-terrorist-threat-and-its-black-identity-extremists/">2017
leak</a> exposed that its counterterrorism division
had invented a new, unfounded domestic terrorism
category it called “<a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/">black
identity extremism</a>.” 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.</p>
<p>The sheer volume of documents those surveillance
efforts have produced is troublesome, advocates say.
The <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bie-foia-responsive-docs-aug-28-2019">latest
batch</a> of <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bie-foia-responsive-docs-sept-30-2019">FBI
documents</a> — 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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/under_=">folded</a>
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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/08/white-supremacist-domestic-terrorism-fbi-justice/">claimed
that it had abandoned</a> 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.</p>
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<p>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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/black-lives-matter-fbi-surveillance/">tracking
their movements</a> across states, warning local law
enforcement partners that <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/08/black-protesters-terrorism-threat-isis/">Islamic
State group supporters</a> were “urging” protesters
to join their ranks. The FBI also drafted a mysterious
“<a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/black-lives-matter-fbi-surveillance/">race
paper</a>,” the contents of which remain secret even
though the bureau has disowned it. And as the <a
href="https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKagy0oyMA/mnzAKMpdtiZ7AcYLd5cRR">Young
Turks reported</a>, the bureau has established a
program dubbed “Iron Fist” targeting so-called black
identity extremists with undercover agents.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<h3>Baseless Assessments</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As a <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-dissent/">new
report</a> 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p><img
src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/10/document-01-1572357675.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=525"
alt="document-01-1572357675"></p>
<p class="caption">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.</p>
<p class="caption">
Document: FBI via ACLU and MediaJustice</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<h3>Working With Police</h3>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>To activists already concerned with police violence
and a lack of accountability, police collaboration
with the FBI’s surveillance efforts is particularly
troubling.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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
<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/10/16/20-years-after-the-million-man-march-how-the-post-covered-it/">tens
of thousands</a> to the capital to commemorate the
original 1995 event and protest a series of
high-profile police killings of black men.</p>
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<p>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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/">has
reported</a>, 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
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