The DHS risk -based approach reflects a broader change in the application of American laws shaped by the post -September 11 security priorities – one which raises the perceived intention compared to demonstrable reprehensible acts and uses behavioral clues, affiliations and other potentially predictive indicators to justify an early intervention and extended surveillance.
A year ago, the DHS warned that the grievances linked to immigration led to a peak of threats against judges, migrants and the police, predicting that new laws and highly publicized repressions would radicalize individuals more. In February, another merger center reported a renewal of calls for violence against the police and government representatives, citing the counterposter for perceived of federal surpassing and identifying the demonstrations and court decisions, while triggers are probably triggers.
Sometimes, the sprawling predictions may seem premonitory, echoing the flash points in the real world: in Alvarado, Texas, a coordinated ambush allegedly in a detention center this week attracted ice agents with fireworks before shots exploded on July 4, leaving a policeman slaughtered in the neck. (Nearly a dozen arrests were made, at least 10 for attempted murder.)
Before the demonstrations, agencies are counting more and more on intelligence forecasts to identify the groups considered as ideologically subversive or tactically unpredictable. The demonstrators marked “transgressive” can be monitored, detained without loads or encountered with force.
The researchers of the social movement largely recognize the introduction of the preventive protest police as a departure from the end of the 20th century which prioritized de -escalation, communication and facilitation. In its place, the authorities have increasingly highlighted the control of demonstrations by early intervention, surveillance and disturbances – the surveillance of organizers, the restriction of public space and the response in a proactive way on the basis of the risks perceived rather than real conduct.
The infrastructure initially designed to fight terrorism is now often used to monitor the streets at the street level, with virtual investigations targeting the demonstrators for an online expression exam. The merger centers, funded through DHS subsidies, have increasingly issued bulletins reporting protest slogans, references to police brutality and solidarity events as a signs of possible violence – to develop these assessments to the application of the law in the absence of clear evidence of criminal intention.
The monitoring of the demonstrators included the construction of files (known as “baseball cards”) with analysts using high -tech tools to compile publications, affiliations, personal networks and public declarations of government policy.
Obtained exclusively by Wired, a DHS file on Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia graduate student and anti-war activist, shows that analysts have drawn information from Canary Mission, a dark blacklist who profiles criticism of Israeli military action and Palestinian rights supporters.
On Wednesday, before the Federal Court, a senior DHS official recognized that the equipment of the Canary mission had been used to compile more than 100 files on students and academics, despite the ideological inclination of the site, mysterious funding and investment.
Threat bulletins can also start officers to anticipate conflicts, shaping their posture and their decisions on the ground. In the wake of violent demonstrations of 2020, the San Jose police department in California cited the “numerous intelligence bulletins” which he received from his local regional merger center, the DHS and the FBI, among others, to understand “the state of mind of the officers in the days preceding and throughout the civil bustle”.
Specific bulletins cited by the SJPD – whose response to the protest caused a payment of $ 620,000 this month – has drawn up the possible coverage of the demonstrations for “domestic terrorists”, warned of opportunistic attacks against the police and promoted an “unconfirmed report” of Vans U -Haul allegedly used to transport weapons and explosives.
Subsequent reports in the wake of Blueleleaks – a discharge of 269 gigabytes of internal police documents obtained by a source identifying themselves as the anonymous hacktivist group and published by the transparency group distributed, the refusal of secrets – federal bulletins were elegant on a vague parody site and were devoted to cars, including Parody which supposed the cars, in particular parody cars, Punnicol cars on fire, despite a clear banner labeling the “false” site.
Threat alerts – not classified and systematically accessible to the press – can help the police to shape the public perception of protests before starting, laying the basics of legitimizing aggressive police responses. The warnings of the DHS not verified on national terrorists infiltrating the demonstrations in 2020, echoing publicly by the agency’s acting secretary on Twitter, were widely disseminated and amplified in the media coverage.
Americans are generally opposed to aggressive protest repression, but when they support them, fear is often the driving force. Experimental research suggests that support for the use of forces depends less on what the demonstrators really do only on the way they are represented – by officials, the media and by racial and ideological frameworks.
