It turns out that major players in the Black Lives Matter protests really are being watched. A “crisis management” report from the cybersecurity firm XeroFox shows that the firm is monitoring key players such as DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, calling them “threat actors.” The report also showed that the company was “protecting” the online accounts of various Baltimore police and officials.
McKesson and Elzie both tell Mother Jones they were “not surprised” that they were being watched. “It confirms that us telling the truth about police violence is seen as a threat,” McKesson says. Both activists say they do not know why they were identified as physical threats.
But hey, this country is all about freedom of speech, right?
Team Blackness also discussed the GOP debate, Trump being Trump, and another unarmed civilian shot by police, this time in South Carolina.
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srv
So now monitoring someone’s twitter feed or subscribing to their RSS feed is being watched. Where’s that gofer gif?
As always, it’s different if Obama and his minions at the NSA do it.
Cervantes
Not to worry — the apologists will be here in a moment to tell us it’s OK.
boatboy_srq
Old
suspicionshabits die hard.When did srv start guzzling Kool-Aid?
Frankensteinbeck
Following people’s twitter accounts and tracking where protests are happening doesn’t bother me. Labels like ‘threat type: physical’ rating these people by ‘severity’, and comments like “intelligence regarding potentially violent agitators” on the other hand, is fucked up. Similarly, ‘threats mitigated’ and ‘assets protected’ is a really disturbing way to look at protests. Viewing peaceful protestors as the enemy is a major racism issue, and has led to violence. Lots of violence. And not from the ‘potentially violent agitators’.
ET
If all they were doing was monitoring twitter accounts I don’t know if that really counts rises to the level of dangerous. If that was the case everyone who follows the account of someone with a social media account would be deemed a threat. That is just too low a threshold.
As for why they were IDed as threats – that would be easy. They are black, involved in blacklivesmatter, and spoke up. In other words they didn’t know their place and some white guy who grew up in the burbs (and likely still lives there) and majored in criminal justice said so. That and they had to justify their salary and look like they were seriously assessing a threat.
FarmerG
If BLM is worthy of such surveillance, why do the Koch brothers who pledge $900 million to influence our elections not demand closer scrutiny?
#whiteprivilege
WereBear
So now it’s THSWB.
Taking a Humanitarian Stance While Black
A guy
Not all live matter, case in point—-Colorado shooting penalty verdict upcoming
scav
@boatboy_srq: They’re all having to up the offense in order to get any personal attention at all. Poor dears. becoming trite.
Steve from Antioch
Wasn’t this fear mongering nonsense posted here before and didn’t commenters note that all that happened was that some people were reading the tweets of BLM folks and so forth. You know, reading stuff that people put on Twitter to be read.
The latest article you link to seems to contain no new information. It says
Are you seriously peddling this bullshit as something to be worried about?
rikyrah
Black folks have been monitored since we stepped off those slave ships…them being monitored….yawn.
A shock…really?
Cervantes
@rikyrah:
I don’t see anyone calling it a shock.
bago
If people who literally report what’s going on are a threat… You might be a police state.
mclaren
So being black + speaking out = terrorism.
How low do we go before we finally recognize this country is morally and intellectual bankrupt?
A guy
I’m on the side of no live matter cause all men are created equal