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In what is starting to look like COINTELPRO updated and outsourced for the 21st century, it was recently revealed that cybersecurity firm ZeroFox monitored at least two high-profile Black Lives Matter protest organizers and labeled them as 'physical threats' in secret reports to Baltimore city administrators and to an unnamed 'classified partner' organization at Fort Meade (headquarters of the NSA and other intelligence agencies).
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. McKesson and Elzie live in Missouri, where they helped organize the Ferguson protests. They traveled together to Baltimore for a week and a half during the Freddie Gray protests.
This classification of non-violent political protesters as threats follows the nationwide, FBI-orchestrated purge of the Occupy movement that was legally enabled by labeling them a terrorist threat.
(Score: 2) by Jiro on Sunday August 09 2015, @03:17AM
What you're saying is that although they threatened looting, burning, and rioting, they didn't do it, so that doesn't count. Why in the world do you think it shouldn't count? The security form is trying to determine that they are a threat. Making credible threats means that you are a threat, regardless of whether you happened to have carried them out this time or not.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @03:25AM
> What you're saying is that although they threatened looting, burning, and rioting, they didn't do it, so that doesn't count.
> Making credible threats means that you are a threat,
What I am saying is that it wasn't even close to a credible threat. Breitbart had to really reach to find anything and the worst he could find was a call-and-response at an organized political conference that required per-registration isn't even close to plotting destruction.
Having to find the smallest possible transgression and blow it completely out of proportion actually disproves the point - this is the worst Breitbart can do it means these people are pretty damn pacifistic.