U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials under then-President Donald Trump compiled intelligence dossiers on people who were arrested at Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, according to an internal review.
Surveillance of Portland protesters in 2020 “included lists of friends, family and social media associates for people who posed no threat to homeland security,” the office of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, who obtained the report, told reporters.
The dossiers, known by agents as baseball cards, were previously normally compiled on non-U.S. citizens or only on Americans with “a demonstrated terrorism nexus,” according to the 76-page report.
Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's free speech, privacy and technology project, said the report indicates leaders of the Department of Homeland Security wanted to inflate the risk caused by protesters in Portland. The city became an epicenter of sometimes violent demonstrations in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer. But many protesters, including women belonging to a “Wall of Moms” ad hoc group and military veterans, were peaceful.
“We have a dark history of intelligence agencies collecting dossiers on protesters,” Wizner said over the phone from New York, referring to domestic spying in the 1960s and 70s against civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters and others.
"We need to be especially careful if agencies that are tasked with intelligence gathering are going to step in to look at protest activity and where Americans are exercising their First Amendment rights,” Wizner said.
Protesters who break the law aren't immune from being investigated, Wizner said, but intelligence agencies should be careful not to create “a chilling environment” for Americans to legally exercise their right to dissent.
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