Report: Minnesota Secretly Runs a Surveillance Program to Track Activists and Journalists

The Minneapolis police were caught flat-footed in 2020 as protests materialized in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of its officers. The protests quickly morphed into a riot that saw multiple businesses looted and a police station set ablaze. As the trial of former officer (and now convicted murderer) Derek Chauvin approached, law enforcement announced a multifaceted program to maintain order called Operation Safety Net. Authorities insist the program wrapped up after the trial, but a report from MIT Technology Review claims Operation Safety Net is still active and continues to accumulate data on activists and journalists in Minnesota.

Police announced Operation Safety Net (OSN) in February 2021, about a month in advance of Chauvin’s trial. OSN included staff from a dozen local law enforcement agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The city expected widespread unrest from jury selection on through the trial itself. However, the scale of the protests never came close to the events of June 2020. The ACLU and other community organizations demanded OSN be mothballed in 2021, and it seemed at first like the city compiled.

Following the guilty verdict, OSN staff stopped having press conferences and posting on the now-deleted project website. The Minneapolis police still contend that OSN is not active, but Technology Review obtained emails and documents showing that senior program leadership still meets regularly to share intelligence, something they refer to in the emails as “OSN 2.0.” The documents also demonstrate the scale of the secretive surveillance program.

MIT says law enforcement used every opportunity to gather data on journalists and activists in the Twin Cities area. For example, members of the press were detained and photographed during protests over the killing of Daunte Wright in April 2021. OSN also allegedly made watch lists with that data, allowing officers to access identifying information on anyone swept up in OSN. As activists have pointed out repeatedly during the surveillance ramp-up, US law has long protected the anonymity of those who attend protests. That doesn’t stop police from amassing these databases. MIT reports that OSN even made use of the controversial facial recognition tech from Clearview AI, which has said it wants to identify every person on Earth.

Just last month, Minneapolis police shot and killed Amir Locke while serving a no-knock warrant at a home where Locke was a guest. Evidence indicates that OSN was still active at that time with secure chat rooms, planning meetings, and information sharing platforms. Some October 2021 documents even talk about planning for future events in March 2022. So, OSN could still be operating right now. Since the police refuse to confirm OSN 2.0 exists, there’s no telling what they’re up to.

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