Police and Military Conducting Surveillance of Your Social Media (JBLM Cop Watch)

According to reports from Portland Indymedia (an independent news site in Portland, Oregon) police intelligence and military anti-terrorism officers are monitoring your social media activity and infiltrating your on-line groups, and even conducting surveillance of businesses that post (or allow to be posted) fliers critical of government activity. Now, this is no shocking revelation, we have known that the government monitors our on-line activities since at least 2013, when Edward Snowden disclosed the NSA's illegal spying on American citizens. While we may all kind of expect to be swept up in national level surveillance, are we also aware that local police and military units may be specifically targeting us individually and labeling us as "homegrown violent extremists" (domestic terrorists) simply because we make a comment or follow a group on-line?

Documents published by Portland Indymedia show that police officers in Washington State are monitoring social media on a daily basis, and even creating fake social media profiles to allow them to infiltrate on-line groups, because members have posted pictures of firearms, or critized government activities. These same Portland Indymedia reports reveled that the Anti-Terrorism Office at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (a military base near Tacoma, WA) is conducting surveillance of the civilian community because individuals posted "anti-DOD fliers" [fliers objecting to the military using Stingray cell-phone surveillance devices to monitor the civilian community], and is "keeping an eye on" an individual because he had requested information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

"Bellevue, WA Police and JBLM Anti-Terrorism Office Spying on YOU!" (December 29, 2020)

"WA State Fusion Center and JBLM ATO Monitoring Portland Social Media Activity" (January 26, 2021)

* This article was originally published by JBLM Cop Watch.