<\/p>\n
As people nationwide rallied last year to support the Standing Rock Sioux\u2019s attempts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, a private security firm with experience fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan launched an intrusive military-style surveillance and counterintelligence campaign against the activists and their allies, according to internal company documents.<\/p>\n
Its surveillance targets included everyone from Native American demonstrators to the actress Shailene Woodley, along with organizations including Black Lives Matter, 350.org, Veterans for Peace, the Catholic Worker Movement, and Food and Water Watch. The records label the protesters \u201cjihadists\u201d and seek to justify escalating action against them.<\/p>\n
The activities of the company spanned, but were not limited to, the four states through which the pipeline passes: South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. The documents also show that its surveillance efforts continued after the breakup of the Standing Rock camps this winter, including at ongoing pipeline protests in southeastern Pennsylvania, Iowa and South Dakota.<\/p>\n
The internal documents from the firm, called TigerSwan, take the form of situation reports, or \u201csitreps,\u201d prepared between September and April for its employer, Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners. The records detail a range of tactics that experts from the American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers Guild and Electronic Frontier Foundation say would likely be illegal if conducted by law enforcement.<\/p>\n
A private security company probably doesn\u2019t face the same prohibitions, legal scholars say, but the collaboration between TigerSwan and local, state and federal authorities detailed in the firm\u2019s internal reports raised red flags. Several legal experts described the contractor\u2019s tactics as disturbing and perhaps unprecedented.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a Big Brother society, with a private corporation \u2013 with even less restraints than the government \u2013 totally interfering with our right to privacy, free speech, assembly, and religious freedom,\u201d said prominent civil rights attorney Jeff Haas, who works with the National Lawyers Guild and represents several of the nearly 800 people arrested while opposing the pipeline.<\/p>\n
If the government can\u2019t do it, he said, \u201cWhy should a private corporation working for another private corporation be able to?\u201d<\/p>\n
TigerSwan did not respond to requests for comment. Energy Transfer Partners said it would not answer questions related to its security procedures but acknowledged that it had shared some information with law enforcement.<\/p>\n
The tactics used against the self-described \u201cwater protectors\u201d were first reported last weekend by The Intercept, which based its coverage on documents provided by a contractor who worked with TigerSwan, according to the news outlet. Grist independently obtained more than a dozen similar documents prior to The Intercept\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
According to the situation reports provided to Grist, TigerSwan also conducted surveillance of a church in Chicago, a 17-year-old girl in Iowa, and an AmeriCorps volunteer in Akron, among others. Reports of the actress Woodley\u2019s arrest and the number of social media views she racked up were included in the reports.<\/p>\n
The company specifically focused some of its most intense efforts on people of color \u2013 including Native American groups (like the Red Warrior Society and the American Indian Movement), members of Black Lives Matter, Palestinian activists, and those it labeled as \u201cIslamists.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to intrusive surveillance, the leaked documents reveal that the security firm attempted to create divisions between activists, manipulate and discredit pipeline opponents, and collect evidence that law enforcement could use to prosecute Standing Rock activists.<\/p>\n
The ACLU\u2019s human rights program director, Jamil Dakwar, said the records obtained by the news outlets suggest the company was painting an exaggerated picture to persuade both Energy Transfer Partners and law enforcement to take a more aggressive stance. \u201cThey are operating with no transparency, no accountability,\u201d Dakwar said.<\/p>\n
Last September, security guards employed by a company called Silverton deployed dogs against demonstrators near Standing Rock, resulting in several injuries, negative media attention and an investigation \u2013 the dog handlers \u201cwere not registered as security officers\u201d in the state of North Dakota, according to local officials.<\/p>\n
Energy Transfer Partners put TigerSwan in charge of Dakota Access security, consolidating several contractors under its umbrella \u2013 including Silverton, which kept operating even after the dog incident, according to the leaked documents.<\/p>\n
Based in North Carolina, TigerSwan has offices throughout the world, tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government for security services abroad, and an Army Special Forces veteran as its chairman.<\/p>\n
Many of the Standing Rock supporters named in the TigerSwan situation reports told Grist they had no idea that they had been under surveillance, and some disputed much of what the firm reported about them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis company is demented,\u201d said Clayton Thomas-M\u00fcller, a member of the Canadian Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, and a campaigner with 350.org \u2013 a nonprofit frequently cited in the reports. TigerSwan reported on Thomas-M\u00fcller\u2019s trip to the camps, though his purpose was simply to bring donated clothes from Winnipeg to the protesters at Standing Rock, he said.<\/p>\n
In September, the leaked documents show, TigerSwan set up an \u201cinformation operations campaign\u201d targeting the Standing Rock activists \u2013 which, according to the nonprofit RAND Corporation, is defined in military and security circles as including \u201cthe collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n
TigerSwan\u2019s Oct. 3 report describes trying to delegitimize the protests by exploiting \u201congoing native versus non-native rifts, and tribal rifts between peaceful and violent elements.\u201d Several situation reports also refer to \u201csource reporting\u201d and \u201cinformant collection,\u201d suggesting the use of infiltrators in the Standing Rock camps and protest groups.<\/p>\n
The documents often portray protesters in what their targets say are exaggerated terms, apparently to inflate the potential danger they posed. For example, the Nov. 9 report ominously warns: \u201cAn element of the Black Panther Party from Chicago is active within the camps in ND. A member of that delegation led 30\u201340 activists in hand-to-hand combat training in Camp 2.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s definitely talking about me,\u201d Kelly Hayes said when read the report over the phone. \u201cBut that\u2019s definitely a misrepresentation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayes is a member of the Menominee Tribe; she\u2019s not a Black Panther, she said, identifying herself as part of a collective of indigenous and black organizers from Chicago \u201caimed at the defense of communities of color.\u201d She taught what she describes as several \u201csmall pockets of women and fem folks\u201d very basic self-defense classes, adding that she has never engaged in violent action.<\/p>\n
The classes she taught were not advertised in the camp or on social media. \u201cIt was a word-of-mouth thing,\u201d she said, and thus could only have been reported from someone on the ground in the camps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat really does say something about how infiltrated everything must have been,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hayes made several trips to Standing Rock, the first during the early stages of the movement in spring 2016, when there were no more than a few dozen people at the camps \u2013 which later grew to house thousands. She ran the first direct action and blockade training sessions at Standing Rock, and came back subsequently to run more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are educators, and we are protesters, and we are community members \u2013 and we\u2019re doing movement work,\u201d she said. \u201cIt sounds to me like these for-profit individuals were trying to make things sound more exciting and important to impress their employers.\u201d<\/p>\n
TigerSwan\u2019s activities also reached well beyond the protest camps. A significant portion of the Nov. 11 situation report, for instance, is devoted to monitoring organizations and people of interest to the firm in the greater Chicago area, including the surveillance of a \u201clocal anti-DAPL church\u201d and people who protested in the wake of Donald Trump victory in last year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
The company also reported on anti-pipeline sentiments at a second church in Illinois\u2019 capital, Springfield, and, according to an earlier situation report, was probing links between Black Lives Matter Chicago and groups at local universities that it discovered via social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not entirely surprised that they would hone in on the black and brown organizing,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cThey\u2019re spending a lot of money, right, to infiltrate and figure out who we are and how we connect? That fear comes from a recognition of our power.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. laws regarding surveillance and other counterintelligence tactics don\u2019t appear to specifically govern TigerSwan, an overseas military contractor operating as a private security force on American soil.<\/p>\n
Several legal experts said the example it presents might be unprecedented. What happens when \u201cprivate police\u201d share information and act in concert with \u2014 or potentially at the behest of \u2013 public law enforcement agencies, but are not covered by the same laws?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the sort of question that Harvard\u2019s Kennedy School of Government asked police chiefs from across the country to consider at a 2014 symposium. The chiefs concluded that it would be a bad idea to hire an elite special-forces unit recently demobilized from Afghanistan to provide hostage-rescue services to a city police department.<\/p>\n
\u201cMilitary units are more oriented toward the use of decisive force against enemies, and less toward apprehending violators and achieving peaceful solutions,\u201d the police chiefs reasoned. The private companies, they said, had profit motivation that could create \u201cperverse incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legal experts told Grist that the same sort of concerns apply to TigerSwan\u2019s involvement at Standing Rock \u2013 especially as detailed in the leaked \u201csituation report\u201d documents.<\/p>\n
TigerSwan\u2019s Oct. 10 report, for example, says that its \u201csocial media cell has harnessed a URL coding technique to discover hidden profiles and groups associated with the protesters allowing the firm to access private social media information. \u2026 Self-incriminating information can be gathered on protesters to be used at a later date.\u201d TigerSwan gained access to a private Facebook page created by Cohen\u2019s group, Mississippi Stand, which provided information on rides to get members to protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they were getting unauthorized access to Facebook profiles \u2013 not the public stuff, but things that they shouldn\u2019t have \u2013 then that could potentially be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal anti-hacking law,\u201d said David Greene, senior staff attorney and civil liberties director at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.<\/p>\n
Greene said that if TigerSwan simply exploited a Facebook vulnerability, it wouldn\u2019t be a violation. The company would have had to break a security measure that the social network had in place for it to be a legal matter \u2013 and it\u2019s unclear if that happened, based on the limited details provided in the records.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Lacambra, a criminal defense attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the activities are potentially serious enough, however, that a subpoena should be sought to find out exactly what TigerSwan did.<\/p>\n
Jeff Haas with the National Lawyers Guild said he\u2019s particularly concerned about the relationship between TigerSwan and law enforcement agencies. The documents provided to Grist detail multiple occasions that the firm met with or shared information with police and sheriff\u2019s departments.<\/p>\n
The Morton County Sheriff\u2019s Department \u2013 where Standing Rock is located \u2013 told Grist that it communicated with TigerSwan \u201cin order to monitor and respond to illegal protest activity.\u201d But it asserted that the sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for maintaining safety on public land, while TigerSwan ran security on DAPL property.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a while, the courts have ruled that you\u2019re not entitled to infiltrate or spy on people unless you have probable cause to believe they\u2019ve committed a crime,\u201d Haas said. \u201cThe government couldn\u2019t meet that standard probably here.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the information provided by TigerSwan could have helped police forces overcome that prohibition. Elizabeth Joh, a private security legal scholar at the University of California, Davis, referred to such techniques as a \u201cpotential end run on the basic constitutional restraints we place upon police.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haas agreed. \u201cIt\u2019s like we have a second level of government interference of surveillance that\u2019s shared with official government forces, but how do you control that? I\u2019m not sure the law is totally clear, but this could be a way to basically get around the Constitution. And until these documents got leaked, it was certainly a way to get around the public knowing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
High Country News published this article on HCN.org on June 1.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Company behind DAPL used paramilitary security to track activists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,221,28,561,29,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-72511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-gas-and-oil","tag-headlines","tag-native-american","tag-newsletter","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72511"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=72511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}