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« What are you doing here? | Main | SuperMegaSpeed Reviews »

Why are counterterror experts involved in monitoring protests?

Here's the article, including a tremendous "you kids get off my lawn" rant from an anonymous "source", but what strikes me is that they interview a counterterror expert (again anonymous) who has been monitoring the Darren Wilson protests. Here's some commentary from a website i found that notes that this is a common occurrence:

Some people might say that 'counterterrorism' analysts...should be monitoring the tweets and Facebook posts... if those activists intend to shut down highways.

We can agree to disagree about that, but please don't say these fusion centers are primarily dedicated to stopping terrorism when they are doing things like this. Stopping traffic for a few hours is civil disobedience, not terrorism. A supposed anti-terrorism center has no business monitoring public social media accounts looking for 'intelligence' about civic protest movements.

Meanwhile, Gawker and Emptywheel mock the NYPD for being stumped by "cutting edge of 2006 technology" like Twitter and disposable phones. They don't really comment on the counterterrorism angle which i think is the most alarming part, though, although i guess the fact that the protestors know that they need disposable phones to avoid getting hacked by the police is a piece of it.

By fnord12 | December 2, 2014, 12:13 PM | Liberal Outrage