Why Is the Department of Homeland Security Monitoring the Black Lives Matter Movement?

A new wave of just-released internal documents reveal the Feds have been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since August of last year, when unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson. The incident—and a local grand jury's decision not to indict the officer involved in Brown's death—sparked anti-police protests across the country that were tracked closely by America's chief anti-terrorism unit, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Intercept reported Friday.

DHS, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11 to guard against terrorist attacks and other nefarious threats, has used social media to map the location of Black Lives Matter protests for almost a year now—even collecting surveillance on the movement's most peaceful gatherings. The federal department circulated memos about silent vigils in honor of Brown, writing that NYPD's counterterrorism unit would be "monitoring the situation" at a service in New York.

A DHS spokesman told the Intercept—which learned of the surveillance via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests—that his department doesn't respond to specific protests or rallies, but instead provides "situational awareness" for authorities on a local and national level. But Baher Azmy, a legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, thinks that sounds a little fishy.

"What they call situational awareness is Orwellian speak for watching and intimidation," he told the Intercept. "Over time there's a serious harm to the associational rights of the protesters and it's an effective way to chill protest movements. The average person would be less likely to go to a Black Lives Matter protest if the government is monitoring social media, Facebook, and their movements."

DHS has been keeping an eye on protesters since at least August 11, the day after demonstrations in Ferguson turned violent and a group of people torched a Quiktrip in the area. After Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Brown, was not indicted by a grand jury, more than a dozen businesses were looted or vandalized, Molotov cocktails were launched at police officers, and the National Guard was called in (again, having previously been deployed in August) to try to ease tensions in the small Missouri city.

This April, DHS also responded to protests following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old, unarmed black man who died from injuries he sustained while in police custody. The department's police force, the Federal Protective Service, had more than 400 officers on duty in Baltimore when demonstrators took to the streets there.

"When the police are videotaping you at a protest or pulling you over because you're a well known activist—all of these techniques are designed to create a chilling effect on people's organizing," activist Maurice Mitchell told the Intercept. "This is no different. The level of surveillance, however, isn't going to stop us. After all, we organize because our lives depend on it."