A series of preemptive police raids on Twin Cities anarchist groups prior to last week's Republican National Convention roiled the blogosphere, after prominent progressive writers such as Salon's Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake posted video from the scene. But according to a warrant affidavit filed by the Ramsey County sheriff, it was a YouTube video that may have piqued the authorities' interest in the first place.

The affidavit, which lays out the basis for the preconvention raid on a protest group calling itself the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee, describes a year-long investigation that ultimately involved officers from multiple law enforcement agencies infiltrating the group to monitor its plans. Initially, however, police had merely monitored the group's Web site to gather "open source" intelligence. The formal investigation was launched last August, just two days after police noted the appearance on the site of a YouTube "trailer" showing "several persons dressed in 'black bloc' attire" and wielding bolt-cutters, Molotov cocktails, and bowling-balls to the soundtrack of Blondie's "One Way or Another."

Police also cited the appearance in February of a second online video, the "Video Map of the St. Paul Points of Interest," which appeared to highlight potential targets for direct actions. The video was posted by Erik Oseland, one of six activists now facing terrorism charges under Minnesota's version of the federal PATRIOT Act. Another of the six, Garrett Fitzgerald, was identified by an informant as one of the participants in the original "trailer" video.

Yet another of the preconvention raids targeted a group whose whole raison d'être is video production: the I-Witness Video collective. The group films police/activist interaction during large-scale protests, and provided evidence that ultimately helped to exonerate hundreds arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Over the course of this year's convention protests, police would make some 800 arrests, and the city is already bracing for lawsuits.





Amy Goodman's arrest

Perhaps the most high-profile of those arrests was that of progressive journalist Amy Goodman. The YouTube video of the event has already been viewed more than 780,000 times.