Surveillance DHS resisted calls for intelligence on Occupy movement

Published 23 March 2012

Internal documents released by DHS demonstrate the efforts made by the department to avoid gathering intelligence on last year’s Occupy movement

DHS resisted pressure for intelligence on Occupy movement demonstrated // Source: meikar.ee

Responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by gawker.com for documents related to the protest movement, DHS released hundreds of pages of requests from a wide variety of intelligence agencies, ranging from federal to local, for information on the activities and plans of the demonstrators.

The Occupy movement, which grew from the original Occupy Wall Street protests to a nation-wide protest action, aroused the concern of intelligence and security officials from across the country. It reached its zenith in the Occupy Oakland demonstrations, where protesters closed the Port of Oakland for a day, continually interrupting traffic in and out of the port, reclaiming abandoned buildings “for the public,” and committed several acts of arson.

Many of the released documents, available at gawker.com, demonstrate that officials in the agency’s offices of Intelligence Analysis and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties were especially concerned about the legal and constitutional issues surrounding federal monitoring of individuals engaged in expressing their First Amendment rights to political protest.

DHS’s response was to characterize the release of 340 pages of redacted documents as an “interim release,” suggesting that there may be further document releases.

The department was quick to point out that one request came from a federal partner at the Fusion Center in Los Angeles. The Fusion Centers are designed to have a central, physical location where intelligence can be relayed to all levels of law enforcement intelligence in a timely and co-operative manner.

The request was flatly denied, gawker.com reports: “The information being requested does not fall within the scope of I&A’s authorities. Arrests being made at these protests are a criminal matter and the protesters are engaged in constitutionally protected activity…. DHS should not report on activities where the basis for reporting is political speech.”

One memo, in fact, illustrates the DHS concern with public relations, by demonstrating the how well the public would respond to the department’s concern regarding maintenance of civil rights.

The undisclosed author of the memo wrote; “I understand we have already received some FOIA requests regarding our possible reporting of the “Occupy…” protests. I think should the FOIA experts find it appropriate to release information about the manner in which this issue was managed within DHS, it could only be perceived as a positive by those in the public who closely observer the Department.”