Yahoo News has obtained a document indicating that the FBI is tracking groups protesting the U.S. immigration policy on the border.
The document, called an “external intelligence note,” revealed that the FBI has gathered intelligence on people involved with the organizations and is monitoring their social media activities.
The bureau’s office in Phoenix, Arizona, produced the note, dated May 30, 2019, and circulated it among other law enforcement and government agencies. The report claims that there are signs that these groups are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals” but almost all of the cited evidence involved nonviolent protests.
According to Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, “The document raises potential legal concerns in a gray area not yet tested by the courts.”
Stone, who was tasked by former by President Barack Obama to help review foreign intelligence surveillance programs following the Edward Snowden leaks, argued “If you’re investigating antiwar and anti-Trump groups, you run the risk of interfering with free speech rights.”
An FBI spokesperson said that the external intelligence note was part of routine information sharing among law enforcement agencies and that it was from the Phoenix office’s perspective.
The spokesperson added: “These products are intended to be informative in nature, and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
According to Corey Lemley, an activist in Tennessee whose Twitter activity was included in the FBI report, he knew he was being monitored because federal authorities have previously visited his home following his involvement in organizing counterprotests against neo-Nazi rallies in Tennessee last year. Lemley pointed out that he was not surprised and that the government has a history of surveilling activists in the past.
