Article text, because the archive site sadly uses Google’s reCAPTCHA 🤢:
One week after Hamas’s October 7 attack, thousands rallied outside the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles to protest the country’s retaliatory assault on Gaza. The protestors were peaceful, according to local media, “carrying signs that said ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘End the Occupation,’” and watched over by a “sizable police presence in the area.” The LAPD knew the protests were coming: Two days earlier, the department received advanced warning on Dataminr, a social media surveillance firm and “official partner” of X.
Internal Los Angeles Police Department emails obtained via public records request show city police used Dataminr to track Gaza-related demonstrations and other constitutionally protected speech. The department receives real-time alerts from Dataminr not only about protests in progress, but also warnings of upcoming demonstrations as well. Police were tipped off about protests in the Los Angeles area and across the country. On at least one occasion, the emails show a Dataminr employee contacted the LAPD directly to inform officers of a protest being planned that apparently hadn’t been picked up by the company’s automated scanning.
Based on the records obtained by The Intercept, which span October 2023 to April 2024, Dataminr alerted the LAPD of more than 50 different protests, including at least a dozen before they occurred.
It’s unclear whether the LAPD used any of these notifications to inform its response to the wave of pro-Palestine protests that spread across Southern California over the last two years, which have resulted in hundreds of arrests.
Neither the LAPD nor Dataminr responded to a request for comment.
“They are using taxpayer money to enlist companies to conduct this surveillance on social media.”
Privacy and civil liberties experts argue that police surveillance of First Amendment activity from afar has chilling effect on political association, discourse and dissent.
“Police departments are surveilling protests which are First Amendment protected political activity about a matter of public importance,” Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told The Intercept. “They are using taxpayer money to enlist companies to conduct this surveillance on social media. This is especially worrisome now that the Administration is targeting Gaza protesters for arrest and deportation based on protected activity.”
The alerts began pouring in on October 9, when Dataminr flagged a “Protest mentioning Israel” blocking traffic in Beverly Hills, citing a tweet. Over the course of the month, Dataminr tipped off the LAPD to six different protests against the war across Los Angeles. These alerts included information about protests already in progress and information about the time and place of at least one LA protest planned for a future date.
Emails produced by the LAPD in response to The Intercept’s records request show that along with its regular feed of information about constitutionally protected speech, it also provides the department with alerts curated through feeds with titles like “Domestic Demonstrations Awareness,” “LA demonstrations,” “LA unrest,” and “demonstrations,” indicating the department proactively monitors First Amendment gatherings using the platform.
The department also began receiving a regular flow of alerts about protests thousands of miles away, including a “protest mentioning Palestinian territories outside the Consulate General of Israel” in Chicago,” and tweets from journalist Talia Jane, who was providing real-time updates on an antiwar rally in New York City.
Jane told The Intercept that she objects to the monitoring of her reporting by police, and also said Dataminr’s summary of her posts were at times inaccurate. In one instance, she says, Dataminr attributed a Manhattan road closure to protesters, when it had in fact been closed by the NYPD. “It’s absurd any agency would spend money on a service that is apparently completely incapable of parsing information correctly,” she said, adding that “the surveillance of journalists’ social media to suppress First Amendment activity is exactly why members of the press have a responsibility to ensure their work is not used to harm people.”
On October 17, Dataminr sent an “urgent update” to the department warning of a “Demonstration mentioning Palestinian territories planned for today at 17:00 in Rittenhouse Square area of Philadelphia,” based on a tweet. Three days later, a similar update noted another “Demonstration mentioning Palestinian territories” planned for Boston’s Copley Square. Another warned of a “protest mentioning Palestinian territories” in the planning stages at the Oregon State Capitol. It’s unclear if the department intended to cast such a wide net, or if the out-of-state protest alerts were sent in error. Dataminr’s threat notifications are known to turn up false positives; multiple tweets by angry Taylor Swift fans aimed at Ticketmaster were forwarded to the LAPD as “L.A. Threats and Disruptions,” the records show.
Materials obtained by The Intercept also show that despite Dataminr’s marketing claims of being an “AI” intermediary between public data and customers, the firm has put its human fingers on the scales. On October 12, a Dataminr account manager emailed three LAPD officers, whose names are redacted, with the subject line “FYSA,” military shorthand meaning “for your situational awareness.” The email informed the officers of a “Protest planned for October 14 at 12:30 at Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles,” with a link to a tweet by a Los Angeles university professor. It’s unclear if the LAPD has requested these manual tip-offs from Dataminr, or whether such personal service is routine; Dataminr did not respond when asked if it was a standard practice. But the hands-on approach undercuts Dataminr’s prior claims that it just passively provides alerts to customers about social media speech germane to their interests.
A company spokesperson previously told The Intercept that “Every First Alert user has access to the exact same alerts and can choose to receive the alerts most relevant to them.””
Dataminr pitches its clients across the private and public sector a social media superpower: What if you had immediate access tweet relevant to your interests — without having to even conduct a search? The company, founded in 2016 and valued at over $4 billion, claims a wide variety of customers, from media newsrooms to government agencies, including lucrative federal contracts with the Department of Defense. It has also found an avid customer base in law enforcement. While its direct access to Twitter has been a primary selling point, Dataminr also scours apps like Snap and Telegram.
The company — which boasts both Twitter and the CIA as early investors — pitches its “First Alert” software platform as a public safety-oriented newsfeed of breaking events.
It has for years defended its police work as simply news reporting, arguing it can’t be considered a surveillance tool because the information relayed to police is public and differs in no way from what an ordinary user browsing social media could access.
Privacy advocates and civil libertarians have countered that the software provides the government with visibility that far surpasses what any individual user or even team of human officers could accomplish. Indeed, Dataminr’s own law enforcement marketing materials claim “30k people working 24/7 would only process 1% of all the data Dataminr ingests each day.”
The company has this power because of its long-standing “official partner” status with both Twitter and now X. Dataminr purchases access to the platform’s data “firehose,” allowing it to query every single post and scan them on behalf of clients in real-time.
Previous reporting by The Intercept has shown Dataminr has used this privileged access to surveil abortion rights rallies, Black Lives Matter protests, and other constitutionally protected speech on behalf of both local and federal police. Dataminr sources told The Intercept in 2020 how the company’s human analysts, helping tailor the service to its various police and military customers, at time demonstrated implicit biases in their work — an allegation the company denied.
Thank you so much. It’s time the tail stops wagging the dog.