Phoenix police don’t follow Fe’La iniko on social media, but he knows they’re watching. “They’re pretty hip to Instagram,” the racial justice activist said. “Sometimes they’ll pop up in my story views.” Iniko, whose given name is Milton Hasley, often uses social media to share fliers on upcoming protests or speak out against police violence. So when officers surrounded his car last summer while he was leaving a demonstration against the killings of George Floyd and Dion Johnson, iniko worried he might have been targeted in advance for his views. As a handful of cop cars trained their spotlights on him, he was careful to keep his hands visible as he placed them on the steering wheel, a video he posted on Instagram shows.
Police keep tabs on social media, but who keeps tabs on cops?
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Arizona PBS By Nicole Sadek, Laura Kraegel, Jimmy Cloutier and Michael McDaniel/Special for Cronkite News
May 13, 2021
(Video by Michael McDaniel/Special for Cronkite News)
Phoenix police don’t follow Fe’La iniko on social media, but he knows they’re watching.
“They’re pretty hip to Instagram,” the racial justice activist said. “Sometimes they’ll pop up in my story views.”
Iniko, whose given name is Milton Hasley, often uses social media to share fliers on upcoming protests or speak out against police violence. So when officers surrounded his car last summer while he was leaving a demonstration against the killings of George Floyd and Dion Johnson, iniko worried he might have been targeted in advance for his views. As a handful of cop cars trained their spotlights on him, he was careful to keep his hands visible as he placed them on the steering wheel, a video he posted on Instagram shows.
The program also keeps tabs on planned protests, according to a government bulletin.
Last week, Gohmert appeared on the far-right One America News Network (OAN) to condemn iCOP. There’s been enough government “spying” on American citizens through the National Security Agency, he said, referring to the NSA’s previous unconstitutionalsurveillance efforts.
“The only thing that Orwell got wrong was the year,” Gohmert told OAN host Kara McKinney. “It wasn’t 1984 it’s now.”
The U.S. Postal Service apparently has deeper, darker secrets than the NSA. We don’t need any more government spying on our citizens. https://t.co/8qkxgoKSPo Louie Gohmert (@replouiegohmert) May 7, 2021
Just when millions of Americans might be wondering how much more extensive our surveillance state can become, they get an answer, courtesy of Yahoo News:
âThe law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americansâ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.â
One suspects that most Americans would be surprised to learn that an agency tasked with delivering mail even has an enforcement arm. But apparently it does. And the public is being subjected to wholly unwarranted scrutiny:
âThe details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as âinflammatoryâ postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.â
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