the impact of surveillance on the · amendments.” (kusper v. pontikes, 414 u.s. 51, 56 (1973))....

the impact of surveillance on the exercise of political rights: an interdisciplinary analysis 1998-2006 Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez, Randall Amster, Lesley Wood

abstract This paper analyzes the impact of surveillance on the exercise of foundational political rights in the United States. We link protected assembly and association rights to social movements theory. The analysis assesses the impacts of surveillance on the analytical dimensions of social movements identified by scholars: resources, political opportunities, framing, cultures of resistance, political consciousness, and social movement organizations. We draw on interviews with 71 formal and informal “social justice” organizations experiencing different levels of surveillance from 1998-2006 in 4 regions of the U.S. Our findings suggest important implications for social movements scholars and for future litigation of surveillance-related issues.

key words social movements, surveillance, repression, assembly, First Amendment

introduction Our central research question in this project is how social movement activity has been impacted by surveillance in what we refer to as the post-Seattle era.2 We do not, as do most social movements scholars, take state repression for granted. Instead we begin our analysis of the impact of surveillance from the perspective of the First Amendment. The preponderance of legal discourse about the First Amendment focuses on the protection of individual speech acts. These acts are often viewed as isolated, discrete events. Each has an individual speaker, a space, a speech. But as social movements scholars, we might ask how did the speaker get there? Were they alone? What were their fears and risks? How did they have the courage to be there? How did they learn about what they spoke about? How much time did they spend in meetings in advance of that speech act? Was the tactical plan for the event at which they spoke developed democratically? Social movements scholars recognize that most political speech is not isolated, but exists in an institutional and cultural context which supports it.

the impact of surveillance on the exercise of assembly rights. 9.17.07 . 2

A less litigated aspect of the First Amendment is assembly. Since Seattle, public events like marches and rallies have been subject to increasingly rigid constraints. Civil litigation has focused on protecting access to public space with “time, place, and manner” reasonable to groups organizing the expression of dissent. This has generally not gone well, with protests confined to “protest pits,” surrounded with riot cops, or re-located far from (protected) access “sight and sound” of targets. As with the case of litigation on speech, these assembly issues have been litigated as isolated, discrete events. Questions from a social movements perspective would include: Are assemblies about different issues treated differentially in their access to public space? How does the restriction of opportunities for dissenting assembly impact the quantity and quality of dissent expressed, and by whom? What kind of resources are required to access and use public space for dissenting assemblies? What are the physical and social conditions of organizing people into that space -– who is included and how are they notified? What are the network dynamics of a given assembly? What form does decision making about the format of the assembly take? Who is excluded? Who controls the diversity of individual and group expression? The unit of analysis of such inquiries is a Social Movement Organization, or even a coalition, or, in some cases the wider community of individuals and groups which receives invitations, or doesn’t find out, or is excluded.

Extending these queries and our principal argument further, we have likewise explored the implications for rights of “association.” From a legal perspective, the right of political association sits somewhere on the cusp between First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly, the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s implicit right to privacy. While not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, this broad right is recognized as fundamental to the workings of a healthy democracy: “There can no longer be any doubt that freedom to associate with others for the common advancement of political beliefs and ideas is . . . protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” (Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51, 56 (1973)). Still, despite this foundational quality, legal scholars and social movement theorists alike have not analyzed the right of association in its full measure. The interdisciplinary version of our research agenda thus reads: How has the exercise of the constitutionally-protected rights to dissenting assembly and association been impacted by government surveillance programs in the post-Seattle Era? In this study we attempt to answer this central question by investigating tangible impacts of surveillance schemes on the basic rights of individuals and groups to organize, associate, and assemble for political purposes.

As a basic proposition, it may be said the right of association derives from enumerated rights of speech, assembly, and petition, while simultaneously working to preserve those same rights. In this sense, associational rights are somewhat unique in American jurisprudence, yet are no less vital for this uniqueness, as the Supreme Court has opined: “[S]tate action which may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the closest scrutiny.” (NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 461 (1958)). Indeed, as the Court subsequently affirmed, “it is now beyond dispute that freedom of association for the purpose of advancing beliefs and ideas and airing grievances is protected” (Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 523 (1960)). Moreover, the Court has repeatedly “emphasized that such a right is necessary to


promote free expression,” and has acted to protect “collective action [that] is necessary for effective advocacy” (Kaminsky, p. 2281). In the final analysis, despite its derivative nature, it is clear that “freedom of association is so essential to the First Amendment that in its absence, the First Amendment would lose much of the protective force that it was intended to have” (Kaminsky, p. 2282). Thus, the freedom of association is properly seen as a foundational touchstone for a democratic society.

Still, there remains significant confusion as to whether rights of association and assembly are individual rights or group rights. From a legal perspective, the rights afforded by the Constitution are generally seen as rights obtaining to individuals; thus even rights of assembly and equal protection are viewed as applicable to groups but are held by the individuals in a given group. This implies that the rights of the group qua group are rarely recognized as such, although association may stand as an exception: “[T]he right to associate only serves an instrumental role. That is, it can only be invoked when individuals exercise their First Amendment rights through collective action.” (Kaminsky, p. 2283, citing Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984)). While not dispositive of the legal perspective, this does suggest that application of the right of association is group-centric, which certainly makes sense when one considers even a basic dictionary understanding of what it means to “associate.”

From a social movements perspective it is painfully obvious that assemblies simply do not exist without social movements and social movement organizations. Even spontaneous insurrections depend, if not on formal organization, on cultures of resistance, the development of a political “frame,” and on social networks as an organizational resource. In the United States today, there appears to be a dearth of overt insurrection. Almost all public dissent takes place within the structure of state permits, and requires considerable organizational resources. It appears to us that the sociological perspective often fails to fully account for the legal realities (including the primacy of individualism in the law) that frequently operate to both enable and constrain social movements. What we are interested in with this work is to bring a legal sensibility about rights of association and assembly more straightforwardly into the social movements literature, and also to suggest the utility of a social movement perspective on potential litigation over issues of speech, assembly, and association.

In this regard, a number of legal cases have connected the right of association with the right to be free from unwarranted government surveillance. In NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462 (1958), the Supreme Court held that compelled disclosure of an advocacy group’s membership list would be an impermissible restraint on freedom of association, observing that the “[I]nviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.” The Court recognized that the chilling effect of surveillance on associational freedom “may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs,” (357 U.S. at 463), a point echoed by the courts in subsequent decisions such as Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516 (1960) (tapping a political organization’s phone would provide its membership list to authorities, which is forbidden); Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479 (1965) (organizations had been harmed irreparably when subjected to repeated announcements of their subversiveness, which scared off potential members and contributors); and Zweibon v.


Mitchell, 516 F.2d 594 (D.C. Cir. 1975) (surveillance may cause members to leave an organization, thereby chilling that organization’s First Amendment rights and causing loss of membership). As one commentator likewise notes, the existence of “broad investigative powers can have a very disturbing inhibiting effect on the exercise of the freedoms of speech and association” (Christie, p. 876), concluding that “surveillance of civilians by any government agency at political meetings should be prohibited in all but the most narrowly defined set of circumstances” (p. 888).

While the legal cases regarding surveillance have been brought on behalf of individuals or organizations, social science research has persistently emphasized the impact on organizations and movements. For more than thirty years, Gary Marx has been studying the impact of covert police operations on social movements. [Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988] A number of case studies of social movements and repression show the extent of surveillance used against US social movements. [Churchill and Vander Wall 1990, 2002, Schultz and Schultz 1989, 2001, Davenport 2005, 2006]

One of the most significant scholarly studies on surveillance, which has particular relevance to our project, is David Cunningham’s 2004 study of FBI counterintelligence activities analyzes 12,000 of the more than 50,000 pages of COINTELPRO memos made public in 1977. Counterintelligence programs designed to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” [6] various political targets were official FBI policy during what is known as the COINTELPRO era, from 1956-1971. However, the “normal” intelligence activities of the agency, before, during and after the official programs, included much of the same activity, and very similar effects on targets. [185] Intelligence operations can serve two goals, investigation of federal crimes and (the more controversial) precautionary monitoring through information gathering about organizations. Counterintelligence operations may take a preventative goal, “actively restrict a target’s ability to carry out planned actions” or may take the form of provocation for the purpose of entrapment of targets in criminal acts. [6] Some of the “normal intelligence” activities undertaken by the FBI outside of official COINTELPRO which nevertheless have a preventative counterintelligence function are: harassment by surveillance and/or purportedly criminal investigations [203, 210, 213], pressured recruitment of informants [206], infiltration [207-9], breakins [202, 214], and labeling or databasing which harms the group’s reputation impacting its ability to communicate with the media, draw new members, and raise funds [213], “exacerbat[ing] a climate in which seemingly all mainstream institutions opposed the New Left in some way.” [180] In addition, infiltrators acting as agents provocateurs is, inexplicably, part of normal intelligence operations. Two things about the FBI are perplexing to observers. The first is the shocking latitude in selecting targets. At the time of the Bureau’s 1909 founding, it was mandated only to investigate antitrust and interstate commerce laws (including prostitution), “placing the investigation of political beliefs and affiliations beyond their purview” [16] but within the next 10 years, the Bureau became involved in raids of draft-dodgers and deportation of supposed anarchists [17]. Moving with political winds, the Bureau was involved in repression of unions, communists, spies, saboteurs, and propagandists. “Hoover’s interpretations of the [1939 Executive] orders as indicating that the FBI should investigate even propaganda ‘opposed to the American way of life’ and individuals stirring up ‘class hatreds’ made virtually every political


group susceptible to FBI surveillance.” [24] During the 1940s, memos on 28 investigations show “in no case is it apparent that the targets were engaging in (or even suspected of) actual criminal activity...clearly illustrate the Bureau’s central concern with policing expression of political radicalism. Such a mission had no direct law enforcement function.” [192] During the 1980s alone, the Bureau “opened 19,500 terrorist investigations...close to half...predicated on no allegation of criminal activity or direct membership in terrorist organizations.” [216] Criteria for engaging in monitoring have changed over time, shifting with waves of political hysteria and civil liberties scrutiny. The 1940 Smith Act illegalized “advocating the overthrow of the government by force or organizing or belonging to a group that had such a goal”, but the Supreme Court eventually required that conviction required evidence of “ ‘an actual plan for a violent revolution’ ”, rather than just “revolutionary beliefs”. [26] Such a “criminal standard” [200] would obviate all but the investigatory operations of the FBI and the use of standard “probable cause” requirements or “reasonable indication of violence” [202] would certainly outlaw all counterintelligence operations. Instead, the Bureau seems to have been allowed to operate “based on a theory that legal dissent is merely a front for deeply rooted subversive goals” [215, 225]. The Bureau has rarely been required to demonstrate that it is abiding by these requirements of criminal code. “After more than three decades of investigation had procured not a single prosecution of an SWP member for violating federal laws, Bureau officials in the post-Hoover era still felt justified in monitoring the organization.” [202] There have been few lawsuits against the Bureau and although the SWP won paltry damages, there was no general injunctive relief. Congress has repeatedly investigated the FBI but has never asserted a level of power and oversight which would ensure the application of criminal standards or respect for the First Amendment. The high point of FBI regulation was the 1976 Attorney General’s Levi Guidelines, which “established a standard of suspected criminal conduct, meaning activity (rather than merely ideas or writings)” and limited investigative techniques, excepting cases with ties to “foreign powers” (governed by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). [196] The Levi Guidelines were weakened by Attorney General Smith’s 1992 Guidelines, but the criminal standard was maintained. [198] Since 9/11 in 2001, Congress has undermined post-COINTELPRO regulations, in order to facilitate “preventative” FBI operations. [219] Agents may now “override any existing legal guidelines” regarding surveillance, and to “infiltrate suspicious groups without first establishing that the targeted organizations are tied to illegal or terrorist acts.” [220] Of course all this hinges on the legal definition of ‘terrorist’. Prior to the 1980s, this label had to pass the criminal standard as a “threat to domestic security”. [227] The 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act re-defined it as “the use of force or violence in violation of the criminal laws of the US or of any State...that appears to be intended to achieve political or social ends.” [227] In addition, consistent with the FBI’s logic regarding legal political activities, the ‘terrorist’ label can be applied to “seemingly peaceful, law-abiding groups” if agents argue that they “are somehow connected to (or ‘fronts’ for) established foreign-based threats.” [226]

One of Cunningham’s unique contributions to our understanding of the FBI is to emphasize the role of administrative aspects of FBI operations. The focus of post-9/11 intelligence shifts has been on massively increasing the amount of data being


collected (by allocation of more agents to the job, loosening restrictions on their means of collecting intelligence, and...taking all suspicious activity seriously”), but these shifts have not been accompanied by an increase in the quality of the analysis (widely recognized as the real intelligence “failure” regarding 9/11). [221]

All of this has taken on new relevance in light of recent revelations about widespread domestic surveillance of political groups since 9/11. The touchstone upon which the “pervasive surveillance” and terrorist-phobic society rests is that surveillance systems reduce victimization. And yet, mainstream peace groups such as Food Not Bombs (see ACLU-Colorado) and the American Friends Service Committee (a branch of the Quakers) have found themselves under surveillance (see AFSC.org; Taylor). As a general matter, it appears that garden variety peace organizations across the country have been infiltrated, documented, photographed, and/or harassed (see, e.g., Barber & Shukovsky), leading to numerous pending lawsuits. The difficulty with much of the litigation to date is most intensively problematized in Laird v. Tatum 408 U.S. 1 (1972). In that case, the plaintiff objected to the chilling effect on First Amendment rights by the mere existence of a government surveillance program, but did not allege any specific harm to himself as a result of the program except that he “could conceivably” become subject to surveillance and therefore have his rights potentially chilled.

Our study looks at this process from the other side, seeking to assess the impacts of surveillance activities undertaken by local as well as federal agencies, on the exercise of constitutionally protected rights to assembly and association. Previous literature has shown that knowledge of, or fear of, surveillance and infiltration also forces movements to direct their energies toward defensive maintenance and away from the pursuit of broader goals [Boykoff 2006, 145; Cunningham 2004; Davenport 2005; Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988]. This may mean that an organization may spend more time theorizing about police behavior rather than pursuing movement goals; shifts its tactics; changes the frequency, location and size of meetings; or censors topics of discussion, and forms and modes of communication in order to improve its defense [Davenport 2006; Flam 1998]. According to Howe and Coser [cited in Goldstein 2001: 371], after it became common knowledge that the Communist Party was “crawling with informers” in the 1950s, only the most hardened members continued to participate actively in an organization that implemented “tough policies . . . as a means of protecting” itself.

Movements also need to maintain credible relationships with a variety of external organizations. Police may convey their belief that a group is dangerous in a variety of ways, from the heaviness of the police presence at a group’s demonstration [Noakes, Klocke and Gillham 2005] to the leaking of information to the press [Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988 ; U.S. Congress 1976, 35; Theoharis 1978, 164; Churchill and Vander Wall 2002, 54, 392]. The defensive isolation that movements often retreat to when they are subject to surveillance and infiltration makes it more difficult for them to maintain sources of funding or access to shared community resources, and to share sensitive or controversial information with the press [Marx 1974; Davenport 2006; US Congress 1976, 183]. These police actions often make other groups and individuals hesitant to associate with that organization. [Davenport 2006; Klatch 2002; Marx 1974, Schultz and Schultz 2001:169]


Relations with government organizations are also likely to be impaired. [Boykoff 2006: 179; Marx 1989]. From the perspective of the social movement organization, being the target of covert forms of repression may increase its distrust of the government. Mutual police and protester distrust may limit the possibility of police-protester negotiations before demonstrations, thus putting social movement groups at risk for being labeled “bad” protesters by the police and, thus, subject to stricter controls during demonstrations [Noakes, Klocke, and Gillham 2005; della Porta and Reiter 1998].

Several studies have suggested that covert forms of repression can result in challengers substituting violent behavior for non-violent activity [Lichbach 1987, White 1989]. As surveillance increases the cost of action to social movement actors, it can contribute to the decline of organizations and movements. Movement decline is associated with exhaustion, and a frequent polarization and increasing distrust between militants and moderates. In movement decline, moderates who are most likely to compromise with authorities are more likely to defect from an organization, and militants who seek continued confrontation are more likely to persist. [Tarrow 1998, 147-8]

Repression including surveillance may also turn dissidents underground (away from more public, restricted spaces toward more private “free” spaces), or alternatively away from overt collective forms of resistance toward more covert, individualistic forms of resistance. [Davenport 2006; Johnston 2005] If the militants continue to be targeted by authorities, a dangerous situation may emerge. As della Porta notes, the combination of partial demobilization, factionalization, and selective repression can produce terrorism [della Porta 1995]. For example, in Germany in the 1970s, the state divided militant and moderate protesters by offering the moderates concessions. These attracted the moderates in the movement to legitimate action, but frustrated the radicals who sought greater change. The radicals then struck back with more extreme violence. The state also escalated, and ultimately the militants were suppressed or driven underground. [Goldstone paraphrasing Sabine Katsted-Henke, 1997, 11-12]

methods We are interested in every type of overt and covert surveillance. This includes: direct observation and visits by officers, such as writing down license plate numbers, and also raids, questioning, and burglary; electronic surveillance such as phone, covert audio recording, email, web, computer, video and photo; undercovers, informants, infiltrators, and agents provocateurs; and databasing. We are interested in the impacts of surveillance on groups (formal and informal), communities, movements, and individual activists (specifically in the sense of how impacts on individuals affect dissenting assembly).

We have completed 49 in-depth interviews 1-5 hours in length. These interviews were conducted with individuals, groups, and multiple groups but the unit of analysis in all cases was the group. The 49 interviews yielded information about 71 groups in 4 regions of the United States. Of the groups, 44 were “stable”, 11 were disbanded, another 11 groups were “having difficulties” and 4 were “taking a break”.


Although we would have liked to investigate groups of the right and left, we do not have connections to right wing groups, so we restricted ourselves to “social justice” groups of the left.

Our sampling method was reputational snowball based on our personal networks. It was essential that we have personal contacts as we needed the activist version of a security clearance to secure these interviews. We also composed our sample, purposively stratifying by the kinds of issues the groups work on and by the level of surveillance they are experiencing. We chose the four regions based on our knowledge that each region contained a diversity of alter-globalization and anti-war groups (since these are and had experienced which had experienced repression

Of the 71 groups, the median age of the group was 8 years. 32 of the groups have 501c3 status, 33 are “informal organizations with shifting participation” and 21 have paid staff. Age of group members was equally spread between 20 and 60 years of age, with some participants also older and younger than that range. 42 of the groups identify as peace or anti-war groups. 41 also work on globalization issues. 20 work on prisons or policing. 23 work on immigration issues. 14 identify as anarchist. 9 have worked on animal rights issues. We asked the groups what kinds of activity they spend energy on. In our sample, the median amount of energy spent on lobbying was 17%. The median amount of energy spent on international solidarity was 25%, 35% on civil disobedience (which some prefer to call “civil resistance”), and 46% of energy goes into education.

We used a long, detailed interview schedule organized around three topics. First we asked about direct experiences and evidence of surveillance. Then we asked about group members’ perceptions of the landscape of surveillance, locally, regionally, and nationally. Finally, we asked them to describe the impacts of surveillance on their groups, their communities, the social movement that they see themselves as part of, and on individuals.

prefatory remarks on findings consistent with previous research Our findings are consistent with Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988, Flam 1998, Churchill & Vanderwall 2002, Boykoff 2006, Davenport 2006, While our findings on the effects of surveillance are comparable to past work, we have taken a different approach in our analysis, as I showed at the beginning we are attempting an interdisciplinary approach.

current surveillance is comparable to cointelpro Our first, and major, preliminary finding has to do with the significance of surveillance in the Seattle era. Our instrument allows a close comparison with Appendix A of Cunningham”s 2004 book on cointelpro. Cunningham studied internal FBI memos, itemizing all the tactics they used. Our instrument is sufficiently comprehensive that we cover in detail much of the same territory. We will be able to compare effects with Cunningham’s documentation of intentions. We are not presenting that comparison today. But I can say based on our preliminary analysis of our data that the nature of intelligence activity in the era we are studying is comparable with the COINTELPRO era.


surveillance cannot be disassociated from policing and prosecution The second preliminary remark that we need to make is that our interviewees were not able to disassociate completely their experiences of surveillance from their experiences of policing, most markedly from police violence. “also it’s about how cops in the street make people feel ineffective, marginal.” Additionally they were not able to separate surveillance from the impacts of prosecutions, specifically from increasing sentences, the banning of political motivations from court proceedings, and grand juries. Morever, interviewees were well aware of the relationships between surveillance and police violence: “The police being so overprepared because of their surveillance increases the risk of violence against us. If they weren’’t expecting something, they wouldn’t have all that stuff.”

response rate The third preliminary remark is that while all studies have some response rate difficulties, those suffered by this study amount to data. Understanding our difficulties with response rate requires a little background with an issue which will be discussed more deeply later in this paper. In activist “security culture”, one of the methods used is “vouching”. Vouching depends on personal history with a trusted person. A “security clearance” (although it’s not called that) requires getting a vouch from a person trusted to the group or person. Sometimes “double-” or “triple-vouching” is required. Some groups actually do an activist version of a “background check” in order to ascertain that the person in question is telling the truth about their history and has no connections with law enforcement.

We had uneven difficulties with refused interviews. In situations where our personal credibility and visibility was high, we were almost always able to secure interviews. In situations where we were not personally well-known, although we were able to acquire security clearances, we found an unexpectedly high refusal rate. In most cases we were not able to ascertain a reason for refusal because we had no direct contact with the refusee. People encouraging colleagues to participate in the study were surprised by the low response rate. We embarked on a process of gathering data about the reasons for refusals, where possible.

The perception that we were “doing a study”. Already buffeted by many academics wasting their time, alterglobalization organizations in particular were reluctant to give us time when ”studies” seem not to benefit them in any way. Although this study clearly could benefit them (as well as the larger movement of which they are a part), they seemed “studied out”. (We did not find this problem from anti-war/peace organizations.) It is unfortunate that excessive and often ill-informed research by graduate students has resulted in a blanket unwillingness of activist organizations to expend resources participating in studies.

Concern that talking to us would cause the group or organization to come under surveillance. Several organizations wanted to avoid us, in the belief that talking to us would amount to an admission that they were involved in actions that warranted surveillance.

Denialism: A number of organizations who the interviewers strongly suspect to be under surveillance refused to talk to us on the basis that they are not suffering surveillance. The most common way this was denialism was expressed was “well everything we’re doing is above-board, so the state doesn’t have any interest in us.”


There are several motivations for this denialism: (1) Admitting to being under surveillance could damage the organization’s reputation and frighten away supporters. (2) In order to manage their own fears, organizers often have to engage in psychological repression of their knowledge of threats. (3) Rather than opposing government repression, some organizations work to reinforce a hard line between legal and illegal political activities and constantly reaffirm that they are on the legal side. This assertion involves the demonstrably incorrect assumption that state repression targets only illegal action.

Security culture. This is a set of practices which organizations implement in order to protect the organization and members from prosecution. Implementing security culture is a lot of work. As an interviewee pointed out, making distinctions between what needs to be protected and what doesn’t is an additional layer of work. Inexperience, fear, or excessive caution can lead to implementing security culture when it’s not necessary. (Many organizations we contacted and interviewed do not do any illegal activities, yet they still use security culture. Excessive caution can take the form of: (1) Just don’t talk to anyone about anything. (2) Avoid tape recorders. (3)A belief that since the state is lawless, the law can’t protect us. There is no reason to bother researching state activity because the state has no intention of respecting the Constitution. The only protection is security culture, so breaching it to collect data on the lawlessness of the state is not worthwhile.

“Turning over a new leaf.” Perceiving an increase in state repression, some activists have changed the nature of the activist work they do or have quit entirely. By dissociating themselves from surveillance, they assert both strategically and psychologically that they do not warrant further government attention. They avoid conversations which would re-associate themselves with having been the target of government attention.

It forces people to think about things that they have been dealing with every day….They don't want to acknowledge all that trauma. They'd like to think that's part of their past and their future will not include surveillance or harassment. They've turned over a new leaf in that they've stopped organizing. That was a chapter of my life in which I was surveilled. I don't do that any more. I don't do the hardcore organizing. so the government won't be interested in me.

The Green Scare: Simultaneous with the beginning of our study in early 2006, what is known as the “Green Scare” introduced at least four political dynamics which impact response rate. (1) Extensive federal investigation is happening into activities formerly understood as a form of Non-violent Civil Disobedience (NVDA) which are now classified as “domestic terrorism”, specifically property crime against private interests involved in controversial environmental practices. Pending sentences for these crimes are as high as 30 years, with several of the accused facing sentences over 20 years. If criminal categories are actively expanding in this way, activists have no way of knowing what now legal (or grey area) acts may soon be characterized as “terrorism”. This means that all kinds of currently legal activities might not be safe to discuss. (2) Several of the Green Scare indictments and convictions accuse defendants of nothing more than incitement to property crime, chilling political speech. (3) Several of the cases have involved the affidavits of long-term infiltrators (some of whom had


plenty of credibility and vouches) as well as extensive electronic surveillance introduced into discovery (such as 500 pages of phone call transcripts). This has undermined even the most robust security culture systems. (4) As part of the Green Scare, a number of grand juries were underway in various parts of the country at the time of our research. Activists aware of these grand juries were living in a state of extreme anxiety, concerned that they might be called before the grand jury, that their friends might secretly “turn” under the pressure, that (in the best of circumstances) an unknown number of people will go to jail for refusing to testify, and that even organizing community solidarity in response to grand juries could result in another wave of indictments for “obstruction of justice”.

For the moment, the Green Scare has activists who are aware of it (and not all progressive activists are aware of it) realizing that there is no safe political activity, no safe place, and no safe relationship any more.

How deep the snitches have gotten, I don’t feel like I can even trust people that I’ve been close with for long periods of time. I can only trust people I’ve given tattoos to or made love to. That’s not even a good indicator. ... close friends have switched sides and given up information in the interrogation room. That’s what’s putting questions on the people I’m close with. You don’t know if they’re going to be able to turn somebody.

Now every conversation is a risk. The maxim “don’t trust anyone” is in play in many communities, severely isolating activists. This means that a vouch, even a good one, is no longer enough. To have a conversation, activists must now decide that it is worth the risk. Often this decision hinges either on personal contact with us, or a strong recommendation of another person that the study is a worthwhile activity. In essence, activists need some very personal motivation to take the risk of speaking with us, even though we are not discussing any illegal activities in the course of these interviews. Our activist credentials and security clearances were not enough on their own to motivate activists to take these risks.

analysis We use an analytic framework based on social movements literature, which recognizes 5 important dimensions of social movements: Social movements draw on many different kinds of “resources” – money, time, bodies, space, equipment, membership, allies, publications, etc. In some sense, nearly everything that movements use is a resource, but scholars have separated out several of these aspects for distinct analytic attention. They treat separately both the historical-institutional-rhetorical context of “political opportunities” and the conceptual “framing” work of movements. Recent scholarship has also identified culture as a sufficiently powerful dimension of movements as to require independent attention. Finally, political sociologists emphasize the psycho-social and ideological dimensions of social movements as a realm of study that they call “political consciousness”. We added another analytic category which is the impact on social movement organizations, since they correspond to the legal concept of “association” and are entities recognized by the law.


how surveillance impacts resources

“…the difficulty of assessing what doesn’t happen…”

Of course, one of the most important social movement resources is participants. Recent publicity of massive surveillance databases, along with codes and tags such as “criminal extremist” and “domestic terrorist”, have created widespread fear to participate in completely legal political events. Interviewees explain that “People who might be sympathetic, are now either just completely neutral or don’t want to know.” Interviewees were not only concerned about the chilling of fellow citizens’ dissent, they also explained how it makes those who are active feel lonely and isolated: “People are staying home to avoid being on a list, so then it feels like nobody cares.” A number of interviewees stated their suspicions that FOIA requests, “leaks” of database information to the media, and other releases of investigatory files were actually strategic law enforcement activity intended to intimidate. Reluctance to participate impacts donations to organizations, numbers of participants in events, willingness to sign names on petitions and ads, volunteering, and receipt of newsletters and other educational materials normally sent to members. “There are people who don’t want to be a spokesperson or a speaker or write letters to the editor.”

Interviewees were very conscious to acknowledge that shifts in group membership and quantitative level of activity are multi-causal. As one interviewee stated, “it’s very difficult to assess what doesn’t happen.” Many said “well you can never really know” why someone doesn’t participate any more or why we’ve had fewer new people joining us this year. Despite this cautiousness, nearly every interviewee was able to think of people they know personally who had explicitly stated that they were leaving


political work due to their fears of surveillance. Several interviewees stated that they personally knew 20-30 people for whom that was the case. Many interviewees, when asked to close their eyes and visualize specific people who used to be active and no longer are, and who they either know or strongly suspect curtailed their activism due to surveillance or fears of it, counted 5-10 faces. Everyone knew at least two people who were no longer active.3 One particularly astute activist explained that he could list 300 people. Another interview explained “I would not want to give you a small number because it is my conviction that almost everyone that I know in [this city] doesn’t want to come out.” An interviewee who has seen “meetings go from 50 to 10” explains that “the people who have come are pissed off and they are strong enough personally and culturally and constitutionally, to come….You don’t know the other dozen people who’ve decided not to go there.”

Organizations depend on organic leadership development and on volunteerism. Several interviewees pointed out that surveillance often targets people who are stepping up and taking responsibility for logistics, outreach, or safety roles like marshals and medics. The criminalization of logistics personnel has a chilling effect on volunteerism.

While individuals are concerned to participate, surveillance also threatens the bonds between organizations in networks. Perhaps unlike earlier eras, when surveilled organizations tended to go underground and isolate themselves (see della Porta 1995; Zwerman and Steinhoff 2005), what we are hearing from our interviewees is that instead of self-isolation, surveilled organizations are now being abandoned by their allies. “As soon as your orgs name is linked with another org, that may or may not be under surveillance but you believe is, then there's this sense of we're going to trigger the alarm bells and we're going to be under surveillance too, just because we had a picnic with these folks.” According to an interviewee, organizations have become reluctant to share listserves and are even mistrusting when they try to have a meeting together. Another interviewee explained that even educational events are infused with distrust. The concern that surveillance may “spill” from one organization to another, or that all organizations might be held responsible for the actions of allies, leads to a reduction of solidarity actions among groups. One of the pacifist groups in our study had been meeting in a church hall. After the media revealed that they were under surveillance, they were no longer welcome to use the church and their relationships with people in that congregation have been strained because they were viewed as having put the church at risk. An entire town’s political organizations can be tainted by aggressive criminalization of one organization. An interviewee has explains how police violence affects regional organizing, “When I attend meetings in other towns, people say I don’t want to go [to do political action] to [city]. It’s scary, it’s dangerous there.’ When you hear that you realize that the surveillance on [city’s] activists has worked….You shouldn’t have to stay home to be safe. You should feel safe wherever you go to express yourself.” An activist explains how delicate participatory coalitions are damaged by surveillance.

…meetings used to have 50 people and now they have a dozen. [This coalition was] dependent on input by everybody. Now people don’t show up, so the decisionmaking process suffers because people aren’t there to participate. We had pacifists and militants working together, talking. There are heated disagreements. But add the pressure of [surveillance] and what was difficult but not impossible, becomes improbable.


The next area of resources that is impacted is the nexus of strategy, secrecy, creativity, and trust. An interviewee explains the “paralysis” of how trying to be strategic and creative to create effective actions is impacted by “worry about the heat you're going to get for even trying -- for even talking about it... if I do ANYTHING they are going to be watched, hammered down.” Prior research has documented that inducing paranoia is in fact one of the goals of surveillance [Churchill and Vander Wall 2002; Marx 197].

how surveillance impacts political opportunities

“5 peoples homes being raided leads to intimidation of millions of people.” At first we thought that we would not find impacts in this area, but examining the data, we found that surveillance forecloses political opportunities in a number of ways. By remaking public space as a space of imminent police violence, “People were no longer willing to participate in meetings and activities. There is a down right fear... people will say things like, ‘yes, I will answer the phone for you, but I will not show up to the next rally... I can think of three or four individuals who have gone to more spiritual activists, like meditations, prayers, and conversations and will not participate in public rallies.” Inexperienced activists were easily intimidated by the teargassing of a permitted rally. But even more experienced activists experience this effect: “It gets tiring when you are shadowed by 40 cops ready to beat your ass down when there are no illegal actions planned. It's just a protest.”

Another way in which the climate is changed by police action is to create an atmosphere of threat, which intimidates participants and would-be participants. On top of the impacts of police violence in public space, well publicized surveillance has an powerful intimidating effect. “again, 5 peoples homes being raided leads to intimidation of millions of people. it needs to be clear that a goal of such activity is to isolate the movements that are being repressed, using the fear of millions of people to create that political isolation.”

Several pacifist groups we interviewed had been infiltrated during civil disobedience actions. Going through the very personal and intense experience of preparing for arrest and then finding out that one of their fellow arrestees was an agent shook people deeply. In conjunction with prosecutorial shifts (increasing sentences and the restriction of political motivations from court proceedings, forcing the defense to rely on technicalities), civil disobedience, which depends on using the legal process, surveillance forecloses of space for civil disobedience. “You don't want to get your friends and nuns and old people involved.”

A third way in which political opportunities have changed is the perception of the openness of the system to peaceful change. One of our groups described itself as “an anti-system kind of group – we’re about demanding the system live up to its moral code.” American peace and justice organizations like this one were the largest type of groups represented in our study. They organize stalwart, calm pressure and they expect their moral politics to receive respectful deliberation. An interviewee described feeling “so disappointed by the teargas. There was facepainting [at the rally]. If we intended something then we wouldn’t have invited children…We tried everything we could so there’d be no secrets and I expected the same thing in return.” Interviewees described the frustration of having no access to space “closes off this channel of democracy that we already don’t trust. ultimately whatever we say will be distorted.” Reflecting on police seizure of art materials, an


interview explains: ”There's a strong statement: ‘our threshhold for your dissent is so low, it's way down here. we're not going to tolerate perfectly legal building of perfectly legal things’.”

Another impact on the political opportunity structure is police action to change the social context in which assemblies occur. A number of groups we interviewed described the appearance of counterprotesters or opponents at events which had not been announced public. This led them to believe that the police were circulating this information to opposing social organizations. One interviewee suggested that such police invitations to counterprotesters is giving a green light to inviting social/civil violence against dissenters.

Of course one of the most important changes in the climate is the creeping criminalization of dissent. The line separating criminality from legality is moving rapidly into the arena of dissent. The most obvious area is the coding of property crime as violence. “When people are being thrown in jail for 25 years for destroying vehicles it means that we are just supposed to follow orders.” Another is the definition of military recruiters as federal officers, making interfering with them in any way a felony. The creeping criminalization even includes the treatment of educational activities as “threats” to national security. Creeping criminalization has a variety of effects. First it chills discussion even of legal activities that may not be legal next week. We asked an interviewee about legal activities s/he does not discuss. “Street art...Critical Mass4...squats.”

Interviewees made a number of interesting points about the creeping criminalization. One argued that it’s happening because current social movements are in fact non-violent. “People aren't committing the crimes that they want them to commit. They can't throw them away, lock them up, so they will invent....charges.” Another pointed out how criminality is used as a justification for surveillance, without due attention to the nature of the crime. Another pointed out that s/he knows s/he can be criminalized at any time. “We are now protesting and doing activism under the approval of the government forces. in other words I’m just waiting for the time when I cross the line (and that line is defined by them) when they grab my ass. and they can do it any time and they can do it legally.” Finally, an interviewee carefully explained the impacts of criminalization for the social context of political action and its capacity to reach fellow inactive dissenters:

“Since the hugely successful mass action in Seattle with WTO, routinely since then large gatherings on a whole range of issues have been portrayed in the media as criminal, violent, disruptive. [They are portrayed as] people come from no home, coming out of the shadows, the alleys, to descend on this area and provoke violence and chaos.... creates the image of the left as a criminal element of society.”

how surveillance impacts framing

“...we spend a lot of time reworking and rewording simple statements”

Surveillance impacts framing in three ways. First, the criminalization of groups interrupts their ability to implement their frame. An interviewee who was labeled a “criminal extremist” based on international solidarity work explained the results of losing control over their frame: “calling us criminal extremists in the media and in public.


makes it difficult to have a discussion and be taken seriously. easy to diminish importance of what someone is saying when police say they are a radical criminal extremist.” While groups are being contained, vilified, and marginalized they are not able to engage in effective communication. An interviewee explains that surveillance has “hugely impacted our success in getting American people to stand up and confront that their civil liberties are being taken away and their consumption is screwing up the planet and is depriving people in africa and elsewhere to have decent lives. they’re not getting that message because they can’t hear us because we’re being suppressed.”

Second, surveillance steals the frame, preventing groups from deciding how to communicate about themselves. An interviewee explains that the imposed criminal frame, which s/he points out, has become “standard and routine”. This aspect of surveillance “communicate[s] that we are illegitimate and ... a threat not to the systems of the oppression that we’re against, but ... a threat to the safety of everyday people in the community.”

The third way that surveillance impacts framing is by causing groups to feel they must re-frame themselves. Groups talking about choosing their words very carefully, and spending a great deal of extra time reviewing the words they choose. One informal organization explained “the assumption that everything is being read puts pressure to word things carefully to make sure it’s clean and carefully worded...we spend a lot of time reworking and rewording simple statements...concerned about seeming inflammatory [or] confrontational.” They joked that they now have a “department devoted to that”. Then they became somber, describing the significance of this vigilance as “an accepted dimension in how we operate...it [surveillance] creates a new priority that wouldn’t otherwise exist.” Another organization takes this re-framing even to the point of how they describe their assemblies: “We don't hold protests or demos we hold "public awareness rallies". Our language has changed. We have to be more precise. can't talk like a regular person... if you're chatting away you might say the wrong things.”

how surveillance impacts the culture of protest

“New people can’t get involved. It’s hard to build a movement on community when secrecy is an important thing.”

Surveillance impacts the culture of protest by reducing the quality and quantity of political discourse: “We’re scared to be able to openly and honestly talk about issues in our community, state using that info to crush legitimate movements.” A middle-aged man in a peace group told us “my mom is scared to talk to me on the phone...What is she allowed to say and not any more.” Another peace group reported that before they found out about the extent of surveillance they were under “we used to be a lot closer. Now we sometimes talk in code, more cryptic, share less information. We're all a bit more reserved in terms of our speech.” An activist explains “I don't like even talking about politics with them because I don't want to get either of us confused in each others business. If someone is being watched for something i'm not being watched for, I don't want to talk about politics with those people.” Another activist


says “People are scared of the implications of just being radical. There’s almost no space that we consider safe…People just stopped expressing those views entirely.” We found three distinct impacts of reduced discourse. The first is elimination of what is called “cross-pollination”: “It was nice to be able to tell stories of like I worked with this organization and can I help you build... Here’s what we did that you all might be able to do... Now ...you can’t help them out, you can’t tell them stories of things you’ve done before. Because if they were a snitch you’d be in a really bad situation.” A second aspect of reduced discourse is secretive planning. As mentioned above, organizations are communicating much less and across fewer media. “There isn’t that constant discussion, which can be really beneficial. Then you get everybody’s opinion if you can talk to everyone.” This interviewee went on to explain how discourse is intentionally reduced as a protective measure: “Here, we can only talk about what’s going on here. Next week we can’t talk about this any more. And we can’t talk about something else until it’s sure who’s going to be part of it....” Another interviewee summed it up: secretive planning is a disaster in community building, “we couldn’t think creatively.” If actions cannot be discussed later on, then the strategy of the movement no longer moves forward. The third aspect of reduced discourse is the lack of debriefing. Secretive planning is just one of many dimensions of what activists call “security culture”. Surveillance has in fact caused security culture to replace organizing culture, with devastating impacts. The hallmarks of organizing culture are inclusivity and solidarity. The hallmarks of security culture are exclusion, wariness, withholding information, and avoiding diversity. “It’s hard to build when you’re suspicious.” Another activist jokingly described security culture as the “icemaker”, which has replaced the “icebreaker”. S/he went on: “Like handing out a signup sheet. If people feel like that’s going to get in the hands of the government that means that people are not only afraid to sign up, but afraid of asking for it.” A new activist described the experience this way: “What’s the opposite of unites? When I’m suspicious or they are, it creates a tension, conscious or not, about who people are and what their intentions are.” Our interviewees were very conscious of the effects of the cultural shift. “People perceived us as not inclusive because we were so scared.” An activist described their group as showing “paranoia, freakiness, and unwelcomingness that results from the fear...” Another admitted “There’s not as many people involved, there’s not as many voices in the decision making, there’s not as many people from different walks of life.” An activist explained, with alarm, that security “was the first thing we talked about, even before our name or what we're going to do.” Another interviewee pointed out that security culture has become so common that people are using it for actions that don’t need to be protected. “There’s confusion over what actions need to be clandestine and what doesn't.” We noticed in implementing security in this project that it took a lot of energy simply to distinguish when we needed to be secure and when we didn’t. Security culture also involves speaking in code, which, interviewees joked, made communication nearly impossible in some circumstances, particularly when organizers try to communicate with more peripheral people. Interviewees also described the effect it has on themselves as organizers: “I had to learn not to welcome people and not give out information... I’m interested in community building, and then you’re taught to be suspicious and not welcome people it’s antithetical to your theory of change. Another explains when I see people I don’t know I get excited. when I saw the undercovers I was amazed that we had attracted folks that don’t fit in, and I was sad when I found out they were


undercovers.” Another interviewee described how people who fit too well are suspicious as well as people who don’t fit in. S/he described someone who has been softly excluded from the group: ”It makes me suspicious of people who are potential friends and allies, in ways that don't make me comfortable.” Prior research has documented that inducing paranoia is in fact one of the goals of surveillance [Churchill and Vander Wall 2002; Marx 197]. “It’s just constant…When someone new shows up, the whole meeting changes.” This is a limitation on association rights. A second impact on cultures of protest is breaking the experience of trust. (also see Davenport 2006) After it was revealed that a group’s civil disobedience action was infiltrated, “people were tense, held back, uncommunicative. not feeling good about themselves and other people... [There’s] something insidious about destroying the trust.” An interviewee who learned that a long-term and close friend was an FBI informant describes the effect of the experience:

“If this friend of mine could be an informant, then anybody could. I didn't trust any of my friends all of a sudden. the world didn't make sense. if he was an informant, it was so unbelievable that anything could be true. my entire reality was disrupted...I want to get out there and do more, but my body is so impacted by the experience, having all my friendships and alliances thrown into question, that I'm not really doing much any more.”

Moreover, it disrupted the bonds of friendship and community: “We're lonely in our churches and organizations where we work. so there's an incredible sense of community when we meet [other peace activists]. We're hugging and learning to protect each other and what we're going to do when we go to jail together, protecting each other from brutality, learning what peoples weeknesses are. To know that in the midst of all of that there's someone who's spying on you, essentially. it makes you very sad, and hurt.” Another striking impact of surveillance reported by several groups is that they destroy all written records of their work. They do not take notes at meeting. As one interviewee reported: We’re afraid to have a piece of paper with anything written on it at the end of any meeting. Many interviewees said that they don’t want to be seen taking notes, as it would make them look suspicious. This is the destruction in advance of the history of the movement. The last aspect of impact of surveillance of cultures of resistance is the impact on prefigurative practices. One version of this kind of shift is a church group who described how surveillance caused the congregation to question (and ultimately to largely abandon) their “Christian obligation” to social justice. A more widespread version of this impact is its disruption of participatory democracy, one of the hallmarks of current US political culture. Many groups reported that they were no longer maintaining their former level of inclusivity in decisionmaking. [See Marx 1979, Boykoff 2006, Flam 1998, Goldestein 1978] “Sometimes a handful makes decisions and it never used to be that way.”


how surveillance impacts political consciousness

“I’m thinking about oh I wonder if somebody’s watching or listening I think ’I don’t care because I’m doing nothing wrong’

and then I think ’oh shit, it doesn’t matter any more.’ “

Finally, we turn some attention to the effects of surveillance on individuals which are related to the exercise of assembly rights. In this section of our study, the unit of analysis is the individual. The first impact is the perception of one’s legal political work and oneself as marginal or criminal: ”Even the word activist is stigmatized. people have disgust for what you do. you’re not a committed, responsible citizen. you’re this crazy hippy, trying to cause trouble and not thinking about the future and being a citizen who does the work and lives on the way the govt wants you to.” The second type of perception is the perception of oneself through the eyes of others as a possible infiltrator: “I must look suspicious. I was vague about myself. I see myself as an infiltrator.” An interviewee explained: ”If we're all the same fight, we respect that hesitancy. .... I don't fit totally into the culture, or I'm too something. I do feel insecure and shy about it.. it's just this unnerving feeling of I'm being myself, I feel legitimate to myself, I have all these experiences and know all these people, but maybe that's not good enough.” Interviewees talked about the impacts on their own capacity to work of the breaking of a culture of trust. “I didn’t want to meet anybody new, I didn’t want to be in a relationship, I didn’t want people to know me, or be close to me in that way.” Another said simply “When you’re socially isolated it’s hard to be an organizer. if you’re in that kind of fear level it attacks your immune system and affects your health, and your ability to relate to people.” For many interviewees, surveillance has caused them to see the government as lawless. Aware that the line of criminality is moving, they believe that anything could happen at any moment. “…rendition without charges case, I think that enters into people’s subconscious, like every moment of their day.” An activist explains the effects of not knowing what is going to be illegal on any given day. ”…stepping off the sidewalk, those are only civil infractions and only circumstantially illegal. ...it's so often arbitrary. that's peoples experience. sometimes you can march in the streets sometimes you can't. Rhat's the area most affected for people. Their political imagination gets curtailed by repression.” A young activist says: “It is scary that maybe one day the police will just walk in my door and take me or I’ll have a bunch of charges that I don’t know are accumulating, legitimate or illegitimate. the way the government is operating now it doesn’t seem to really matter the accuracy of the data.” The next area of impact on individual activists is the pressure to disassociate from risky areas and people. “I have really shifted the things that I’m willing to work on from anything that was progressive and radical to things that are more peace and justice as opposed to fighting the system.” Another interviewee explained “I’m cautious about people I meet. I met someone from Pakistan and I have his card. But now I am choosing to get rid of materials associated with him because he’s in the Middle East.” Activists experience this demobilization as tragic: “There was a time in my life when I felt like I was going to do something powerful. WE were going to do something powerful. and it was all taken away. And now it feels like I'm just going through the motions. I'm just verbalizing it, I'm not living it.” Perhaps the most chilling impact on political consciousness is the


discouragement to be associated with critical ideas and practices. This was discussed by our interviewees is the case of Ward Churchill.

It was a message: “shut up or else. Don’t question the received wisdom about 911.” … the thing that prompted it all were his comments about 911, war in Iraq, resistance to imperialism… Daniel Ellsberg – he’d be dead in the water at this juncture. Ward just wrote an essay, he didn’t release any private government documents!...

It happens with collaboration of a lot of private interests. The FBI has been silent on Ward. Other people are doing the work. It wasn’t the government, it was Clear Channel Communications and a network, including private intelligence. What it shows is the confluence between media, law enforcement, government. …. The media attack didn’t come from the media. it was fueled by intelligence agencies. I am convinced that [intelligence agencies] leaked info to private media and right wing blogs…. It didn’t stop with Ward...Now I have a Clear Channel file. You’ll never see that one until they broadcast it [They say] “we have the info, it’s your choice when we release it.” This forces self-censorship.

Are there things I wanted to say that I didn’t? Yes. [Ward] has to spend every hour of every day responding to personal attacks. … Now we’re a year into it. This may be one of the most dangerous cases in our time, because of its chilling effect. Anyone associated with Ward Churchill is contaminated. If you honestly come out and say “I think that Ward was right” you’re a pariah…. Some organizations have started to say “we will work with you if Ward is not there.” Why is [Ward] ground zero for the new form of squashing dissent? … Another interviewee describes the impact on their political practice: “Here i am thinking about how i'm going to create this alternative lifestyle but people are listening to me all the time and are going to illegalize that. [I feel I should] live a normal life… It'll be easier for me to hang out and drink beers instead of being passionate and political – stop being such a wierdo, cut down on the types of things that make me feel like that. But those are the things that are important. That's stupid, it sucks. People are afraid to ride bikes around town… We don't do Critical Mass any more. All of a sudden people got arrested, booked on wierd charges. … At this point I assume the FBI will know whatever i do: Is this worth it being on my FBI file? We feel wierd about going into any government building, avoid it at all costs. They'll take any opportunity to trick me into jail… I'm afraid things will get confiscated. Or just if I have a pocket knife that I forget to take out when i go pay for a parking ticket.”

how surveillance impacts social movement organizations

“…and you’re trying to communicate with millions of people…”

The organizations we studied included formal organizations, like churches and nonprofit 501c3 organizations. We also included ad-hoc groupings focused on an event, affinity groups, and informal but long-term community groups. Much social movement work happens outside formal organization, in various informal groupings.

The first way that our interviewees explained their organizations being


affected by surveillance is the experiential aspects of general criminalization. They were subject to surveillance implying criminality when they were not involved with anything illegal. Weekly meetings were criminalized, watched, patrolled. This gives the message to groups and activists that “not only are we watching you, but everything you’re doing is wrong.” An interviewee explains, “they drive by on a regular basis…[Sometimes they are] out of their cars walking down the block writing down plate numbers. This intimidates people from coming to our meetings.” An interviewee explains “People definitely don’t want to put their names on leases, phone bills, anything that takes down your name. I don’t want to be associated with this [group] that they think are terrorists.” S/he goes on: “We barely did anything and got fucked with by the cops. How can we begin to be effective if we can’t even do anything? It affects peoples motivation. They become apathetic, depressed, alcoholics. Depression and alcoholism are on the up and up. Political activism is on the down and down.”

Surveillance sullies the reputation of organizations – this is the public relations aspects of criminalization. Without any prosecution having occurred, potential participants, donors, and supporters perceive an organization as criminal. Social justice organizations that are part of religious congregations found that their reputation for surveillance damaged their relation with their communities: “If we were being watched and beat up, then there must be something not right about what we’re doing... As if we’re not really [religious people]...Our reputation was tainted. If the police don’t trust you, something must be wrong with you.”

As recognized by Boykoff 2006, Cunningham 2004, Davenport 2005, Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988 and Flam 1998, organizations under surveillance tend to shift their agenda from projects to self-defense. Interviewees described this repeatedly as “a distraction”. An interviewee states “what I want to be doing is on the street holding a sign and doing my protesting. But when we pulled off into being concerned with countersurveillance.” An interview observes that the new leadership of their group “avoids anti-war and anti-military and protest [but] we’ve always been about war and peace and nonviolence.” Other organizations described their struggles against the criminalization or restriction of demonstrations. The most striking example of this shifting agenda was a church we interviewed, whose governing board was so spooked by surveillance that they curtailed most of their donations from their endowment. Interviewees from this church were shocked when the church failed even to give money for aid after Hurricane Katrina.

Even once the immediate self-defensive activity is over, the agenda of the organization may be permanently shifted. A long-time board member of a 27 year-old peace and justice organization reflected on the effects of overt surveillance 6 years after it happened. “It's scared us from sponsoring events, put a damper on it. My sense is we would have been much more active aginst the war. As an organization we've avoided initiatives…We haven't done [any civil disobedience] since then. We've participated in other groups’ events, [holding] banners…We have been more low-key than in the past… We haven't been in the public eye as much…I think we've stayed away from contentious issues. We haven't said anything about immigration or about the war.” This interviewee went on to say that the organization avoids taking any initiative and has not sponsored any protests or civil disobedience since their experience with overt surveillance. “Our straegy changed to put more emphasis on education…we’re more likely to do legislative lobbying rather than protesting.” When interns propose other actions “the response is to mute suggestions.”


We were very surprised to find how broadbased was the chilling of internal communication in organizations. Regardless of the legal status of the activities they participate in, nearly all of the groups we interviewed have reduced their use of email and telephone, have built extremely “complicated” communications systems, or try to have their meetings in person. “We did not use email at all, for anything. We set our meetings at rotating locations and everybody knew where the meeting was going to be. We wouldn’t communicate by phone.” Interviewees were quick to point out how much this “slows us down.” Because of the difficulty in communicating, “things that take a lot of planning don’t ever happen.” Many organizations referred to the problems they have communicating with members have gone “totally off line” or people who want to participate but will not give their name or put their contact information on a list. “...and I'm not talking about people doing untoward things, I'm just talking about people who choose to be out of the surveillance realm.”

“It totally changes the character of any conversation. ‘Do you remember that meeting we talked about last week well it’s happening tonight. What’s it about? I’ll tell you later.’ “

The final point that is a specific impact on organizations is how surveillance creates a reluctance to maintain particular organizational arrangements. Instead of working for a long time with the same group, activists feel safer changing groups constantly. “I’ve noticed a big shift from long term strategizing and community building to direct action and then disappear. No ongoing collectives, just talk to one person about each thing I’m doing.”

conclusion We have seen that current surveillance is an alarming threat to mobilizations, and thus to the exercise of constitutionally protected rights to assembly and association. Our findings about the post-Seattle era are consistent with studies of previous activist eras. Current surveillance is both qualitatively and quantitatively comparable, with the enhancements of technology and Congressional leniency apparent. In only one qualitative dimension does our data diverge from previous findings, which is that we did not find the customary dualism in which hardcore activists become more militant while others become more moderate. [Lichbach 1987, White 1989, Tarrow 1998, Zwerman & Steinhoff 2005]. Instead we found signs of pervasive pacification. In lieu of going “underground” to continue their actions [Davenport 2006; Johnston 2005], activists are evading the surveillance net by dropping out of social connections entirely while organizations are abandoning “grey area” activities like civil disobedience and moving toward doing educational and permitted activities.

Nevertheless, many activists have in fact redoubled their efforts to promote social change through nonviolent “grey area” methods, a sentiment reflected by Father Roy Bourgeois of the School of the Americas Watch: “The spying is an abuse of power and a clear attempt to stifle political opposition, to instill fear. But we aren’t going away” (Cooper & Hodge). In Arizona, a group of nonviolent activists who had been under surveillance by terrorism agencies went to the FBI headquarters and “turned themselves in” as a symbolic act of defiance and as a demonstration of their unwillingness to abandon their efforts (World Prout Assembly). Thus, while there


may be a sense of fear among many activists, there is also is a demonstrable spirit of rededication to the myriad causes that social movements undertake.

We are interested in the persistent attempt to rationalize surveillance and repression. Scholars of social movements should take note of the implications for consciousness of the state and forms of repression. We observed age and class distinctions here. While some organizations edit and re-edit their press releases, younger activists know you don’t have to do anything at all to be targeted. The lack of understanding from the elder progressive community has led to a rationalization of repression, taking the form of blaming young people for their own repression (particularly for “provoking” police actions at protests); limiting support for “Green Scare” defendants; and providing little collective concern for defending people from illegal investigations, and absurd indictments, bonds, and sentences. Rationalization collaborates in the creeping criminalization of dissent and political activity.

However, conservative decisions on the part of activists and organizations are highly understandable in light of the costs of surveillance to membership, fundraising, family life, and organizational resources. An organization which was illegally searched spent more than 1500 hours of volunteer time dealing with the fallout for their membership and relations with other organizations. They finally filled a lawsuit for damages, which took 5 years to resolve. Databasing increases information collected, with no opportunity to purge, correct errors, or challenge interpretations. An interviewee notes that even requesting to see your government file is treated as an admission of guilt. It will be the “first entry in new files… i’ve been doing something that makes me believe that you may have reason to monitor me.” Activists who viewed a lot of released files noted that “the redaction was deliberately inept”, which has a further counterinsurgent function. There is no mechanism of accountability for false accusations, improper or unwarranted investigations, or erroneous surveillance. Entry of a presumed relationship between two organizations proliferates to everyone with even remote links. Rapid information sharing between jurisdictions, (including internationally) exponentially increases the impact of tags.

Cultural changes resulting in the loss of history and process have major implications for social movements and the study of their processes and outcomes. Driven by creeping criminalization (we do not know what will be illegal next year), as part of security culture, organizations do not create archives and do not take meeting notes, and activists often do not keep diaries. Moreover, our interviewees explained that strategic and ideological dialogue is greatly reduced. Not wanting to be implicated or to implicate others, political actions are now planned and undertaken in a bubble of time never to be referred to again, with colleagues who will scatter immediately, never referring to one another or what they learned from the action. In addition, people are reluctant to discuss their political ideas, reducing the quantity and quality of political discourse and ideological development. Surveillance of educational events also makes it more difficult to spread analysis and theory.

The data collected here do suggest that challenges to securing legal standing to overcome the burdens raised by the case of Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1 (1972), can be surmounted. In the very recent case of ACLU v. NSA (06-CV-10204, E.D. Mich. 2006), for instance, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor rejected the government’s invocation of Laird in defense of its warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, noting that the plaintiffs in that case (journalists, scholars, and political organizations) had demonstrated actual


and not merely hypothetical harm as the result of unwarranted surveillance. Similarly, our findings indicate that the harm suffered by political organizations and individuals as a result of widespread surveillance, infiltration, and documentation, is legally cognizable and not at all speculative (cf. ACLU-NCA, discussing the “First Amendment Rights and Police Practices Act of 2005”). More broadly, we suggest that programs such as this violate basic rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and association, which strike at the core of any social movement’s ability to operate in a democratic society. As Justice Douglas observed in his dissenting opinion in Laird: “When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist’s shoulder in the library, or walks invisibly by his side in a picket line, or infiltrates his club, the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is cast in the image which Jefferson and Madison designed. . . .” (408 U.S. at 28-29). Likewise, as Judge Warren poignantly wrote in U.S. v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967): “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.”

Based on our reading of Cunningham and an examination of our data, we conclude that much current law enforcement surveillance is more properly conceptualized as counterinsurgency. While the state can always justify depriving individuals of their rights in the interest of public safety or national security, or justify repression of an organization based on some concern about criminality, counterinsurgency against an entire movement violates the fundamental protections of the First Amendment, which is the foundation of a democratic society, variously conceptualized as a marketplace of ideas, a context of free debate and dissent, or self-governance

Based on our analysis, we suggest shifting the “unit of analysis” from aggrieved individual activists or groups to the context of associations which make assembly possible: the social movement. We propose that social movements present themselves as a class before the law, in class-action lawsuits modeled on consumer-rights litigation. If a social movement could gain standing as a class, it could include people who are not members of an organization, as well as dissenters who may have never taken action because of anticipatory conformity. It is the concept of social movements which can bind direct and indirect chilling effects into a coherent grievance, demonstrating that there is no non-problematic level of surveillance in a democratic and free society. It is of fundamental concern that, to this point, a social movement per se has not yet been represented or referred to in the law as a cognizable entity. We conclude that this has both impaired litigation efforts and to undermine the vital role of social movements in a democratic society.

I didn’t know that the event was classified as domestic terrorism…[I attended] a peaceful rally with [my 3 year old] child…I definitely know that my experience has made my thinking more radical, but has also tempered my action.

One has to immediately question who is really getting surveilled? People who deserve it or people who are dangerous or asking for it?... It is regular people who are just standing up and trying to say something that's not even necessarily controversial but not within the government agenda.


references ACLU-Colorado. 2005. “New documents confirm: FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force targets peaceful activists for harassment, political surveillance.” Retrieved on November 3, 2006, from http://www.aclu-co.org/news/pressrelease/release_JTTF051805.htm.

ACLU-NCA. 2005. “First Amendment police standards bill becomes law.” Retrieved on November 24, 2006, from http://www.aclu-nca.org/boxSub.asp?id=76

AFSC.org. 2006. “Newly released surveillance files reveal Pentagon is keeping secret tabs on peaceful protest activities.” Retrieved on November 4, 2006, from http://www.afsc.org/news/2006/SecretSurveillanceFiles.htm.

Barber, M., and P. Shukovsky. 2006. “Peace groups under watch: Authorities keep tabs on non-violent Seattle activists in hunt for al-Qaida,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 22.

Boykoff, Jules. 2006. The Suppression of Dissent: How the State and Mass Media Squelch USAmerican Social Movements. Routledge

Christie, G.C. 1972. “Government surveillance and individual freedom: A proposed statutory response to Laird v. Tatum and the broader problem of government surveillance of the individual,” New York University Law Review, vol. 47, pp. 871-902.

Churchill, War and Jim Vander Wall. 1990. The COINTELPRO Papers. Cambridge: South End Press.

Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. 2002. Agents of Repression. South End Press: Cambridge.

Cooper, L., and J. Hodge. 2006. “Peace group under FBI surveillance,” National Catholic Reporter, Aug. 11. Retrieved on November 3, 2006, from http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006c/081106/081106o.php.

Cunningham, David. 2004. There’s Something Happening Here. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Davenport, Christian. 2006. “Killing the Afro: State Repression, Social Movement Decline and the Death of Black Power” draft presented at the Workshop on Contentious Politics, Columbia University.

Davenport, Christian. 2005. “Understanding Covert Repressive Action” Christian Davenport Journal of Conflict Resolution 49:1, Feb 2005. 120-140.

Della Porta, Donatella. 1995. Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State : A


Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Donner, Frank 1980. The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System. New York: Vintage Books

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the impact of surveillance on the · amendments.” (kusper v. pontikes, 414 u.s. 51, 56 (1973))....

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