Micah Lee

Twitter Thread: Northern California Regional Intelligence Center

Posted August 17, 2020 in twitter-threads

Background: This is an archived Twitter thread. For more information, read: Elon banned me from Twitter for doing journalism. Good riddance.

Original URL of Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/micahflee/status/1295382291741540353

I poured through two weeks of docs from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (police intelligence agency), between when George Floyd was killed while handcuffed face-down in the street, to when the BlueLeaks hacktivist exfiltrated the data https://theintercept.com/2020/08/17/blueleaks-california-ncric-black-lives-matter-protesters/

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 141 Retweets, 566 Likes

It turns out, starting May 31 NCRIC's terrorism liaison program began emailing PDFs listing upcoming protests to over 14,400 people, mostly local cops across northern California, emailing this twice a day at 10am and again at 6pm

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 4 Retweets, 18 Likes

This PDF listed 46 protests scheduled for June 6 in San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Oakland, other cities, and 36 other events for following days. The vast majority of events were #BlackLivesMatter protests

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 5 Retweets, 16 Likes

NCRIC's director Mike Sena says that NCRIC no longer sends these twice-daily emails. He says they started after a right-wing extremist killed a guard at Oakland's federal building, and stopped "I believe it was after the suspects were taken into custody" https://nbcnews.com/news/us-news/airman-charged-killing-federal-officer-during-george-floyd-protests-california-n1231187

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 4 Retweets, 9 Likes

"Really what we have here is over-broad collection and dissemination of peoples’ protected First Amendment activity, and it’s untethered to any basis in the law," an @ACLU_NorCal lawyers says. The docs also claim to be exempt from public records request, which isn't true

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 7 Retweets, 19 Likes

NCRIC also regularly forwards fear-mongering memos from FBI, DHS, and other feds, containing cherrypicked anecdotes and tweets that make protesters seem scary and dangerous, to these 14k local cops across northern California. Like, consider this tweet

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 5 Retweets, 12 Likes

An LA-based FBI analyst saw it and wrote this report called "Civil Unrest in Response to Death of George Floyd Threatens Law Enforcement Supporters’ Safety". NCRIC then forwarded this document to its list of 14k cops

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 4 Retweets, 15 Likes

There's so much more like this too. NCRIC steadily forwarded docs from feds to local cops saying things like this. If cops believe their lives are in danger, this might help explain why their response to peaceful protests have been so brutal and violent

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 6 Retweets, 17 Likes

Oh yeah, and one of the documents tries to lay blame for the massive nationwide outrage against police killings of Black people on "foreign influence campaigns"

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 8 Retweets, 14 Likes

NCRIC was so busy spying on protesters that it had to postpone its class about spying on cell phones

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 10 Retweets, 23 Likes

Local cops across northern California logged into NCRIC and submitted "Suspicious Activity Reports" about local BLM protests, and also requested support monitoring social media related to these protests.

For example take this tweet

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 2 Retweets, 9 Likes

A San Jose State University cop posted a SAR under the category "Radicalization/Extremism" saying, "Possible meeting spot for protest activity at SJSU. [...] Has been seen on Twitter under the name @simonvertugo."

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 3 Retweets, 11 Likes

Cops from these agencies posted SARs and support requests about BLM protests:

  • Oakland PD
  • SFPD
  • San Benito Co Sheriff
  • Novato PD
  • Walnut Creek PD
  • Sunnyvale Dept of Public Safety
  • Antioch PD
  • Fremont PD
  • Napa POD
  • Healdsburg PD
  • Palo Alto PD
  • Golden Gate Bridge Patrol
  • Contra Costa College

Posted: 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 3 Retweets, 12 Likes

A group of people wearing black clothes and masks (during a pandemic) were at a gas station in Napa asking about renting vans to drop off in SF. Someone saw them, thought they "looked like a ‘ANTIF[A] or Black Bloc’ group" and it ended up as a SAR

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 2 Retweets, 7 Likes

The VAST MAJORITY of SARs related to civil unrest were about BLM protests or suspected antifa activity. But there were a few SARs about fascists too. Like this one, where someone called a gov employee and described his plans to shoot and kill protesters

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 3 Retweets, 9 Likes

There were also two instances of police (from @RedwoodCityPD and @MoragaPolice) requesting help protecting racist white female teenagers against doxing/online harassment they faced after making racist statements and using anti-Black racial slurs

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 4 Retweets, 10 Likes

BlueLeaks contains SO MUCH evidence of spying on First Amendment protected activities, systemic bias, etc. This was all from NCRIC, but there's also another 150 police/fusion center websites included the hack. Stay tuned for much more reporting

Posted 8:29 AM · Aug 17, 2020, 10 Retweets, 33 Likes

Micah Lee is a security engineer, software developer, and a journalist. He's the author of Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations and is the person behind Semiphemeral.
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