Close All Tabs - The Surveillance Machine, Pt 2: No Opt-Out

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Think you can opt out of surveillance? Think again. Our locations, behaviors, and images are being tracked at unprecedented levels — and private tech companies are at the center, selling that information directly to the government. In this episode, Morgan talks with Nicol Turner Lee, Director of the Center for Technology Innovation at The Brookings Institution, about why avoiding identification in public spaces is almost impossible, and how civilians are now helping do the government’s work by surveilling each other. Guests: Jalsa Drinkard, Columbia University student and an organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, CUAD Don Bell, policy counsel at The Constitution Project at The Project On Government Oversight, POGO Nicol Turner Lee, Director of the Center for Technology Innovation at The Brookings Institution Further reading: This pro-Israel group keeps a blacklist. Now it’s taking credit for deportations. — Zack Beauchamp, Vox  Privacy on the Map: How States Are Fighting Location Surveillance — Rindala Alajaji, Electronic Freedom Foundation  Police surveillance and facial recognition: Why data privacy is imperative for communities of color — Nicol Turner Lee and Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, Brookings Institute It’s Possible to Track Someone’s Personal Phone to an Abortion Clinic. And It’s Legal Too. — Byron Tau, NOTUS  Planning to attend a protest? Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Attending a Protest guide for practical digital security tips to help protect your privacy and data. Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at [e-mail] You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien. Sound design by Maya Cueva and Brendan Willard. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money. Star 1 Credit Union in your best interest. You also having trouble with scammers trying to poke holes in your dam? We need a phone plan that stops these pests at the perimeter. That's why I switched to GoogleFi Wireless, a wireless plan built with industry-leading security.

Google AI helps block. Pesky scammers so my info stays secure and best of all unlimited plans start at just $35 a month. Whatever you do, your site with Google. Explore Google file wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. Block spam known to Google may not detect all spam calls. From KQED. A quick heads up before we start.

This is part two of our deep dive on the government surveillance of protest movements. It'll make more sense if you start with last week's episode, which explains how we got here. So in that episode, we covered the history of American surveillance and how Dragnet Surveillance became the norm. Dragnet surveillance, if you remember, is where the government tracks everyone, like a giant net scooping up all our information. But what does that look like in practice? What tools are being used to monitor protests? And how does all of this impact our right to free speech? Okay, let's jump back in.

This is Close All Taves. I'm Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let's get into it. This was an actual act of digital violence towards our students. Last time, we met Jalsa Drinker, a student organizer and senior at Columbia University, who served as security during the weeks-long encampment protesting the school's financial ties with Israel. As the university began cracking down on students through disciplinary actions like expulsions and suspensions, she says many students were caught off guard by the kind of evidence that was presented.

A lot of people's social media accounts were cited at their disciplinary hearings when they were called in to kind of discuss their case. It's definitely being looked at and collected. In the year since, students who attend protests or even just express solidarity with Palestinians on social media have been disciplined or docs. which means their private information was leaked online. And some now face deportation. It's a drastic escalation, not only in monitoring what people post, but also in punishing them for it.

And that's raising alarm bells for free speech activists. Though surveillance using social media is now reaching an extreme, it's been in use for over a decade. Let's look back at that time and open a new tab. Protests in the 2010s. That was from the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in 2014. And then in 2016, an ACLU investigation revealed that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram had all shared user data with a company called Geophilia. That company analyzes a social media post and then groups them by location.

Media outlets use a service to spot breaking news stories and businesses use it for marketing. But as the ACLU discovered, geophilia also marketed this tool to law enforcement agencies as a way to monitor protests. Intelligence agencies had been surveilling and apprehending Black Lives Matter activists as early as 2014. This investigation showed that private companies were also aiding in surveillance. After that ACLU report came out, those social media companies cut off geophilia. This investigation coincided with a period of privacy reform. It was right after Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA's mass surveillance program. Congress had just passed a new law to curb the government's mass data collection.

And a few years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn't go around demanding that companies hand over your data without a warrant. Except, there's a glaring loophole here. The government can't demand your data, but there's nothing stopping them from buying it. And that's exactly what's been happening. In the last decade, protest surveillance has become even more intrusive, thanks to this partnership between private tech companies and the government. A controversial social media surveillance tool has been helping the Los Angeles Police Department monitor Gaza protests. Here we are at the end of the route. And as you can see from the map, my face has been scanned every step of the way. These data brokers, they market and sell directly to the government.

This is what we're calling the surveillance machine, because it's not just the government acting alone. Let's break down how this machine works and how it's used to target political speech. Starting with this, the government is collecting a lot more of your data than you probably realize. New tab. Data as surveillance. The industry of collecting and selling data is incredibly lucrative. companies want data for things like credit checks or targeted advertising. This commodification of our personal information is known as surveillance capitalism, a phrase popularized by Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff.

That legal loophole that we talked about earlier, the one where the government partners with private tech companies, it functions because of this system of surveillance capitalism. It's what allows the government to obtain our data and paint this very detailed picture of us, all without a warrant. It's all thanks to key players in the system, data brokers. They're the middlemen.

They collect tons of personal information, and then they sell it off to whoever can pay, including law enforcement. It's like rather than the police getting a warrant to search your apartment, they just give the landlord an envelope of cash, and the landlord lets them into the apartment. This is surveillance policy expert Don Bell, That's basically the same thing that's happening with your phone.

You know that pop-up you get when you visit a website asking to allow cookies? Or sometimes when you open a new app and it asks for permission to use your location and run in the background. These are all ways that data brokers glean information, from your daily commute to what time you exercise, to the ads that grab your attention when you're scrolling in the middle of the night. Each of these pieces of data is a little building block that starts to tell data who you are, like individual pixels that eventually make a full portrait of you and your life. Large data brokers are able to sell essentially dossiers, which contain thousands of data points on any given individual. It could be the doctors that you go to, the places of worship that

you go to, the protests that you go to, the protests that you go to, the people, people that you're intimate with, it can create this complete picture of who you are, what your beliefs are, what your associations are. And in the hands of a government that aims to surveil and target people, that is extraordinarily dangerous. And the government has used this data broker loophole to surveil groups all over the United States, especially over the last few years. The military, for example, monitored Muslim communities in 2020 by buying location data source from a Muslim prayer app.

In 2022, ICE got around sanctuary city policies by using information from data brokers to identify and deport undocumented immigrants. One data broker contracted with the government offers a tool called LocateX, which uses location data to track and potentially identify anyone who crossed state lines to visit a police. abortion clinics. You don't get the mass surveillance on the scale that we are seeing without some sort of cooperation between ad tech and the private sector and the public sector. After social media companies cut off access for geofedia in 2016, countless other companies took its place. One of those was data miner, a surveillance company that uses AI to scour social media sites. It's alerted law enforcement to Black Lives Matter marches, pro-choice rallies, and most recently protests in solidarity with Gaza. Dana Minor often contacted police departments directly,

warning them about the precise time and location of protests. These surveillance tools are now being used to punish people for what they say online, a right that's protected under the First Amendment, specifically our right to free speech. And like we talked about in last week's episode, The Trump administration is surveilling international students' social media accounts. Political speech is now grounds for deportation. Tonight, international students at colleges and universities around the country reeling, the federal government revoking a number of visas with little to no warning. And if you notice that there are people in your class who are effectively disappearing because of their beliefs,

you may be far less likely to express your beliefs online. And in doing so, you are seeing the suppression of First Amendment activities. There have been attempts to crack down on data brokers. Some members of Congress are now rallying behind the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act. Remember, the Fourth Amendment protects people from, quote, unreasonable searches and seizures. End quote. Their proposed law would ban the government. from buying data without a warrant, effectively closing this data broker loophole.

It passed the House last year, but it still needs to go through the Senate. And then the president would have to sign it into law. But given the current administration's recent actions, Don isn't optimistic that'll happen. The thing that worries me enormously is this administration and this national moment is very different from any other moment. If this kind of authoritarian push continues, it's going to be exceptionally hard to first stop it and then build something that truly protects the constitutional and privacy and civil liberties of all. And here's the thing with data collection. Keeping tabs on our behavior and connections, it's only one part of the surveillance machine. Even if you ditched your phone and pretty much every other device, your privacy.

would still be at risk. Because the moment you step into a public space, your face is being tracked. We'll get more into that after this break. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star One, you keep more of your money.

Star One Credit Union in your best interest. So good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack. stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam Edelman, frame and free people. Join the Norty Club to unlock exclusive

discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Let's get back to the story. New tab. Facial recognition

for sale. I'm not that old, so I want people to know. did not march in the civil rights movement, right? But I am a student of history when it comes to social movements and civil rights. Dr. Nicole Turner Lee is a senior fellow in governance studies and the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Lee researches how technology shapes social justice movements and pointed out that today's activists are more visible than ever, which means they're easier to surveil. back then the tools that we used like the telephone you couldn't see anybody right the telephone tree to tell people to show up in you know 25 25 35 35 35 35th street because we're going to march on that day no one knew who was on the other line of the telephone line you just knew you were getting a call to show up but just like today I just saw on social media there's going to be some um protest happening over the weekend right and it's all over social media where it is who's showing up it's as double as sword like acting do need a space in this burgeoning information economy, but they also need some protection

that government who is supposed to protect our democracy is not going to use that against them. Social media is fodder for facial recognition technology, which works by analyzing images and matching faces with similar features. The technology is problematic. Studies have shown that it misidentifies black people and other people of color at a higher rate than white people. Still, it's one of the major tools of modern surveillance, particularly when it comes to protests. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the NYPD used facial recognition to identify, locate, and attempt to arrest an activist without a warrant. The police cited the activist's Instagram account in their reports, which is becoming the norm.

As this technology becomes much more embedded outside of, you know, protected law enforcement environments where it's being used, for investigation. We are now seeing facial recognition to analyze faces on social media, whether that's the individual or the bystander in the photo. All of this has pushed students protesting for Gaza last year to be more diligent about covering their faces. But now, some universities are facing pressure to deploy facial recognition tools on campus and have banned face masks to discourage protest, especially pro-Palestine activity. Private businesses are also facing pressure to cooperate with facial recognition programs. And it's especially difficult to opt out of being identified

because of the sheer number of cameras in public spaces. They're everywhere. They're at traffic lights, public CCTV, and guarding private businesses and homes. Footage from dash cams and police body cams can also feed into these databases. If you've ever gotten a driver's license or gone through airport security,

your face is definitely in a database. You know, I always say to people, Well, do I mind that there are cameras on the subway system? Probably not, because I'm probably not going to do something quite egregious on the subway system. But when somebody knocks on my door, am I going to feel different? And unfortunately, disproportionately, people of color tend to be the ones whose doors are knocked on because there's a higher likelihood of some type of institutional interaction where they are in somebody's database. And once again, private tech companies are the key to facial recognition surveillance.

The Black Lives Matter activist we mentioned earlier, the NYPD used one of these third-party companies to identify him using his Instagram. What third-party companies have done is that they've actually engaged in what I call massive wholesale scraping, meaning they're able to identify us in a variety of contexts, both personal and professional. And those images are sort of sold back to the federal government so that they can maintain those databases. in those images. I mean, there's a lot of central intelligence that is basically creeping up across the entire country. In a handful of states, residents have some recourse if they don't want their face to appear in facial recognition databases. But those protections are inconsistent, and the process of requesting deletion is convoluted. You have to make these requests to each company individually, and you may have to repeat the process because there's no opting out

of being included again. In the absence of privacy legislation at the federal and state level, guess what? My mother used to say this all the time. If you're not in the kitchen, you're on the menu. So we are all on the menu, even though we think we live in a society where there's some level of privacy, maybe in the context of our living rooms, in actuality, when you leave your home and you walk out that door, you are actually in a surveillance capitalist society. So private tech companies are helping the government get around privacy laws and making a profit off of it. But even if we passed stronger laws and closed that legal loophole, it still might not be enough. Because the reality is, we've been surveilling each other for a long time.

Okay, let's open one last tab, doxing as surveillance. This practice of tattling on each other has been gaining steam online for years. Think of the seemingly innocuous ways that people are shamed on social media for what others perceive as bad behavior. Maybe they ghosted a new relationship and their bitter ex posted their hinge profile to warn others. Or someone caroned out too hard at a restaurant and their outbursts at a server was recorded and went viral. People have endoxed for less. And now, these public shaming practices are weaponized as a surveillance tactic. I don't think that people submit to participate.

on these platforms with the expectation that their information will be used to target them and to weaponize them. What makes this part of the surveillance machine different is that it's civilians leading it, doing the work of monitoring political speech for the government, like in the case of Ramesa Osturk. 30-year-old Ramesa Azturk was on her way to break her Ramadan fast with friends on Tuesday when six plain-clothed officers approached her. The neighbor who captured the arrest on surveillance video described it as a kidnapping.

Ramesa is a Turkish student pursuing a Ph.D. at Tufts University. Last year, she co-authored an op-ed in the school paper, which criticized the school's response to student protests and described the war in Gaza as a genocide. Then, in March, she was doxed. A pro-Israel organization called Canary Mission added Rameesa to their blacklist. They posted her name, face, and work history. on their site and accused her of anti-Israel activism, citing last year's op-ed. Weeks later, her visa was revoked and she was arrested. Canary Mission claims credit for her arrest and those of other visa holders who face deportation

for supporting Palestinians. The organization maintains a database of publicly available dossiers on people who they consider anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, including Jewish academics. People have been harassed, threatened, and fired, after being doxed on the site. And since the president signed the executive order targeting international students for protesting, Canary Mission has singled out visa holders and other legal U.S. residents in a new section of their site, calling for deportations.

This kind of civilian-led surveillance is especially alarming to legal experts like Dr. Lee. I was a student against apartheid when I was in college, and I was a student urging our university to divest. that is just as similar to what we're seeing in many of the pro-Palestinian movements with regards to, you know, just some of the things that we're witnessing on the university campus, where students have, I guess, an implicit understanding that they are protected because they're in a space of intellectual freedom. To have that happen is just very sad and disturbing. But then the second thing is, like, not only the government's doing it, but we as citizens are helping the government to do that to our fellow citizens. other civilian-led surveillance groups go even further. Bitar U.S., the American branch of a Zionist nationalist youth movement, boasted that they've sent deportation lists to the Trump administration. They also claimed credit for the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian-born Columbia student who

faces deportation for his involvement in the protests. One of the facial recognition tools Bataar uses purports that it can identify protesters, even if they're matter. The tool works by scraping countless photos off of people's social media accounts. And the developer, Aliyaahu Hawila, says he plans to license it to other pro-Israel groups. Here he is, speaking to the Associated Press. I mean, if they're wearing masks, they're trying to hide. Then you ask yourself, oh, well, if you're proud of yourself and, like, you don't think you're doing anything illegal, then why are you hiding your face? Civil Liberties organizations have been fighting to regulate the government's partnerships with

surveillance tech companies. But when civilians use the same technology to docks each other, that's uncharted territory. The fact that there is a level of implicit consent that that media could also be sent to law enforcement, you know, is quite troubling. But it does set up a really terrible precedent if we say that people's freedom of speech and points of view can be targeted, and we do it in a way that we don't equally apply that standard to other movements. There's no expectation of privacy in public spaces anymore. We've gotten into the habit of recording everything about our lives and the people around us. Even if you don't use social media, your face could end up in the background of someone else's Instagram story. For years,

we've sort of dealt with what's called bystander theory, and there's been a lot of research done on that. you know, tech companies have worked hard over the years to get bystanders to opt in to being in people's photos. But sometimes you don't know who that person is. Like, I know I'm very mindful myself if I have a photo and I see like these random people in there of like cropping the photo to kind of get them out. But that type of hygiene is not necessarily part of everybody's toolkit. We take photos and we have a host of people that sit in those photos and then all of a sudden you, that person shows up again in somebody's criminal database or may not have anything to do with what you were doing at this scene, but they're still sort of pulled into, as my mama would say, your drama. All of this doxing in surveillance could have dire consequences for not only our right to the freedom of speech, but also our willingness to engage in any political issue, both online and in real life.

But at the same time, you know, does that mean that we're going to have folks that are two or afraid to post about, you know, things other than Pilates on many of these platforms, right? And what does that world look like in the next five to ten years if people feel that it's just not safe to say what you want to say, not just on social media, but generally, right? Like if you're a bystander at a meeting, you're probably going to be targeted. A speech that you might have made at church, you know, could be picked up by somebody who recorded it, shared it in some way or form, and now they're coming at you. three degrees removed from it. The surveillance machine is massive. Between the data collection,

facial recognition, and doxing campaigns, protesting can feel more dangerous than ever. But if it's any comfort, Dr. Lee doesn't think that people will stop exercising their rights. Activists have weathered surveillance before and figured out ways around it. When I think about the ancestors of people who gave me the right to sit here on this podcast with you and get the education that I have, they believed in something. And they did didn't allow that surveillance to break up their social movements, which would be considered the civil rights movement, which led to great policy. So I want to put that out there. I think that that's not going to minimize how people organize. It's just going to influence how their tactics

may change. But if you're a truly engaged activist, the government already has data on you. You know, surveillance is not new to America and to the world. It is part of capitalism. you know, no amount of scrutiny should stop us from wanting to actually elevate good causes and to work in the public interests. It only means that we have to be smarter and we have to be more reserved and how we share what those causes are. The right to organize and protest for what you believe in is a fundamental right that should be guaranteed by the Constitution.

But we've seen how that right is threatened and inconsistently protected. So if you do find yourself at a protest, how should you protect yourself against surveillance? Um, personally, I will take it off that phone. That's Jalza Drinkard, who we heard from earlier. Getting off your phone, like she recommends, might not be realistic for everyone. But there are ways to protect your digital privacy. You can disable location services for all apps, use encrypted messaging services like Signal to talk to your fellow organizers, and turn off your phone when attending protests.

We'll link some more privacy resources in the episode description. And before you post any pictures or videos online, consider some of that digital hygiene that Dr. Lee talked about. Is anyone else's face visible in your post? Did strangers in the background consent to being recorded and posted? Staying informed about how to protect yourself from surveillance is a community effort, which is why Jalsa recommends connecting with other organizers. meet up in person, like, and then like a good old coffee shop.

That's where a lot of the movements happened. It happened in coffee shops and libraries where there wasn't any cameras. The activists of the past didn't have the tech that we have today, but they did face huge hurdles when it came to surveillance. And that didn't stop them from organizing. Surveillance may be ingrained in American culture, but so is protesting. Since we produced this episode, there's been a development. Rumaezza Ozturk, the tough student who was detained after writing an op-ed, was released after spending six weeks in a detention center in Louisiana.

Okay, let's finally close all these tabs. Close All tabs is a production of KQED studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sun. Our producer is Maya Kueva. Chris Aguza is our senior editor. Jen Cheen is KQED's director of podcasts and helps edit the show. Special thanks to Don Bell, Jalison Drinkard, and Nicole Turner Lee for sharing their perspective and expertise in our surveillance machine series. And shout out to George Hofstetter for connecting us with Columbia's student organizers. Sound design by Maya Cueva and Brendan Willard.

Original music by Chris Agusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Mahasanaan and Alana Walker. Katie Springer is our podcast operations manager. Tali Kernan is our chief content officer. Support for this program comes from Be Wrong Who and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild,

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California, local. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gatoron Red switches. If you have feedback or a top of, you think we should cover, hit us up at close all tabs at kQED.org. Follow us on Instagram at close all tabs pod or drop it on Discord. We're in the close all tabs channel at discord.g slash KQED. And if you're enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use.

Thanks for listening. Support for a key QBD podcast comes from Xfinity. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you're guaranteed five years of reliable Wi-Fi with our best equipment, No annual contracts and no fees. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi. Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply. Select plans only.

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like Low Prices. in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years, savings may vary by state.

Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details.