The Evolution of COINTELPRO

What is COINTELPRO and why does it matter? COINTELPRO was a cold-war FBI operation essentially focused on stopping dissent. We had a cold war to win, after all. The program's methods were described by the Church Committee as "intolerable in a democratic society" and that the goal was less about preventing crime, and more about maintaining the existing social order. The five main groups targeted were the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party, White Hate Groups, Black-Nationalist Hate Groups, and the New Left. Some of these are existing and organized political parties, and some are just broad categories that may not even be applicable. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement was labeled as a black-nationalist hate group. Now, the actual strategies and methods employed by the FBI during this program were varied. Actions ranged from simple surveillance, to assaults, burglary, lying on the stand, and even direct assassination. But movements can only be contained if they're relatively small. There's only so many agents, so many informants, only so many people that can be involved in a project and keep it hidden. A large enough movement, like Martin Luther King Jr's civil rights movement, is simply too big to be stopped. And that is what COINTELPRO is for, to either crush these movements as they emerge, or to redirect them if they're unavoidable.

People view the internet as a great tool to coordinate resistance and opposition to the government. After all, many protests and rallies are organized online, through Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and other social media sites. However, there is a different viewpoint worth considering. The internet, and digital communication as a whole, is the greatest surveillance tool ever created, and is essential to a modern surveillance state.

So what proof is there? It is no secret that companies like Google are always listening. You talk about something with a friend, and that same day Google serves you an ad for that thing. Google, through android services, constantly tracks the location of a user, their mode of travel, and so on. Again, these are well documented and incontrovertible facts of technology companies. Companies like Google and Facebook make their revenue mostly on advertising, so it makes sense that they'd want to gather as much information as possible about a person's habits and behaviors.

Where does the government come in to this? Well, who created Google? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, everyone knows this. But in their paper describing the creation of Google, "The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine", the end of the article mentions that the research, the development of Google, was made at Stanford with funding provided by DARPA and NASA. DARPA is the more interesting agent in this situation.

What does DARPA have to do with this, and what is DARPA? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, formerly known as just ARPA, is a government division that conducts high-technology research with essentially unlimited budget. Their yearly budget for 2025 was slated at about 4.5 billion dollars, with about 220 employees. Twenty million dollars per employee. They're responsible for the creation of the Internet itself, a project made in collaboration with Stanford; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Utah. It's a common myth that it was made by scientists to facilitate collaboration. The internet was created by the United States government.

So what else is DARPA responsible for? Another program, called the Information Awareness Office. What was it all about? One of the most important subprograms was that of Total Information Awareness. The program entailed tracking every possible bit of information on someone, such as transactional data relating to transport and travel, medical and financial records, and biometric data such as gait, eye color, and face. All this data is combined in a repository and analyzed with various tools and models, with the end goal of predicting "plausible futures" and acting on this with cross-agency collaboration. Again, this program focused on gathering all information possible about people to predict future behavior. The agency behind this program also funded the creation of Google, who collects all information possible to predict their personality, behavior, and interests in order to serve ads.

Now, just because tech companies like Google are collecting data doesn't necessarily mean that this data is being sent to the government directly. Except, it is. A program called PRISM created by the NSA (keep in mind that DARPA's Information Awareness Office notes cross-agency collaboration as being part of the program) to directly gain information from technology companies. It became the NSA's primary method of information gathering. Providers include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft. The data provided includes emails, voice and video chats, photos, any stored data (messages, passwords, etc.), file transfers, notifications of logins, "Online Social Networking details", and other "Special Requests". Again, this is a voluntary arrangement between tech companies and the NSA to provide the government with information on essentially all of these interactions.

Let's say you decide to be safe, play it totally safe and not use any major social media networks. No Google, no Facebook, no YouTube, no Apple products. Only open-source, decentralized apps. You'd still be tracked. Most data goes through submarine cables, the fiber optic tunnels connecting internet services across the world. If the government could tap into these cables, they could have an essentially unlimited source on people's internet communications. And they do. The program is called RAMPART-A. the program taps into submarine cables and extracts data, being able to monitor up to one hundred million internet sessions per cable. Data collected includes international fax, emails and web chats, VoIP calls, and so on. Again, essentially all internet traffic that crosses the border of the United States or its allies is tapped into, analyzed, and processed.

So then maybe avoid the internet entirely. Use texting only, to avoid any social media or submarine cable taps. Wireless phones don't have cables that can be tapped into. I'm sure you know what's next. DISHFIRE is an NSA program collecting data and metadata from text messages to build profiles on people. Say you get a one-time passcode from your bank, from an app, whatever. The government is able to link you with that service. Say your friend says "Hey, let's go to Target, the one on the west side of town, 6PM on Friday." Now the government knows you're there, and can keep that in mind. So how large-scale is this? As of 2011, roughly two hundred million messages were being collected every day.

So where is the government storing all of this? Hundreds of millions of text messages, internet communications, emails, social media posts, this is a massive amount of data. Well, not to worry, the NSA built a data farm in 2013 in the middle of Utah with the capacity to store about a hundred years worth of all communications. The data center will be maintained by graduates from the University of Utah -- one of the first ARPANET nodes -- with technical certificates in data analysis. Utah is also a source of many CIA and NSA agents, given the high Mormon population's general tendency to learn multiple languages for missionary work and their loyalty to the American government.

But, ah! What use is the data the government gathers, if it is encrypted? So what if they gather my emails, they can't read them, it's just useless noise to them! That is why the government, working within the AUSCANZUKUS/FiveEyes framework developed BULLRUN, a program to crack encryption with advanced techniques, backdoors placed inside of common encryption algorithms (such was the case with DUAL_EC_DRBG), as well as direct industry partnerships. The New York Times wrote a short brief on it.

So then, is the solution to simply not go online at all? Go Amish? Leave your phone at home, and you'll be safe? Nope. A program called SENTIENT uses spy satellites to autonomously track targets, gather information for processing, and even identify targets worth tracking. Also, oddly, this framework was used to gather information on UAPs, also known as UFOs. Moreover, even if these satellites did not exist, companies like Flock Safety track your known locations and movement patterns based on license plate readers that have been popping up around cities. Government agents can use these as live camera feeds, or passive license plate readers. They're beginning to put out drones as well, not fixed to specific locations.

But after all, sites like social media are just propaganda. The people you're talking to on there are possibly federal agents, or government bot farms. This isn't unsubstantiated. In 2013, the website Reddit put out a blog post listing fun statistics, like their top cities such New York and London. But the "Most addicted city" was awarded to Eglin Air Force Base, in Florida. This post was quickly revised, but not before a copy of it was saved to the Internet Archive. So what does Eglin have to do with any of this? Well, besides hosting a "cyberspace operations squadron", researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base had co-authored a paper titled Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity. Besides all of the technical and math jargon, there are some fun excerpts such as:

So what am I saying with all of this? The internet is a continuation of COINTELPRO. Instead of undercover agents to sabotage or shift the narrative of groups, government-run accounts function the same way. Instead of wiretaps and laser microphones, people carry around microphones with them, pass all of their communications through government-monitored channels, and walk in plain view of cameras or spy satellites that monitor their movements.

The point of these programs is not to stop crime. Crime can be stopped by the police. These things are of no concern. Instead, these programs are to monitor dissent. Who is unsatisfied. Who is upset. Who is plotting, who is talking, who is meeting. Can we guide them to channels such as peaceful protest that simply let them vent these stresses without real consequence? If not, we know where they are and when they're there. The program is not meant to stop isolated maniacs and mass shootings. It is meant to stop organized, coordinated groups that may threaten the system in place. It is meant to prevent people from getting radicalized outside of the acceptable tolerance. COINTELPRO never stopped. It just went online.