The secret police: Inside the app Minnesota police used to collect data on journalists at protests

Our investigation has found that officers were gathering watch lists of people attending protests, thanks to the ability of Intrepid Response to collect data that can be analyzed in many ways. The Minnesota Fusion Center has access to facial recognition technology through the Homeland Security Information Network. The OSN member agency of the Sheriff's Office uses facial recognition and investigative technology.

This kind of informal multi-agency coordination encourages policy shopping, where the agency with the least restrictive privacy rules can perform surveillance that other agencies wouldn't be able to.

It's not clear where personal data went after the Minnesota State Patrol shared it. The photos were accessible to the Minnesota Fusion Center and the Department of Natural Resources through the Minnesota State Patrol. The photos were stored in an electronic folder owned by the Minnesota State Patrol. The photos have not yet been deleted because of pending litigation.

An “extremely disturbing” incident

The night of April 16, police took photos of Duggan. The file dated April 16, 2021, contains the same data in the same format as the images, with the coordinates of the location where the photos were taken, a time stamp, and a map of the immediate area.

There is a person named JD DUGGAN.

Several dozen journalists were included in the cataloging activity. Six journalists were photographed in the same way as Duggan, and they all called the incident concerning. Many people asked officers why their data was being collected and where it was being stored, but they didn't reply.

Records were kept on us even though we did not commit a crime. Chris Taylor, a freelancer working for the Minneapolis Television Network who was photographed by the Minnesota State Patrol, believes that this is a step in the direction of authoritarianism and has a chilling effect on the free press.

It was unlike anything I had seen before and was very disturbing, says Sokotoff.

The Minnesota State Patrol settled a lawsuit regarding its treatment of journalists during the protests. On April 17, over 25 media companies, including local outlets Minnesota Public Radio and the Star Tribune as well as the New York Times, the Associated Press, and Fox/UTC holdings, signed a letter sent a letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The state patrol responded publicly by issuing a press release that stated that officers took pictures of journalists and driver's licenses at the scene in order to expedite the identification process.

The tactic “doesn’t appear to serve any law enforcement purpose beyond intimidating reporters who are doing their job,” said Parker Higgins, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has been investigating the incident. “And now, almost a full year later, there still aren’t clear answers as to why the photos were taken, how the images were shared or stored, and whether that data remains in law enforcement databases.”