Kenosha Shooting Spurs Social Media Surveillance
The Atlantic Council wants you to know that the armed vigilantes coming out
to patrol the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin after the violent protests
sparked by brutal police shooting are organizing online.
by Raul Diego
August 28th, 2020
By Raul Diego
The Atlantic Council, an independent policy think tank that focuses on
international affairs and is notorious for selling influence to foreign
countries, has a sister organization dedicated to promoting "objective truth
as a foundation of government" by identifying disinformation and "building
digital resilience" to teach people how to expose "attempts to pollute the
information space." The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) counts on a
team of "digital sherlocks"; a group of 32 researchers, analysts and editors
who prepare reports on various news narratives, which the Western media
establishment dislikes, such as the liberation of Aleppo, Syria, relying on
sources like the White Helmets who have been thoroughly exposed by MintPress
contributor, Vanessa Beeley.
The DFRLab, which has attacked MintPress and Beeley in its publications as
"anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, and anti-Western," has turned its propagandistic
sights to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where 29-year old, Jacob Blake, was shot seven
times in the back by police while his children watched sparking mass civil
unrest, which resulted in the death of two people and another wounded at the
hands of a 17-year old who, yesterday, was charged of first degree murder by
Wisconsin state prosecutors.
The Atlantic Council's "fake news" researchers revealed in a Medium post
that several armed militia groups in the vicinity of Kenosha, which is only
40 miles from Milwaukee, had coordinated on multiple social media platforms
to "defend" their city from the violent protests, which had erupted over
news of the police shooting. According to the DFRLab, Facebook, which has
partnered with the Atlantic Council before, and Reddit were the platforms of
choice for self-described militiamen to rile up sympathizers and call on
them to "take up arms", posting a number of event RSVPs on their social
media pages with titles like "Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and
Property" and "STAND UP KENOSHA!!!! TONIGHT WE COME TOGETHER."
Digital sherlock
The digital sherlocks' post contained detailed timestamps of the evolution
of these alleged militias organizing over the Internet up to 13 hours before
the fatal incident involving Kyle Rittenhouse; the teen charged for the
killing of two men during the riots. They identify "Kenosha Guard" as the
leader of the online call to arms, who was seemingly the most active in
trying to gather support together and went as far as to write and publish a
letter addressed directly to the Kenosha chief of police, Daniel Miskinis,
where he asks that he "NOT have [his] officers tell us to go home under
threat of arrest as you have done in the past."
The detail of the DFRLab's exposition of the alleged militia members'
activity on Facebook and Reddit is even more striking because practically
all of the referenced posts by Kenosha Guard and others were deleted pretty
quickly; most staying up for barley a few hours. Unless they had been
monitoring the armed militia groups on social media beforehand, it is
unclear how DFRLab was able to piece together such a robust timeline of
events.
More than likely, DFRLabs relied on Facebook's own monitoring and social
media surveillance tool called CrowdTangle (purchased in 2016), which is
cited in the Medium post as their source for impressions and interaction
data about an InfoWars post on the social media platform DFRLab researchers
claim "amplified the call to arms, potentially encouraging additional people
with weapons to attend the event."
The "real story"
The InfoWars article, which DFRLabs claims could have incited more violence,
was one of the first media outlets to cover the armed groups organizing to
stop "looters and rioters." The piece calls them "brave locals" for coming
out to protect private property and filling the gaps left by an
"outnumbered" police department.
Local news station, KOB4, reported that several armed vigilantes and
"militia members" were looking to be deputized by Kenosha County Sheriff
David Beth, who declined any such requests and told reporters that doing so
would create "a liability to me and the county." Perhaps, it was just easier
to look away and allow "Kenosha Guard" and like-minded cohorts to patrol the
streets in an unofficial capacity and dispense with formalities that could
come back to bite the Sheriff in the next election.
Black Kenosha resident Ray Roberts, told KOB4 that he could see men from
"rural areas [getting] in big trucks loaded up with guns and flags and got
into town," adding that despite violating curfew, police were "not stopping
them." Robert's first-hand account betrays the narrative that the DFRLab and
others are trying to shape in order to justify censorship and deplatforming,
which is actually just another manifestation of America's structural racism
and decades of economic disenfranchisement coming home to roost.