At the height of Thursday night’s gas emergency
that affected 8,000 people and in which one person was killed,
Massachusetts state police posted to Twitter a map of responses to fires
and explosions.
It was an image of a computer monitor, showing locations of 39
incidents as confirmed “by MSP Watch Center”, and it included a vital
message: “Reminder: all residents of Lawrence/Andover/N[orth] Andover
who have Columbia Gas must evacuate, as should anyone else who smells
gas.”
But the image also showed something else: a bookmarks bar at the top of the browser window which listed several leftwing groups.
The bookmarks included a Facebook group for Mass Action Against
Police Brutality (MAAPB); the Coalition to Organize and Mobilize Boston
Against Trump (Combat); Facebook 413; Facebook MA Activism; and
Resistance Calendar, which notes timings for canvassing for Democratic
or progressive candidates and anti-Trump rallies.
The state police’s official Twitter account shared the image at
6.26pm. Less than half an hour later it deleted it and shared a new one,
which had been cropped.
But the first tweet had already drawn the attention of activists and
reporters, who shared screenshots and began a social media debate about
online police surveillance.
The MSP Watch Center is the information-gathering Commonwealth Fusion Center,
formed in 2005 to facilitate the “collection, analysis and
dissemination of intelligence relevant to terrorism and public safety”.
There are more than 100 such centers nationwide.
The Massachusetts
state police director of media communications, David Procopio, told the
Guardian police have a “responsibility to know about all large public
gatherings of any type and by any group, regardless of their purpose and
position, for public safety reasons”.
ForLoveFromFear 