History of
Black Dissent & Surveillance
Black Dissent & Surveillance
3 Black Leftists
W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Bayard Rustin, A.Phillip Randolph, Ella Baker, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), Robin D.G. Kelley, Angela Davis, Walter Rodney, Cedric Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright, Gerald Horne, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Black Panther Party, Harry Belafonte
A surveillance device forcibly placed on the bodies of some undocumented immigrants and formerly incarcerated people to monitor and track their movements.
What is an ankle monitor?
The company creating and distributing the mass surveillance tools across the country known as Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs). ALPRs take photos of all vehicles that come into view, logging them into massive nationwide databases. These creepy cameras make it possible to track everyone's movements.
What is "Flock Safety"?
“the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”
J. Edgar Hoover? (FBI Director)
3 key movements, and/or organizations in Black socialist activism from 1919-present day
African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Black Members, The Messenger, Council on African Affairs (CAA), Harlem Trade Unionists, Black Panther Party (BPP), Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Republic of New Afrika (RNA), May 19th Communist Organization, Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), African People's Socialist Party (APSP)
The FBI program created to surveil and neutralize Black political dissent
What is COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program)?
A company that builds Al powered surveillance and "kill technology". They've been powering a lot of the modern day warfare abroad and compiling and analyzing mass amounts of data from a wide range of sources and sharing it with federal agencies including ICE.
What is Palantir?
Owner of Palantir
Who is Peter Theil?
"To mistake Cuba's poverty for harmlessness is to misunderstand the threat entirely. Its material weakness was never the measure of its danger. Its power was always ideological, subversive, and parasitic – and it has proven remarkably durable...grafting itself onto every new enemy of the United States..."
Trump's July 2026 100pg U.S. State Dept. report accusing American leftist groups and Cuba of being part of a "sustained campaign of subversion" against the United States
Something individuals can do to resist AI surveillance.
What is not using AI technology (including ChatGPT, Meta AI, or any form of humanized robots), disabling imposed AI features, organizing and advocating against pro-AI policies and programs, and more
5 surveillance and suppression tactics
infiltration, mail opening, arrest under espionage/sedition acts, braiding anti-capitalist organizing as "foreign ABB/Bolshevik subversion", passport revocations, public blacklisting, financial audits, wiretapping, forged disruptive letters, anonymous smears, police raids, framing, targeted assassinations, long-term surveillance, conspiracy trials, classification of Black Leftists as domestic terrorists or violent extremists, social media monitoring, militarized federal raids, facial recognition tracking, and spatial mapping of protests
4 examples of daily life control/surveillance
Home-based data centers; cashlessness; car AI & psych monitoring; forced AI updates on devices and programs; flock cameras; biometric face scans at airports & amusement parks;
A political and moral philosophy centered on individual liberty, equality before the law, and the consent of the governed. Its core ideas champion individual rights, private property, and democratic governance. It is the ideological foundation of the U.S. Bill of Rights and similar documents in other constitutional republics.
What is Liberalism?
"a government is just a corporation that owns a country"
Curtis Yarvin, influential figure of the MAGA movement and creator of the so-called "Dark Enlightenment"
Something average citizens / community members have done to take matters into their own hands regarding ALPRs.
What is knocking down, destroying, spray painting, covering, flock cameras, or some other form of physical resistance to flock cameras.
The historical criminalization of Black socialist and communist dissent in the U.S.
What is the intersection of anti-communism and white supremacy?
A network of firms, funds, and political actors turning core state functions into private platforms.
What is the "Authoritarian Stack"?
The four billionaire techno-oligarchs that are creating an alternate, autocratic reality.
Who are Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen?
"This turn toward fascism is stimulated by the internal contradictions of the of the colonial capitalist system."
Ajamu Baraka, Director of the North-South Project for Peoples Centered Human Rights, founder of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), and Black Agenda Report contributing editor
3 BAJI reports on surveillance
Facial Recognition Technology Uses and Implications for Racial Discrimination, AI and Racial Discrimination in U.S. Border Enforcement, Beyond the Border: US CBP Presence at Racial Justice Protests in Summer 2020
The Bureau of Investigation's (BOI) first Black activist surveillance target after its formation in 1908.
Who is Marcus Garvey?
Oligarchs, technocrats; theocrats tooled with digital surveillance to usher in a new iteration of totalitarianism.
Who are the new authoritarians?
A coalition recently emerged uniting populist Christian Nationalists and Silicon Valley techno libertarians. Some are atheistic but share the Christian Right's contempt for democratic institutions.
Who is the "Tech Right"?
"___ fights for the abolition of systems of oppression, and as such, believes that further use of AI in U.S. border management and immigration enforcement should be halted."
BAJI
3 revolutionary ideologies that lend itself to resistance struggles
abolition, anarchy, communism, socialism