BLIND ITEM: #1 “The Watchlist Before the Crackdown”

BLIND ITEM: “The Watchlist Before the Crackdown”

An unnamed private tech firm—with longstanding contracts in predictive analytics, surveillance, and law enforcement integration—has partnered with a major U.S. federal agency (not officially DHS, but connected) to aggregate protest-related data across university campuses. This includes:

• Social media activity flagged by emotion-tracking AI
• Attendance at student government meetings
• Club affiliations labeled as “culturally radical”
• Usage of encrypted messaging apps on campus networks
• Anonymous feedback submitted to university “safety” portals
• Participation in Zoom-based teach-ins or virtual protest planning sessions

All of this is being collected silently, with university compliance. Some schools are not aware. Others are complicit.

The result?

A tiered watchlist.

• Tier 1: Identified protest leaders—already being targeted via immigration, academic misconduct, or financial aid audits
• Tier 2: Repeat protest participants—monitored, flagged, and sometimes “randomly” subjected to disciplinary review or mental health assessments
• Tier 3: “Radical-adjacent” individuals—students who haven’t protested publicly, but who engage with protest content, faculty, or groups

This program does not show up in public records. It’s buried in private security contracts under language like “campus threat analysis” or “student behavioral tracking.”

What Can Be Done (Off the Record):

• Use public computers sparingly. On-campus networks are being monitored for metadata, not content—just enough to flag patterns.
• Avoid student portals for organizing. Anonymous tips or incident reporting systems are quietly becoming snitch networks.
• Print everything and destroy digital drafts. If you’re working on an exposé, flyer, or guide—create it offline, print it, and wipe it.
• Speak in code when necessary. Resistance is ancient. If they’re using old-school surveillance, you use old-school subversion.

Start documenting the surveillance itself. Make the watchers the watched. FOIA the firms. FOIA the funding. Begin to expose their shadow work.

~Subject Index: surveillance, predictive policing, digital profiling, student activism, protest suppression, university complicity, private sector firms, emotion-tracking AI, watchlists, encrypted messaging, metadata monitoring, resistance tactics, FOIA, dissent, behavioral tracking, campus surveillance, digital resistance, subversion, civil liberties, academic freedom~