Thread by @patwebbjr

BREAKING: The FBI has been exposed for hiring private contractors to infiltrate and surveil on online chatrooms of people who opposed forced vaccinations and mask mandates, according to Lee Fang.

An FBI surveillance contractor infiltrated the chatrooms of two airline industry groups opposed to vaccine mandates to collect intelligence on the groups’ organizing activities.

The contractor, Flashpoint, which in the past infiltrated Islamic terror groups, is now focused on “anti-vaccine” groups and other domestic political organizations whom they've deemed "Too Radical", according to Fang.

In a webinar presentation for clients last year, which Fang analyzed on his Substack, Flashpoint analyst Vlad Cuiujuclu demonstrated his company’s methods for identifying and entering encrypted Telegram chat groups.

He explained how the company attempted to join chatrooms of transportation workers resisting the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

A growing number of security and surveillance firms are creating fake online identities to infiltrate Discord chats, WhatsApp groups, Reddit forums and dark web message boards to gather information for clients, including corporations and the FBI, to monitor potential threats.

The webpages describing these activities have been taken down following it being brought to public attention, but they can be found on the Wayback Machine internet archive. archive.org/web/

Flashpoint was founded by Evan Kohlmann, former NBC News contributor who investigated Islamic terror groups and whom The Intercept described as “the U.S. government’s go-to expert witness in terrorism prosecutions.”

Jack Poulson of Tech Inquiry, a group that researches the surveillance industry, says that “Flashpoint has been selling its chatroom infiltration services to companies and governments for years.”

But has shifted its focus from surveilling Muslims after 9/11 and followed the money into both the Pentagon’s information warfare programs and the business of monitoring domestic protest groups.

This kind of domestic spying violates the implicit protection Americans have in these kinds of settings. This isn’t terrorism, this doesn’t have anything to do with national security, and the government needs to be held accountable for their illegal spying on U.S. citizens.