Atlanta Police Department Social Media Surveillance Documents

Georgia authorities have waged a two-year long contentious battle against activists opposed to the construction of a police training facility in Atlanta dubbed “Cop City.” The Brennan Center obtained and has analyzed over 2,300 pages of emails and intelligence reports via public records requests. The intelligence reports — and their broad sharing via email — expose the Atlanta Police Department’s (APD) extensive monitoring of the routine political activity of opponents of the training facility.  

While social media monitoring can help police effectively allocate resources to maintain public safety, APD’s broad monitoring of peaceful protesters and organizing events far exceeds that purpose. Targets of this monitoring include signature collection, canvassing, a town hall, pizza nights and reading groups, and get-togethers to talk about neighborhood safety. APD’s operations undermine protesters’ First Amendment rights, help portray them as domestic terrorists, and drive a narrative supporting the indictment of 61 activists on racketeering charges, all while offering no public safety upside.  

A lack of guidelines and protections surrounding APD’s social media monitoring operations enabled these politicized surveillance practices. As the Brennan Center has recommended elsewhere, police departments such as APD must adopt stricter guidelines that explicitly prohibit basing policing decisions on constitutionally protected activities and surveillance of those activities unless there is specific, credible, and documented evidence of a public safety concern. 

The more than 2,300 pages of emails and reports illustrate the harmful impact that standardless intelligence targeting and broad information sharing can have. APD’s homeland security unit regularly shared bulletins with various federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, letting them know of political events scheduled by opponents of the training facility. Recipients of these emails ranged from police forces at Atlanta university campuses to the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Homeland Security. These practices likely continue today. 

According to the documents, APD monitored and disseminated information about innocuous (and First Amendment–protected) gatherings such as a pizza night or a “community conversation” about neighborhood safety and opposition to the police training facility. In fact, the documents include 76 intelligence reports assembled by APD containing details about 155 events, of which 111 were about the Stop Cop City movement.

On their own terms, the intelligence reports are of questionable value: after describing an upcoming event, many reports note that previous events held by the group were peaceful. Or they note that the event was likely to have few attendees or little social media engagement. Yet the intelligence reports provided information about the organizers, including personal details and individuals’ history of activism — one individual was monitored across several reports for his support of one organizing group, despite APD’s uncertainty on whether he was even one of the group’s organizers.  

Available below are the full 2,365 pages of emails and intelligence reports:

The compiled intelligence reports — without the email correspondence — are available here. APD’s social media monitoring reveals a number of egregious examples, including: 

A poster for a canvassing and flyering event organized by Defend the Atlanta Forest, as captured in an APD intelligence report.

APD monitored town halls, picnics, and a “community conversation” about topics such as “neighborhood safety.”

APD targeted a local “pizza night” to discuss community safety.

The APD intelligence report targets a study group to talk about the history of social organizing for abortion rights. It describes other events, such as a vigil and rally, by the organizer, which it notes “were peaceful.”