Congress Must Investigate DHS's Secret Surveillance

Newly unsealed court documents reveal that DHS ran a covert surveillance operation, dubbed "Operation Puppet Master," against American protest groups with no ties to violence.

As The New Republic reports, undercover DHS agents infiltrated more than a dozen meetings organized by groups like the Sunrise Movement, labor unions and various socialist organizations across multiple states, in some cases secretly recording the gatherings, including meetings held inside churches, where pastors had no idea law enforcement had infiltrated their congregations.

The documents describe one agent who, after learning a group was committed to peaceful protest, offered to help build things for "more direct action" and stressed that "going to jail did not bother him" — conduct the defense attorney in the related case describes as an attempt to entice someone with no criminal intent into committing a crime. Despite months of surveillance, none of the groups targeted have been charged with anything.

This wasn't scattered surveillance, it was a coordinated federal operation, and court filings reference a second, still-unexplained program called "Operation Keyhole" that DHS has declined to describe publicly.

Add your name to demand that Congress investigate the scope of DHS's surveillance of American protest groups, determine whether agents attempted to entrap protesters into criminal conduct, and require full public disclosure of "Operation Keyhole."

Americans have a constitutional right to organize and protest without being secretly recorded, infiltrated, or baited into a crime by their own government. Congress has the oversight authority to find out how far this has gone and it should use it.