If you have ever expressed frustration about artificial intelligence or data centers on social media, you may already be on a government watch list. That is the unsettling takeaway from a recent investigation, which revealed that Philadelphia police officers were tracking First Amendment activity of people critical of AI.
The investigation, co-authored by Sam Biddle and Matt Sledge, centers on a memo published by the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center, a fusion center embedded within the Philadelphia Police Department. Biddle, speaking with journalist Taylor Lorenz, described what the document contained.
“It was sort of an overview of what the office had sort of determined to be high-risk rhetoric, speech online espousing anti-data center, anti-AI sentiments,” Biddle said. “These were posts on message boards, posts on Facebook, blog posts, sort of a broad variety of online content.”
Fusion centers were established after 9/11 as regional intelligence-sharing hubs, with at least one operating in every state. Their documents circulate among local police, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. While originally designed to prevent terr**ism, Biddle argues their focus has shifted considerably.
“Terr**ism is rare, exceedingly rare. So there isn’t really much to find. But you have this apparatus that’s set up to find something that’s very rare,” he said. “So they focus on other things people are talking about.”
The memo flagged a wide range of content, including what Biddle described as obvious hyperbole. Posts expressing sentiments like wanting to “burn down data centers” were treated alongside more specific discussions about physical sabotage. The document even raised the theoretical possibility of chemical, biological, and nuclear threats to data center infrastructure.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that anyone, even outside of the country, is contemplating nuking data centers,” Biddle said. “So to say that people online who ha te the things might be somehow wrapped up in that is just nonsensical.”
Also flagged was what Biddle called “a really kind of boomer Facebook meme” expressing a moral obligation to oppose data centers. The concern, he noted, is that sharing something as mundane as a meme could be enough to attract the attention of law enforcement.
The issue is the deliberate conflation of routine civic activism with violent extre mism. People attending community council meetings, reviewing permitting documents, and circulating petitions are being lumped in with fringe voices.
“Whenever you conflate normal political advocacy that is unfriendly to the state and to industry with extre mism or with te**orism, that’s an old tactic going back a very long time in American history,” Biddle said.
Looking ahead, Biddle raised concerns about surveillance moving beyond public social media posts into private communications.
“I would not be surprised if that is a direction where this goes into, of trying to just basically sneak into closed conversations and infiltrate activist organizations,” he said.
