Who’s at Standing Rock?....

[Little Star]

Thousands of people are “checking in” on Facebook to throw off cops

Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota, believe the local Morton County sheriff’s department is monitoring Facebook “check-ins” at the Indian reservation to get a sense of who’s protesting. And someone’s apparently trying to mess with that monitoring.

A call went out for Facebook users over the weekend to falsely check in at Standing Rock to confuse the police regarding protester identities and numbers. But it isn’t clear whether the directive came from organizers on the ground at the Camp of the Sacred Stone, who call themselves Water Protectors because of the purported threat that the planned pipeline poses to Standing Rock’s water supply, or whether it’s a hoax.

Look: https://news.vice.com/story/facebook-users-are-falsely-checking-in-at-standing-rock-to-confuse-police

[Mc Mike]

1. I imagine the authorities are tracking devices at the scene electronically, not by reading posts.

Using state Emergency Management Agency assets, Homeland Security, Patriot Act statutes. Martin Scorsese showed the MA state police doing exactly such a thing in "The Departed", the Whitey Bolger movie. They tracked all these turned off cell phones in a deserted wharf warehouse area, and could see the single one that was turned on.

And I've also read that some movement factions there don't want non-attendees "fake checking in", it may muddy the waters in terms of who is reporting "facts" from the protest, and make it more difficult for the good side to coordinate among the different good groups in the struggle.