United States | News & Politics

Neither X nor Dataminr responded when asked about this contradiction.

While Dataminr’s monitoring of campus protests began before the second Trump administration, it has taken on greater significance now given the White House’s overt attempts to criminalize speech critical of Israel and the war in Gaza. Earlier this month, former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who helped organize Columbia University’s student protests against the war, was abruptly arrested and jailed by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The State Department and White House quickly confirmed the arrest was a function of Khalil’s antiwar protest efforts, which the administration has described without evidence or explanation as “aligned to Hamas.” The White House has pledged to arrest and deport more individuals who have taken part in similar campus protests against the war.

Civil libertarians have long objected to dragnet monitoring of political speech on the grounds that it will have a chilling effect on speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. While fires, shootings, and natural disasters are of obvious interest to police, these critics frequently argue that if people know their tweets are subject to police scrutiny without any evidence of wrongdoing, they may tend to self-censor. 

“Political action supporting any kind of government-disfavored viewpoint could be subject to the same over-policing: gun rights, animal rights, climate change are just a few examples,” the ACLU’s Granick added. “Law enforcement should leave online organizing alone.”