Cata Gaitán

It feels impossible to tl;dr this, but here are some key points: - I was offered ~$10k per night to secretly film people at protests. - The organization claims to bundle and sell this footage to local law enforcement, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense.

- Freelancers hired wear a pea-sized recording device equipped with technology from FLIR (a designer of thermal imaging cameras and sensors) and Axon (a company based in Scottsdale, Arizona that develops technology and weapons for law enforcement).

- They claim to be building a national database of people at protests, and already have teams of hired freelancers filming at protests across the US. - The organization is a private registered corporation in the state of Delaware that monitors and tracks “many freelance press."

- Their stated goal is to “deconstruct extremism by identification and then neutralization” of “pseudo-press” and individuals who engage in “rioting and crime" (WHAT DOES “NEUTRALIZATION” MEAN?).

- If hired on, I would continue covering protests like I normally do, but secretly turn my body to face other press members and protesters to record them. - If in distress, I could press an "SoS button" and they would stage a "pseudo-arrest" with local law enforcement.

And so many other things! Read the story if you want and let me know what you would have done if you had gotten these emails, I'm curious. And as always: do your best to keep each other safe. As @FancyJenkins says, "head on swivel."

(FWIW: My money is on this being a scam. But I think it says something about the conditions we're living in that a part of my brain can't be fully convinced that this isn't happening, in some way or another.)