The FBI flew secret spy planes thousands of times over protest sites.

Evidence

In the case of Black Lives Matter, the FBI engaged in a pattern of surveillance. In 2015, the agency used secret spy planes to film a large-scale protest in Baltimore waged in response to the death of a young black man, Freddie Gray, in police custody. The same planes were used to surveil protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the death of Michael Brown, also an African American. Buzzfeed News reported that the FBI deployed secret spy planes some thirty-five hundred times in the second half of 2015. The FBI defended the legality of aerial surveillance, insisting that they weren’t gathering footage of particular peaceful activists, but instead using planes to follow “terrorists, spies and serious criminals,” per a statement by agency deputy director Mark Giuliano. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 158