PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — On Wednesday, Oct. 27, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., shared an unredacted copy of a report completed by the Department of Homeland Security that investigated its methods and reasoning for collecting private information on Portlanders arrested during the 2020 protests.
The report revealed that former Undersecretary of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Brian Murphy may have acted outside the agency’s guidelines by ordering his employees to collect such private information on people.
According to the report, Murphy wanted to demonstrate that the violence in Portland was not random and that the individuals were connected.
DHS determined many of the people arrested were not connected and had committed trivial criminal infractions that had little to no connection to domestic terrorism.
For people who were arrested during Portland protests, DHS collected lists of their friends and family, travel history, and social media posts.
Read the full report here:
The 2020 protests in Portland started in late May following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and lasted more than 100 nights.