1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

There are secret federal lists tracking protesters labeled as “domestic terrorists” — and the government is lying about it. Last week in Maine, a masked federal agent sneered at a protester filming him, bragging, “We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” When asked, the Department of Homeland Security said flatly: “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.” That claim is not just misleading — it’s false. What exists isn’t one neat list but a sprawling constellation of secret watchlists used by DHS and the FBI to monitor anti-ICE activists, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, Antifa-associated people, and untold others under the vague and politically elastic banner of “domestic terrorism.” According to investigative reporting, these covert systems go by names like Bluekey, Grapevine, Hummingbird, Reaper, Sandcastle, Sienna, Slipstream, and Sparta — tools that collect data not just on protest activity but on friends, family and anyone who happens to be near a demonstration or caught on video. Some were originally designed for things like immigrant vetting, others hoover up social media posts and digital metadata in classified repositories. To understand how we got here, look back at the war on terror. After 9/11, the U.S. didn’t just build terror watchlists — it built biometric ones, folding faces, fingerprints, and irises into the architecture of national security. Systems like DHS’s IDENT and international biometric databases were designed to track suspected terrorists across borders, linking physical identity directly to surveillance systems. That logic didn’t stay overseas. It was normalized, scaled, and quietly imported into domestic security — turning biometric data into a routine tool for monitoring people labeled “risky,” not just dangerous. One DHS lawyer described how this “over-collection” has produced what feels like “Big Brother” rather than orderly law enforcement. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. In September 2025, the White House issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a sweeping strategy to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt” what it calls domestic terrorism and political violence. That document directs the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to coordinate investigations and to treat a wide array of political speech and protest actions as potential threats. Critics have warned this memo’s language — which cites ideological markers like “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and hostility to “traditional American views” as risk factors — could sweep in ordinary political dissent and civil society organizations. Remember that the federal government already lacked a statutory crime called “domestic terrorism” before all this. The label exists in statute for analytic purposes, but there’s no process for officially designating a U.S. citizen or group as such in the way foreign terrorist organizations are designated. If Americans value free speech and political assembly, we must demand sunlight on these secret lists and where they’re being used. Because secrecy has always been the friend of abuse — from Project Minaret’s surveillance of civil rights leaders in the 60s to today’s digital dragnet — and civil liberties lost in the dark are gone forever. The public deserves to know who’s being watched — and why.