The FAA’s no-fly zone barred indigenous drone pilots from documenting the NoDAPL struggle, but private security aircraft continued surveillance.
At the height of the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline’s construction last fall, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a rare “temporary flight restriction,” also known as a no-fly zone, covering nearly 154 square miles of airspace above the pipeline resistance. The no-fly zone — a response to the activities of indigenous drone pilots, whose aerial videos documenting the struggle at Standing Rock drew large social media followings — was approved from October 25 to November 4 in 2016 and renewed twice to cover a smaller area, remaining in effect until December 13.
Drone footage by Dean Dedman, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe
Documents obtained via open records requests, as well as material from court cases, reveal new details about how the FAA and state agencies helped police and private security companies wrest control of the airspace above the NoDAPL resistance from indigenous water protectors.
Following the flight ban, the media was no longer permitted to use aircraft to cover the events without undergoing a review process. According to the FAA’s no-fly order, “Only relief aircraft ops under direction of North Dakota Tactical Operations Center [were] authorized in the airspace.” Meanwhile, aircraft operated by Dakota Access Pipeline security officials continued to fly over the area to conduct surveillance. The FAA confirmed to The Intercept that the flights would have been legal only if the private security aircraft were participating in a law enforcement action. Prosecutors have used footage from those flights as evidence in felony cases brought against pipeline opponents, displaying an unusual and troubling partnership between the private security operatives and law enforcement.
As The Intercept has previously reported, pipeline builder Energy Transfer Partners hired the shadowy mercenary firm TigerSwan in September 2016 to oversee its security operation. TigerSwan moved quickly to establish a collaborative relationship with law enforcement. The Intercept received more than 100 leaked documents from a TigerSwan contractor describing those efforts in detail, along with DAPL security’s broader strategy of using aerial surveillance, infiltration, and social media monitoring to counter the water protector movement. TigerSwan, which began as a military and State Department contractor, frequently used the language of counterterrorism to inflate threat assessments, at times comparing the water protectors to jihadi insurgents.
Court documents confirm that DAPL security personnel were coordinating their flights with state agencies. In a police report concerning a highly militarized October 27 police raid during the no-fly period, Lt. Cody Trom of the Bismarck Police Department wrote that a team of officers assigned to clear protesters from a bridge at County Road 134 included a “DAPL air asset.” A spokesperson for the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, one of the agencies leading the police response at Standing Rock, told The Intercept, “DAPL was not deputized.” The spokesperson did confirm, however, that law enforcement personnel were present on DAPL aircraft. “During no-fly zone periods, a law enforcement officer was always on board the helicopter. The helicopter was flown by a private contractor, and a law enforcement officer accompanied him to conduct aerial surveillance.”
As the temporary flight restriction went into effect, at least one DAPL security aircraft circled the airspace above the police raid on October 27, photographing water protectors and coordinating with police.
The DAPL photos from that day have become key evidence in a federal felony case accusing five indigenous men of helping set fire to barricades on North Dakota County Road 134. If convicted, they each face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.
In a January 24 affidavit and in a later court hearing, Special Agent Derek Hill of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives described how he identified at least two of the defendants, Michael Markus and Brennon Nastacio. “While law enforcement was conducting their operation, a helicopter that was being utilized by the Dakota Access Pipeline was monitoring the situation from the air,” Hill wrote in the affidavit. “A passenger in the helicopter was utilizing a digital camera to document the operation, and these digital photos were provided to law enforcement.”
“From a constitutional standpoint, landowners and others who have property rights have every right to show the police evidence that someone has trespassed on their land,” says Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “But if this instead amounted to deputizing a private company to take aerial surveillance of protesters on public property, including streets, and snitch on them to the police, that’s deeply problematic.”
According to water protectors, a DAPL helicopter frequently strayed from Dakota Access property. “The yellow helicopter that we’d identified as being DAPL’s flew to the south of DAPL property lots of times on October 27,” says Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who often filmed and livestreamed from the water protector camps in North Dakota.
A spokesperson for the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services did not respond to a request for comment. Vicki Granado, a spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners, told the Intercept, “We are thankful for the professionalism and the services provided by all the law enforcement teams that were on the ground in North Dakota that ensured the safety not only of our employees, but the safety of those who live and work in the Mandan area. Beyond that, we do not comment on our security programs.” TigerSwan did not respond to inquiries.
A spokesperson for the FAA noted, “The Federal Aviation Administration carefully considers requests from law enforcement and other entities before establishing Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR) in U.S. airspace. The TFR over the pipeline protest was approved to ensure the safety of aircraft in support of law enforcement and the safety of people on the ground.”
The FAA spokesperson noted that the flight restriction offered provisions for media to operate aircraft as long as they complied with FAA rules around licensing and safety, and coordinated with the agency before flying. The agency did not respond to questions about how many media operators obtained waivers, stating, “We did not deny any requests from media who met those requirements.” One drone pilot, Rob Levine, eventually obtained a media waiver, but only in a small segment of the restriction zone.
A screenshot from a drone video of law enforcement shooting rubber bullets at a drone at Standing Rock.
Dean Dedman Jr.
Myron Dewey, a videographer who attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers to his series of DAPL-related videos on social media, was among the people whose use of consumer drones to document the anti-DAPL struggle spurred the request for a no-fly zone.
“I told the FAA, the difference between how we’re approaching this is that I’m exercising sovereignty,” said Dewey, who is Newe-Numah/Paiute-Shoshone. “I said, ‘If you want to bring up a no-fly zone, you need to go to the tribal council and make your request to them.’”
The no-fly zone came at a moment of heightened tension between police and pipeline opponents, as water protectors, claiming what they called “eminent domain,” built a new camp on land owned by Energy Transfer Partners that would have been covered under the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Two days after the no-fly zone was imposed, law enforcement and private security officers forcibly evicted the new camp, using military-grade armored personnel carriers and shooting protesters with rubber bullets and other “less-than-lethal” weapons.
Yet even before the no-fly zone, law enforcement had been targeting drone operators. On October 19, Aaron Turgeon, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe of South Dakota, was charged with two counts of “reckless endangerment” and one count of “physical obstruction of a government function” for flying his drone in the vicinity of a law enforcement operation. Prosecutors also charged Dewey with misdemeanor “stalking” for flying his drone near a DAPL security guard. Turgeon was eventually found not guilty, and Dewey’s charges were dropped.
Law enforcement went so far as to shoot at a drone belonging to Dean Dedman, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, in the days leading up to the temporary flight restriction, claiming that the drone was flying too close to a helicopter.
An October 24 law enforcement email obtained by The Intercept shows police and emergency response officials communicating with a representative of the California-based security company Trak Assets, which had offered a demonstration on “drone defense technology” for the police to use in North Dakota. And a “logistics tracking sheet” shows that law enforcement acquired a “drone shoot down device” from the Dakota Zoo to “disable protestor drones” on November 4. The document notes that the device was eventually returned to the zoo.
This wasn’t the first time the FAA had been accused of allowing law enforcement to use flight restrictions to keep out cameras. The agency came under criticism in 2014 when a temporary flight restriction was put in place over protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. In audio recordings obtained by the Associated Press, an FAA manager described how St. Louis police “finally admitted it really was to keep the media out.”
Recognizing the “substantial sensitivities” of the issue, officials “at the highest levels” of the FAA weighed in on the decision to institute the no-fly zone at Standing Rock. Internal records show the request generated controversy within the agency. “I know this is a high profile event so I wanted you onboard with my denial. I plan on denying the request based on there being no hazard from the ground to [aircraft], exp: no shots fired,” wrote Kevin George, an air traffic control specialist at the FAA, on October 23. George noted that violations of law by drone pilots would be more appropriately pursued individually by police.
When a request to renew the restriction was submitted in November, FAA officials again expressed hesitation. “Candidly,” an FAA official wrote at the time, “some of the involved tribes are arguing that the FAA’s action to implement a [temporary flight restriction] was driven not by a genuine safety/security threat, but rather by the desire of the local [law enforcement agents] handling the situation to prevent the protesters from using drones to surveil unlawful actions on the part of [law enforcement] that infringe on the protesters’ First Amendment rights.”
“A pattern we have to be very vigilant about in the future is that the FAA tends to just respond in lockstep to requests from law enforcement,” the ACLU’s Rowland told The Intercept. “And we need to ensure that law enforcement does not get used to the perverse incentive of asking for an over-broad no-fly zone that creates a blackout on media surveillance.”
Ultimately, North Dakota law enforcement officers helped sway FAA officials by suggesting that anti-DAPL water protectors would take up arms and consumer drones might cause a fatal accident. “There is also good intel they are going to be even more desperate in their actions,” wrote Sean Johnson of the state’s Department of Emergency Services.
In the same email exchange, Johnson alleged that pilots had intentionally flown their drones toward law enforcement aircraft, and “it is only a matter of time until a law enforcement officer, a lawful protester, or member of the public is injured (or worse yet killed) as a result of unlawful actor usage of UAS.” Highway Patrol officer Shannon Henke added, “We can only pray for the best that a flight crew is not lost due to the violations that keep occurring.” Henke claimed that law enforcement had observed protesters wielding “both long guns and handguns” and stated, “We need to ensure the movement of law enforcement trying to protect the innocent is not being broadcast live by the use of drones.”
In the spring of 2017, as TigerSwan expanded its surveillance effort to new camps in multiple states, the security firm encouraged staff to “focus on becoming Certified Drone Pilots to support the DAPL program,” according to a situation report dated May 5 that was leaked to The Intercept. A day later, TigerSwan confirmed that one of its contractors “completed drone training and has successfully passed the drone operator test” and “is now an official drone operator in the state of SD.”
Top photo: A screenshot from a drone video over a circle of Dakota Access Pipeline opponents on Sept. 20, 2016.
Leaked documents and public records reveal a troubling fusion of private security, public law enforcement, and corporate money in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Mad pig disease.
It is almost impossible to believe that there would be an all-out war against Native peoples camping together in peace, hoping to keep a pipeline from going under a major river and source of water for the entire half of the continent. Not to protest would have been wrong. To do it so well and so peacefully was amazing and a most significant historical event of our time. To have leaders from tribal nations offer their support, leaders from all over the world, tells how important this gathering was, and is, for all our people.
A private army, the desire for violence, the caging of elders, all of it is the worst of our country, another dark moment in an ongoing history of this America’s colonization of people and takeover of lands, water, and human rights.
Linda Hogan
Our Police forces are just that, FORCES! There is no thought of Citizens’ Freedoms, Rights, Goodness or Mercy. There is no more any desire to protect our Constitution, our citizens, our future. Laws broken – no problem, so long as it is the Police breaking them.
Even if it’s over property claimed by the shooter, I know it’s not legal to shoot at a drone. Did the police violate this law? I viewed videos of police unlawfully stopping a water protector without cause, then confiscating his drone through the use of illegal search.
The government cannot claim ownership of the air and the water.
The world’s most powerful secret military contracted mercenary army in human history tracking peaceful protesters IN The United States of America?! WTF?! That’s way FUBAR man!
This story should make it crystal clear to everyone that this is not just politics, it’s WAR. The only way to fight these Goliath pigs is by guerrilla warfare, as Ho Chi Minh so successfully showed. With a few rare exceptions, U.S. society and its government are morally indefensible and must be brought down. First and foremost, we must fight for the natural environment, traditional Native people, and Black people (the latter because their ancestors were forcibly brought here as slaves and they’ve been oppressed and treated like shit ever since).
This is not to say that we shouldn’t use every available tool in this war. Write letters, attend demonstrations, etc. But we need very radical changes, and Milquetoast measures like those are only a tiny fraction of what’s needed. Start by organizing your life so you don’t have to drive regularly, then give up your car. Buy as little as possible and don’t buy evil crap like beef and other unnecessary stuff. One way to bring down the evil monster is to starve it of money, and if we don’t buy their crap, they wither and die.
I think people are too fond of their creature comforts for your idea
I agree for now. What’s really needed is a major evolution in human consciousness, and soon. As we say, people will seek when they’re ready and you can’t successfully force anyone, so I don’t know how to accomplish this, but it’s the only hope.
armed conflict is not a solution.
armed conflict is what the powerful look forward to.
armed conflict also empowers the worst of armed conflict enthusiasts.
consider syria or libya .
to change things in the US, vote for a unified third party.
once the people in the US put in a few third parties, the elites will panic.
Germany has like 8 parties.
A third party can defeat the electoral college.
Meanwhile simply script laws as the founders did, post them, and charge the political offenders.
This has been done before. It is very effective for public involvement and sentiment.
I didn’t say or imply that the guerrilla warfare must necessarily be violent, though I don’t agree with you that it’s necessarily the wrong solution. Nazi Germany was defeated by violence. Vietnam won independence by violence. Etc. Whether to use violence is a strategic decision, and sometimes the only right one. I’m strongly and unequivocally opposed to the U.S. starting wars, but I’m not nonviolent (“nonviolent” means that you NEVER use physical force against another person, even to fight back or defend yourself). Nonviolence is unnatural and sometimes ineffective, and the only intelligent use for it is as a strategy.
While I always vote Green except for Barbara Lee, you’re delusional if you think that the Green or any other 3d party will get elected to any major federal or even state office anytime soon. Germany, along with all other democracies except for England, has proportional representation. Without that, 3d parties have no way to break into the Club, and we don’t have it.
“Buy as little as possible and don’t buy evil crap like beef and other unnecessary stuff. One way to bring down the evil monster is to starve it of money, and if we don’t buy their crap, they wither and die.”
Oh NO!
Eat your vegetables, little Andrea- because one day, the left will starve themselves to death, and white males will wither themselves away, too stupid to eat, and stay strong against the onslaught of global finance!
Then, when those morons are weak, we will spy on them endlessly, and work hand in hand with the FBI as Democracy subverting cowards-who will be very fat and plump indeed.
Look! First, these weaklings were raaised by single mothers- all of them too stupid to ‘grow a pair’ and THEN, as the ADL spying scandal morphed into the NSA “collect it all” and the FBI’s CVE programs- these MORONS began to starve themselves to death.
Now, the ADL trains police in Israel, and weak white males whinge on about starving themselves to death.
https://www.adl.org/what-we-do/combat-hate/law-enforcement-partnerships
Such an easy win…..mazel tov! The marriage of the police state and ‘feminism.’
You need help, and I’m being serious, not sarcastic or mean. Your comments are delusional, because they are irrelevant to anything I said. Forgoing beef has nothing to do with starving, being hungry, or even being weak. You seem very detached from reality, and I’m not just talking about this comment.
I’m a pilot and I live in Bismarck, ND. A TFR is NOT the same as a No Fly Zone, not at all. The protest had their own pilot from Oklahoma who came up and flew people over the camps above the TFR. I flew over them myslef. It’s not at all a No Fly Zone. It’s simply altitude flight restrictions; they could fly over it, too, and they did. So did other private pilots like myself. And so could others, and some could go through the TFR if the FAA gave them permission. By using “no fly zone” you are purposefully twisting this story to imply something else.
thanks for that clarification!
? can the fly drones at night and are they subject to VFR or IFR?
Thank you very much for reporting on this important story. This was the kind of quality journalism I was expecting from The Intercept. Not the SJW, neo-marxist nonsense that seems to overwhelm this site.
Please keep it up!
excellent report. Not talked about by the theiving wallstreeters who regularly violate laws to rob the public. The coalition of the wealthy pigs do not want free people, strong people, or a population that want their own way on their own land. AMERICA IS OFFICIALLY A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY.
The “police” or whatever you want to call them here, operate like a 3rd world dictator, partner themselves with corporate interests instead of….
Protecting the peace. Which should have been, keeping BOTH sides honest, and separated from each other and erupting in violence.
Instead..the police was on the side of corporations.
Private company tells government to steal private property. Private company then hires private security to beat previous owners off of the property the government just stole from them. I find it incredulous how any American that didn’t get paid by the private company in this saga can find this acceptable.
I’ve been reading each installment as it arrives. Great work. Our government and law enforcement truly sucks when they work with private security contractors against our rights to protest. That’s completely at odds with what we’re supposed to be about. Shame on you all.
Welcome to a New World Order where your rights are written in pencil.
Bury My Drone at Wounded Knee.
The incredible amount of deception and illegal activities by ETP and affiliates and contractors and police in Standing Rock are nothing short of embarrassing, reprehensible, and anti-American. There was a missile launcher deployed by ND Guard also. The claim was it was only used for observation, but it was specifically built as a anti-drone weapon. Thanks for publishing.