Search of Golden Gate Bridge Protesters’ Social Media Was Illegal, Attorneys Argue

As seven pro-Palestinian activists who blocked the Golden Gate Bridge two years ago prepare for felony trial, their attorneys are raising First Amendment concerns about a wide-ranging search of their social media activity.

The California Highway Patrol’s search warrant identified Facebook and Instagram accounts they believe belong to the defendants and sought three months of records from parent company Meta, including private messages, contact lists, liked posts, passwords and financial information. Defense attorneys aiming to block the data that was handed over from being used in court argue that the warrant was unconstitutionally broad.

“You can’t just say, ‘I’m looking for evidence of any crime,’” attorney Shaffy Moeel said. “You have to actually have a very particularized, specified thing that you’re looking for if you’re going to ask a judge to sign off on a warrant like this. And so what they got from Meta is hundreds of gigs of data related to what we think is absolutely First Amendment-protected activity.”

Moeel filed a motion to suppress that evidence in court ahead of trial, where defendants face maximum sentences of 14 or 15 years in prison for charges including felony conspiracy, false imprisonment and trespassing to interfere with a business.

Some of the requested information, such as content from accounts the defendants allegedly interacted with, has no relevance to the question of whether the protesters conspired to block traffic, Moeel argued in the motion. Instead, she told KQED, authorities were looking to build “a map of political association.”

“You have the district attorney using law enforcement and the court to get data from people, Americans, regarding their political association, what accounts they’re liking, what accounts they’re reposting, what comments they’re posting related to accounts that might have a political message on it,” Moeel said.

The San Francisco district attorney’s office declined to comment.

A CHP analyst looked into Instagram accounts that “supported one another with spreading knowledge of events” as part of the agency’s assessment of protests, according to a CHP officer’s affidavit for the warrant.

Among the list were accounts for some of the groups most consistently responsible for planning pro-Palestinian protests in the Bay Area in recent years, including local chapters for the Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center.

The CHP declined to comment, citing the pending case.

Meta said in a statement that the company pushes back or refuses requests that are illegal. It did not do so in this case.

The trial comes more than two years after protesters blocked vehicle lanes for hours on the Golden Gate Bridge as part of a broader day of demonstrations against U.S. economic support for Israel amid its war in Gaza. In Oakland, protesters also blocked lanes on Interstate 880.

Jury selection and opening statements are expected in the coming weeks, Moeel said.

The defendants had previously hoped to avoid trial altogether and convince a judge to downgrade the felony charges to misdemeanors, but two judges ruled against them, most recently in March.

“Historically, San Francisco has had other protests where they’ve blocked bridges for environmental justice or to raise awareness regarding disparities in providing AIDS treatment,” Moeel said. “And so, I think this is a part of San Francisco history, and the district attorney here in this case took the unprecedented step of charging felony conspiracy to commit misdemeanor crimes.”

Along with those two demonstrations, which occurred in 1996 and 1989 respectively, protesters have also flocked to the Golden Gate Bridge more recently. The environmental justice protest, which involved actor Woody Harrelson, is listed among key dates on the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District’s website.

Anti-war protesters were also arrested on the bridge in 2002, though only one was charged with a felony for assaulting an officer, according to SFGate. In 2020, thousands marched across the bridge as part of the wave of Black Lives Matter protests without incident.

The defendants in this case note that their action two years ago was seemingly the first time the bridge district filed a restitution claim against protesters, originally set at $163,000 in lost toll revenue.

When lawyers for the defendants first argued that the felony charges should be reduced, Judge Brendan P. Conroy said he would have considered the motion more seriously because the defendants seemed well-intentioned, but the considerable restitution amount stopped him.

After the bridge district withdrew its restitution claim last year, attorneys tried again, but again a separate judge denied the motion, which defense attorneys called disappointing.