Published: 24 April, 2012, 02:03

Major Nancy Perez was photographed by Miller shortly before she arrested him on January 2. Image from pixiq.com

If you want to know what the US Department of Homeland Security has been working hard at lately, leave it to a multimedia journalist from Miami, Florida to lay it out for you: they’ve been busy on Facebook.

Freelance journalist Carlos Miller was documenting a law enforcement raid on the southern Florida’s Occupy Wall Street offshoot, Occupy Miami, when he was arrested earlier in 2012 while filming police — for the third time in just a few years. After investigating why authorities in Miami may have singled him out during the ordeal (in which, he claims, he was only filming the event), Miller stumbled upon some evidence that exposes just why he was targeted by the local branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Miller was able to obtain through a public records request communication logs from the Miami DHS that reveal what he believes is proof that authorities had been prepared to issue an arrest against him earlier in the year without him even committing a crime. To the DHS, believes Miller, using a camera seems comparable with carrying out an act of terrorism.

Through the public records request, Miller was able to obtain a treasure trove of correspondence that in many instances included his name. One such account was an email communiqué that was issued by the Miami-Dade Police Homeland Security Bureau this past January only eleven hours before law enforcement raided the city’s Occupy encampment and arrested Mr. Miller yet again.

In that email (sent with the subject line “Multimedia information/Situational Awareness”), authorities describe Carlos Miller as a freelance journalist and, ergo, a terrorist in the making. Over the weekend, the reporter recounted in a blog post published to Pixiq.com the events that landed him behind bars during the most recent instance. Also included in the post were the contents of the email that he suggests pegged him as a criminal with a camera.

“Carlos Miller is a Miami multimedia journalist who has been arrested twice for taking pictures of law enforcement.He has publicly posted on social networks that he will be taking pictures today in order to document the eviction,” reads the bulletin.

Along with that warning was a photo of Miller lifted from his Facebook profile. On his own part, Miller says he has no concern with law enforcement circulating photos from his social networking page and acknowledges that he is aware that his profile is viewable to the public. Of concern, however, is how later that day a recipient of that email singled out Miller after he documented the Occupy eviction and issued

Major Nancy Perez was photographed by Miller shortly before she arrested him on January 2. The charges, as he blogged then, were for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest without violence, despite the police report revealing that he was “taken into custody without incident.” To Miller, though, he can’t help but wonder why he was singled out among a pool of reporters. Was it connected with the email sent only hours earlier?

Read More>>>