Criminalizing Dissent in the ‘Free’ State of Florida
Echoes of the FBI’s Controversial COINTELPRO From the 1960s
The author is an award-winning investigative reporter who returned to journalism after more than two decades in public service. This story first appeared in the Florida Trident on February 19, 2026 and is reprinted here with permission.
By MICHELLE DeMARCO
Floridians could find themselves the target of secretive government surveillance and potential arrest under legislation quietly moving through the 2026 legislative session.
HB 945, sponsored by Rep. Danny Alvarez (R-Riverview) and SB 1712, sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Martin (R-Fort Myers), would greenlight the creation of a new counterintelligence and counterterrorism unit within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The unit’s primary mission would include the detection, identification and neutralization of “adversary intelligence entities,” which include a “person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”
The five-page legislation, which would establish a 10-person leadership team by next year that would eventually oversee seven regional teams, allows the identification of threats by analyzing “patterns of life,” and “executing arrests or by revealing its intent to compel a response using all counterintelligence and counterterrorism tradecraft necessary.”
“This bill opens the door just slightly enough for there to be a justified major exponential expansion of state surveillance of the residents of this state,” said Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, (D-Orlando), during a hearing on the bill by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee earlier this month.
Smith, along with Rep. Dotie Joseph (D-North Miami), are the only two lawmakers to vote against the bills.
A key concern, Smith said, was the “broad and vague language” in the legislation, a view shared by Bobby Block, Executive Director of the First Amendment Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the protection of constitutional rights and open government.
“Grounds for surveillance could be viewpoints and opinions, and that’s not kosher,” said Block, who just recently learned of the bill. Particularly alarming, he said, is the lack of definition and guardrails, the wide powers and abundance of discretion contained in the legislation.
“This is not about liberty or security,” Block said. “This is about constitutional rights at the very foundation of our society, our state, and our country.”
In introducing the bill to House committees, Alvarez has touted the measure as a necessary complement to federal security efforts. “While the feds do their thing and do it well, Florida has a responsibility to look out for ourselves, so we’re going to look after terrorists…nation bad states…bad actors. We’re staying in our lane,” he told the House Government Operations Subcommittee.
A Democratic co-sponsor of the House bill, Rep. Jose Alvarez of Kissimmee, similarly praised the legislation.
Both the proposals have passed initial committee stops in the House and Senate, with several committee hearings yet to go. The 2026 legislative session is scheduled to end March 13th.
While the bills have drawn limited criticism from lawmakers, HB 945 has drawn the interest of a digital intelligence company with a controversial track record in various countries around the world accused of human rights violations, including Venezuela and Serbia.
Cellebrite, an Israeli company whose employees include veterans of the country’s elite cyberwarfare unit, specializes in data extraction of cell phones and accessing data without the user’s knowledge, among other hi-tech surveillance tools. It has had multiple contracts with United States federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and state records show a host of Florida law enforcement and state agency purchases from Cellebrite as well.
Records on file with the Florida Senate also show millions of dollars in local funding initiative requests submitted over the years on behalf of Cellebrite for various projects, including those involving Gov. Ron DeSantis’ State Guard, the Florida National Guard, and FDLE.
As recently as last year, Cellebrite said it was blocking the country of Serbia from using its technology after Amnesty International released results of an investigation documenting Serbian police and intelligence authorities using Cellebrite forensic products to covertly target journalists, environmental activists and others.
Four years earlier, the company reportedly sold its phone hacking technology to the Maduro regime in Venezuela, despite American sanctions in place at the time.
The company, which was included as part of DeSantis’ itinerary during a 2019 business development visit to Israel, is listed as the sole corporate interest in the lobbyist disclosure form associated with HB 945.
Cellebrite’s Florida lobbyist did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The filing of HB 945 comes at the same time legislation, SB 1632, “Ideologies Inconsistent with American Principles” and sponsored by Vero Beach Republican Sen. Erin Grall, would allow the head of FDLE to designate groups as “domestic terrorist organizations.” The bill would also mandate the expulsion of students aiding an organization once designated, as well as prohibit any state funding of any kind to support a designated organization or member of a designated organization, including private schools.
The bill is paired with SB 1634, also sponsored by Grall, which would enshroud the designation process in secrecy. Both measures would “put a lot of power into a very limited number of politicians’ hands,” said Amy Keith, the Florida Director of Common Cause, with decisions based on language that is “discretionary and can hide the rationale.”
Shirin Sinnar, a constitutional law professor at Stanford University Law School, described the legislation as “terrifying,” both a license to “go after political enemies,” and a threat to civil rights advocacy. “Advocacy is still protected speech,” she said.
The ease with which HB 945 has been moving through the legislative process is troubling, said Chip Gibbons, an advisor to both state and federal lawmakers on First Amendment issues and Policy Director for the Washington, D.C.-based Defending Rights & Dissent. “Has anyone read it?” he asked.
Gibbons, a long-time researcher on free speech and author of an upcoming book on the FBI’s history of political surveillance, questioned why state police would have counterintelligence capabilities, and compared the push for such measures in Florida to federal counterintelligence operations run in the United States during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The FBI’s “COINTELPRO” was a covert counterintelligence program aimed at organizations the agency deemed subversive, including civil rights and student groups. FBI records include surveillance of “New Left” activities in Miami, Jacksonville, and even Tampa, where student activities at USF were closely monitored.
Similarly, police political intelligence units or “Red Squads” were set up and collaborated with the FBI during the 1960’s in the Deep South. Their purpose was to monitor and disrupt groups considered subversive.
To Gibbons, HB 945 raises serious questions about the creation of a “political police force.”
“This is clearly an attempt to set up a counterintelligence unit to target Floridians, solely due to views and opinions, first amendment protected speech,” he said. “It’s not really hiding the ball about what it wants to do.”
This is some UK level of surveillance bullshit. WTF.
Tells you what you need to know when the only ones opposing it are 2 liberal Democrats from Orlando and Miami