By: Vice
August 17, 2021
HDR Inc. is a multi-billion dollar architecture and design firm that has designed over 275 jails and prisons. But designing buildings isn’t the only service the company offers—according to documents obtained through a public records request and provided to Motherboard, the firm has been monitoring activist groups’ social media for the government, including people who have opposed its plans to build jails and highways.
The documents show HDR surveilled both public and private Facebook groups run by activists opposed to its projects, including the resistance camp Moadag Thadiwa, which sought to block the construction of a nearly $2 billion highway that cuts through the sacred Indigenous mountain Moahdak Do’ag in Arizona. Other groups the firm monitored include a private group for locals called Ahwatukee411, and Protecting Arizona’s Resources & Children (PARC), an organization that sued the Arizona Department of Transportation over the freeway.