Don't bother checking into the Dakota Pipeline protest to confuse police

Several thousand people have been "checking in" to the Dakota Access Pipeline protest on social media in an attempt to throw off law enforcement cracking down at the nearby reservation.

People have been responding to a call that went round online to flood the page with check ins, as police were apparently using the site to find out who was present at the protest.

However, local law enforcement denied Monday that they have been monitoring Facebook.

The pipeline protest is centered around Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near where Native Americans, environmentalists and supporters have set up camp for the past few months to keep a 1,000-mile long oil pipeline from crossing through tribal lands.

Over the weekend "check-ins" on Facebook started popping up, with people posting they were at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation - even though they were clearly not in North Dakota. Accompanying status updates explained why they were posting, essentially to "confuse" and "overwhelm" police.

Morton County Sheriff's officials, the local law enforcement agency handling the protests, quickly debunked the claim they are using Facebook to target protesters. In a statement posted on the department's Facebook page Monday morning they wrote that the claim is "absolutely false."

Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network who has been at the camp off and on for the past three months, told Mashable Monday that the check-in movement started as a fun way to keep people engaged in the fight. Over the weekend he said it exploded online. "It's not part of some mastermind strategic play," he assured.

However, he said if it does mess up police's social media tracking in any way, then "awesome." He asserted that the sheriff's department has shown poor public relations skills and has repeatedly mishandled the protests, leading to what Goldtooth called "inappropriate dangerous escalation" with last week's arrests.

After a fairly violent confrontation between protesters and law enforcement last week, more visibility sprang up for the demonstration against the pipeline, which would carry crude oil through Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lands. Environmentalists and indigenous groups have been fighting to stop the project, which if completed would carry 570,000 barrels of light crude oil per day from North Dakota's Bakken and Three Forks shale formations to Patoka, Illinois.

Climate activists are fighting against the pipeline since it would promote the extraction and use of more oil, which when burned emits planet-warming greenhouse gases.

A section of the Dakota Access Pipeline would run underneath the Missouri River, a federally protected waterway. The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation — home to roughly 15,000 members and spanning 2.3 million acres — lies just downstream.

One version of the check-in movement spreading online includes this explanation:

"The Morton County Sheriff's Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Standing Rock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps. SO Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them. This is concrete action that can protect people putting their bodies and well-beings on the line that we can do without leaving our homes. Will you join me in Standing Rock?"

Another version of the check-in uses "Randing Stock" instead of Standing Rock with the false notion that the fake name will throw off the digital trail.

Friends -- I'm not actually at Randing Stock. But you should check in there, too. "The Morton County Sheriff's Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Randing Stock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps. So Water Protecters are calling on everyone to check-in at Randing Stock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them." From the Randing Stock, ND page: "if you're sharing your location at Randing Stock (which you should be doing) 1) make it public 2) make the clarification post separate, and so that only your friends can see it 3) don't clarify on your check in, message friends who say "stay safe!" to let them know what's up -- the stay safe posts are more convincing / confusing for p*lice 4) copy paste to share clarification messages (like this one) because making it public blows our cover 5) say "Randing Stock" in clarification posts so that when they filter out / search those terms, your post is visible to the right people"

Even if these check-ins aren't affecting law enforcement strategy, Goldtooth said the online solidarity is an "interesting way to keep people engaged" and might help stave off what he called "movement fatigue."

As of late Monday morning the Standing Rock Indian Reservation Facebook page had 4,637 visits, or check-ins.

Snopes.com, the online debunking site, found the claim that Facebook users can confuse law enforcement by creating false check-ins to be unproven. By time of publication Facebook had not responded to a request for comment about the check-in strategy.