The Covert Gig-Work Surveillance CEO Arrested for Felony Domestic Violence
After a Christmas party, then 53 year old CEO of Premise Data, Maury Blackman, was arrested when his 25 year old girlfriend told San Francisco police that "he just started beating me."
2024-06-03: Today, roughly nine months after publication, a member of Substack’s Trust & Safety Team, identified only as “Jim,” twice “temporarily unpublished” this article demanding the removal of both the unit number and street address of the apartment complex where the covert intelligence contractor Premise Data’s then-CEO Maury Blackman was arrested. In the time since the original publication, Premise filed at least six discovery requests in court to unmask this article’s source, settled their lawsuit against numerous former employees for allegedly revealing Premise’s contracts with U.S. special operations forces, and ousted Blackman as CEO.
2023-10-13: As a result of persistent attempts from an anonymous individual claiming to represent Maury Blackman to bribe the author into taking down this article, as well as an attempt to have the original police report file taken down through a fraudulent DMCA copyright claim, the report is now directly embedded in this article.
Late on the Tuesday night before Christmas in 2021, San Francisco police officer Drew R. Jackson arrived on the sixth floor of the [REDACTED] luxury apartments to respond to a 911 call regarding potential domestic violence and furniture thrown into the walls of unit [REDACTED]. The officers were greeted by the 30 year old female neighbor who had reported the incident and handed an audio recording which they interpreted to be a voice saying “stop, please stop.”
A shirtless, apparently sweating, 53 year-old white male — Premise Data CEO Delwin Maurice Blackman — then answered the door of unit [REDACTED]. According to San Francisco Police Department Incident Report 210844280, Mr. Blackman’s 25 year-old girlfriend — who also lived in the apartment — was then observed by Officer Jackson to have “visible redness to the left side of her face and possible swelling to the left of her eye.”
Though initially distraught and having trouble controlling her breathing, Mr. Blackman’s girlfriend reportedly told the officers that, after coming home from a Christmas party and having an argument, Mr. Blackman “just started beating me.” Officer Jackson further described the young girlfriend as crying “uncontrollably” after stating that Mr. Blackman hit her in their bedroom “so many times” with his open hand.
After finding “bloody pillowcases” in the bedroom where Mr. Blackman allegedly beat his girlfriend, the two police officers placed the CEO under arrest for felony domestic violence. Seven months later, Mr. Blackman published the first episode of his new podcast, “Great Minds Think Data.” The guest was Lanny Davis, a lawyer/crisis-manager who previously represented film producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein.
Perhaps due to Mr. Blackman’s alleged victim subsequently recanting her initial statements and telling police that “nothing happened,” the incident has not previously been publicly reported. And, less than a year after the police encounter, she publicly promoted Mr. Blackman’s podcast interview with Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Neither Mr. Blackman nor his alleged victim responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Blackman’s company, the covert gig-work surveillance platform Premise Data, is undoubtedly best known for having been accused in February 2022 — just two months after Blackman’s arrest — of having been used by the Russian government to target Ukrainians as part of their ongoing invasion. Ironically, the company had been exposed the previous year by The Wall Street Journal as a covert surveillance platform for U.S. Special Operations Forces, including providing support for Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), and Information Operations (IO). By March, Premise had hired Lanny Davis to help manage their crisis communications.
The most recent confirmation of Premise’s work with U.S. defense and intelligence agencies came from Mr. Blackman himself. Premise initiated a lawsuit against former employee Alex Pompe and many of his colleagues in 2019 for allegedly having alerted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as to Premise’s covert intelligence work. As part of the ongoing lawsuit, which goes to trial early next year, Mr. Blackman submitted a declaration last month requesting that his company’s covert intelligence activities be protected from disclosure due to the damage it would cause Premise, as well as potential risk to their gigworkers “simply by virtue of having the Premise app on their phones.”
(The San Francisco Police Department Incident Report is being published here in redacted form to protect both the alleged victim and the neighbor who called 911. The original was available upon request from the San Francisco Police Department.)
Mr. Poulson, thank you for your great reporting! I read the Racket News article this morning and immediately signed on to your Substack. I look forward to more of this fantastic intel!