FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby FourthBase » Mon Dec 31, 2012 1:57 pm

http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary ... s-ows.html

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

“The documents are heavily redacted, and it is clear from the production that the FBI is withholding far more material. We are filing an appeal challenging this response and demanding full disclosure to the public of the records of this operation,” stated Heather Benno, staff attorney with the PCJF.


But to quote someone on Facebook:

"If no one in Occupy had been tolerant of (let alone welcoming to) the black bloc faction's useless signifying on violence, then the government wouldn't have had an even remotely legitimate alibi for infiltrating, sabotaging, cracking down -- an alibi so valuable the government is willing to manufacture it, if need be."

"Here's the thing about broken property. If a bank hired goons to go down and break only the property of Occupiers, no one would be philosophizing about how violence against property is merely free speech and not really violence. And if property destruction is supposed to do non-symbolic harm to a corporation, it winds up a) not actually costing the corporation a penny, because of insurance and b) aiding the enemy by providing a pretense for retribution. So, it's unethical, it's impotent, and it's counter-productive. It's also delusional and delusion-inducing, if the message conveyed is "there's no rational way out of this", since being rational would be the only hope of a way out, ever. Black bloc posers want to convince us that shit is totally hopeless and that the time for being rational is over, because they're miserable nihilists too lazy to think any harder, too eager to stroke their machismo. Again, the proof is easy: When a protester breaks a window, police chiefs and CEOs cheer the loudest."

And this morning, a news item seemingly designed to buttress that alibi:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/3 ... ef=ny-news

The couple is either being set up, or they really are the sort of violence-positive dipshits who spoiled Occupy. Even if it's the former, there's no shortage of the latter who just as easily could provide the police the same excuse.
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight,
that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
User avatar
FourthBase
 
Posts: 7057
Joined: Thu May 05, 2005 4:41 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Dec 31, 2012 2:49 pm

Based on my own experience there is really no need to "set up" anything -- our culture is already a stage-managed masterpiece.

That said, I would love to be there sometime when a Black Bloc kid on mushrooms realizes that They Are The Problem. It would satisfy some part of my soul.

I do not grant the premise that "if only" some saner adults in the Occupy gatekeeping pantheon (or something, right?) had blocked the Bloc, the government would have had no excuses -- Swords to Plowshares has a long history with the FBI and they've never even tolerated the thought of being mean-spirited, let alone violent. (In fact, I'd argue that they provide a valuable red team service to DoD and should be paid for the work they do.)

FBI exists to defend Status:Quo - anyone who raises their eyes to the sky and contemplates a better world is a terrorist, period. I am not exaggerating or indulging in sarcasm.
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby beeline » Mon Dec 31, 2012 2:59 pm

Link

FBI Report Mentions Plot To Kill Occupy Protesters

An identified [redacted] of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [redacted] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas. [Redacted] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles. (Page 61)


It remains unclear as to who or what this report is referring to, yet the FBI decided to disclose it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund – the document is on page 61.

All that is known is that this individual/group was identified by the FBI as having a plan to kill Occupy Protesters. Who was involved? How far did this plot go? Will there be charges?
User avatar
beeline
 
Posts: 2024
Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 4:10 pm
Location: Killadelphia, PA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby FourthBase » Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:44 pm

Wombaticus is right, a pretense is so preferable it will be created if none exists, but no pretense however legitimate is ultimately required. Perfectly demonstrated by the word "suppressed" above. If generous, one could maybe imagine some extreme terrorist situation randomly emerging at Occupy that law enforcement might feel the need to prepare for which might necessitate a contingency plan involving a sniper. But it is purely talking about assassinating individual Occupy leaders with a silenced rifle. Which ought to blow everyone' s mind, because when else has domestic assassination of dissidents been so blatantly put forth as an option in a government document? It's almost too good/damning/horrifying to be true.
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight,
that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
User avatar
FourthBase
 
Posts: 7057
Joined: Thu May 05, 2005 4:41 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:55 pm

My sense of the shooting plot was that it must involve a current FBI asset -- no charges filed in public + ID scrubbed for FOIA = hard to come to any other conclusion. (People used to wonder how Hal Turner got away with it, too.)

There was probably considerable smirking when the decision to let those pages through was reached...it is definitely a taunt.

Hell, maybe it was just Fred Burton, you know? He's like that.
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby FourthBase » Mon Dec 31, 2012 4:03 pm

I misread it as an internal government plan at first instead of a report on a third party threat but, right, why else would the identity be redacted?
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight,
that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
User avatar
FourthBase
 
Posts: 7057
Joined: Thu May 05, 2005 4:41 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Dec 31, 2012 4:06 pm

Harry started one in Fascism.
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=35904

harry ashburn wrote:
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/31/ho ... -movement/
How FBI Monitored Occupy Movement


December 31, 2012


The FBI and other federal agencies coordinated with banks and local authorities in reacting to the Occupy Movement, which was put in the category of a domestic terrorist threat despite the group’s advocacy of nonviolence, Dennis J. Bernstein reports.



By Dennis J. Bernstein

Newly obtained secret FBI documents show that the Feds treated the Occupy Movement as a criminal terrorist threat even though the movement rejected violence as a tactic, a fact that the FBI acknowledges in the files.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which obtained the documents, discussed the FBI disclosures in an interview with me on Pacifica Radio’s “Flashpoints.”


An Occupy poster, urging protests on behalf of the “99%”

DB: Before we get into some of the specifics talk a little bit about what motivated the request and your initial response to these heavily redacted documents that you did obtain.

MVH: The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed a series, or maybe more accurately a barrage of FOI [Freedom of Information] requests in the fall of 2011. At the point at which we could see, and the movement could see, that there was a coordinated crackdown against Occupy happening all over the country.

And we issued FOI demands against federal agencies including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and others, as well as against municipalities and police departments around the country. When we received these documents, which then have taken more than a year to obtain from the FBI, it was very clear to us and clearer, I think, to anyone reading these documents the very intense role that the FBI played in surveillance, mass surveillance operation against the peaceful Occupy Movement.

DB: Alright, let’s talk a little bit about the documents that you received, despite the fact that they were blacked out, in many instances. Let’s go through some of the information … You got a document that was as early as Aug. 19, 2011, and what was the FBI doing? They were getting ready for this movement?

MVH: Yes. It says a lot about the FBI’s conduct in the role of the American intelligence agencies that the FBI, before a single tent was put up in Zuccotti Park in New York, was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the plans and upcoming Occupy protests and that was as early as August, 2011. And of course, the OccupyWallStreet started officially on September 17th.

And while, as you said, the documents are heavily redacted and it’s very clear, too, from the redaction that it’s a limited redaction. There’s obviously a lot more out there that we are working to get. That they were working with private entities, as well, meeting with businesses to alert them that they were the focus of protests.

And the documents, throughout, show the FBI, in cities around the country, different field offices, different joint terrorism task force networks communicating with the private banks, private security entities, really themselves acting as a private security arm of corporations, banks and Wall Street.

DB: That’s pretty extraordinary. It really did have the feel that they were working in concert, in conjunction, with some of the major banks. And it was interesting …. Well, talk a little bit about what happened in terms of Indianapolis and the potential criminal activity alert, whatever that is.

MVH: Right. There’s a potential criminal activity alert put out by the Indianapolis Office of the FBI, even though they are saying that they are aware of the Occupy Movement, they don’t have a date specific for demonstrations or activities in Indiana. But, nonetheless, they are putting out these, you know, warnings, these alerts. Their documents acknowledge that the movement is peaceful.

And it raises these questions, that of course, so many have been asking, you have the FBI granted, you know, mass license since September 11th under the claims of the need for national security, you know, millions, billions of dollars poured into the FBI, Homeland Security and what are they doing?

They are turning their sights on a peaceful social justice movement and doing it at the same time that they are working, hand in hand, with the banks and Wall Street, the very focus of peoples’ demonstrations and organizing because of the economic crisis caused by the corporations, banks and Wall Street. And there you have American intelligence agencies acting as their partners.

DB: And we know that the Occupy Movement had a great deal of students involved, young people involved. What did you learn in terms of spying on campuses?

MVH: There’s a, the Campus Liaison Project of the FBI has been very controversial. Many student groups, campuses, activists have protested against it, saying that it was, you know, going to be an abusive program. And you have plain evidence of it here. You have evidence in New York, and in Albany, that the FBI was communicating outward to many campuses. The documents reference, at one point, that they were communicating information, and this was all just from the New York location, the 16 campuses, I believe it is, and then there’s another six.

And then a representative from SUNI Oswego, from the State University of New York in Oswego communicating information back, reporting to the FBI on the Occupy Movement on campus made up of students and professors. And, you know, in that instance and in many other instances around the country, the documents show this intense collaboration, not just with the banks and Wall Street, but also with state and local law enforcement entities, and the fusion centers.

So here you have this, you know, mass apparatus collecting huge amounts of information, a completely lawful, First Amendment protected — I mean cherished first amendment protected — conduct in the United States and putting it into these completely unregulated, and I think, very dangerous databases and data warehousing centers.

DB: Now were students, were professors employed to be a part of this surveillance. Is there any indication to have students, teachers were paid to surveil?

MVH: I didn’t see anything like that. The reference there appears to be a representative, so I am assuming it is someone in the administration or campus police. Not that I think it was someone who was a student, or a professor or something like that. You know, people can go look at the documents, which I really urge people to do there. We made them all publicly available on our web site, which is justiceonline.org.

And, you know, you can read through these documents and see the activities that are going on. There are multiple instances where it appears from the information in the text that is available that there was infiltration and surveillance or undercover operations of that nature going on.

For example, in Richmond, there is discussion where the FBI is conferring with the Federal Reserve, and there is an in-state law enforcement agencies and joint terrorism task force, and there is this reporting going on from these other entities back to the FBI giving them updates on planning meetings and general assembly discussions.

So that certainly raises that specter, and there’s another similar incident in Anchorage that we can see where someone whose private security working on behalf of the port in Anchorage, Alaska, is meeting with the FBI over the planned West Coast Occupy port actions. And saying that they are going to go attend the planning meeting of the protestors and report back.

DB: I guess the thing that I became concerned about, and I covered a number of these police attacks, really, on Occupy movements in New York and in Oakland, where we would see, maybe there’s a 130 people in an encampment in Oakland and you’d see 15 police forces converge. And apparently these police forces were being coordinated by the federal government who, I guess, was making deals that if they worked with the federal government they would be able to obtain certain weaponry from the military.

And, of course, there’s a concern there when the federal government gets involved in, if you will, community policing, coordinating police departments, bringing police in from other areas. This is sort of walking that, to that border called fascism, when the military and the federal government becomes involved in repression.

MVH: Well, we’ve certainly seen that trend, and that very shift in police in the United States into a paramilitary policing and our office has litigated, as you know, a number of large cases related to demonstrations and mass demonstrations in the United States. And, you know, in the Occupy context that’s really what we’re trying to get at is this connection and coordination between the federal government and local police agencies.

And, of course, the federal government always claims that they are completely hands off, and yet these documents are showing this relationship, over and over again. And you have that use of the legal term, imprimatur, that somehow these activities fall under domestic terrorism, I mean, because that’s how the FBI is categorizing it and that’s just stunning that the FBI is authorized to categorize a social justice movement, peaceful protest, First Amendment, free speech activities as domestic terrorism.

It says something too, that this is happening in this administration. People think if you shift the Democratic, Republican administration that somehow these abuses are not going to occur. But, of course, this is full license to have this type of activity going on under the Obama administration.

You know, let’s look at the Tea Party. The Tea Party was having rallies across the United States where they were open carrying [weapons]. They were bringing guns to their rallies, some of them outside of where the President of the United States was speaking but what does the FBI do? They are going after this non-violent, peaceful Occupy Movement.

DB: Say a little bit more about the role of the Domestic Security Alliance Council and what they are doing in the context of surveillance.

MVH: The Domestic Security Alliance Council is this coordinating body between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and major corporate banking, other interests in the United States. And some of the documents we obtained from the FBI, and one of these documents the Northern California ACLU had also gotten a hold of. When you go through this document, it’s very interesting. It shows the relationship between these private entities and the federal government anti-terrorism security forces.

In this document, the one we have which is discussing demonstrations and the port actions there’s even this, I think it’s a routine kind of footnote that’s on the documents where they make the point of saying that everything that’s within this entity, this communication should not be disclosed to the public or to the media. That it’s to be kept internally between private corporate entities and the DHS and the FBI.

DB: And is there, in terms of the FBI and these federal agencies working with corporate institutions like banks and like working with the Federal Reserve, what’s the problem there?

MVH: Well, I think we would all accept that, you know, having U.S. government intelligence agencies acting as private security with corporations, with banks, with Wall Street which, you know, in these instances also are the very entities, that are the focus of peoples’ social justice activism, and their attempts to change the status quo in the United States – is that what your billions of tax dollars are supposed to be going to do? Is that what’s supposed to happen in a democracy? Of course not. It is the negation of democracy to have the government acting arm in arm with corporations, and banks, and Wall Street, against the people of the United States.

And that’s exactly what’s happening here. I think for most people in the movement this doesn’t come as a shock but the fact that it’s being so plainly revealed here, and that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security don’t even feel that they have to explain it, apologize it or say it’s a mistake or an anomaly. It’s enshrined in what they are doing.

DB: And speaking about what they were doing … what was the Jackson, Mississippi, Joint Terrorism Task Force doing when they issued a counter terrorism preparedness alert, whatever that is?

MVH: Well, there are throughout the documents repeated references to domestic terrorism, counter-terrorism alerts. You have the FBI joint terrorism task forces meeting in like Biloxi with all these private banks to discuss an upcoming demonstration that they’d heard about where people were protesting that it was “bad bank sit-in day.” And yet here they are meeting with all these banks privately.

One of the documents that we have has the FBI domestic terrorism discussions referencing three groups, in essence, in domestic terrorism capacity and that would be the Arian Nation, Occupy and Anonymous. Which says a lot about the FBI’s perspective on social justice organizing that they can just lay that side by side with racist, violent, terrorist organizations, like the Arian Nation.

DB: And as you say the Tea Party is coming, openly, to their meetings with weaponry, I guess they are following the laws of the states that they are in. But it would seem to me that that would require some attention.

Before I let you go, I want to ask you what you think the significance is of what you found, and what you plan to do with the information. Do you plan to keep pushing forward given the fact that so much of this was redacted, or blacked out?

MVH: Yes, we’re filing an appeal. We’re challenging the redactions. We’re also challenging the scope of production. We believe there’s a lot more information, when you read the text of the document it’s plain that there is a lot more information that was being gathered, collected, meetings, memos that we don’t have, and we intend to get.

And the point of this and why we undertook this project, we have these materials from the FBI, we have other materials from The Department of Homeland Security, other materials from local police departments, and we’ve made them all available and searchable on our web site.

The point of doing this is because the people of the United States have the right to control the intelligence agencies and these kinds of government activities. They have the right to stop it. But first you have to know about it. And so long as the government can act under this cloak of secrecy, in the dark, they are going to continue to get away with these actions.

But exposure is the first necessary step to trying to halt and bring an end to this extremity and these abuses. We want to make them available to the public because people need to actually see what’s happening and be able to take action.

DB: Alright and if people again want to get more information about the work that you’re doing over at the Partnership for Civil Justice, how do they do that?

MVH: Please come to our web site. It is justiceonline.org. And on that site you can see all of these documents that we’re getting, we’re continuing to get more regularly. And as we get them, we are posting them. And you can sign up for breaking news alerts so that as soon as we get material we send out e-mail alerts letting people know as the documents become available.

DB: Beautiful. Well, I want to thank you very much Mara Verheyden-Hilliard executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, trying to get documentation from the federal government, from the FBI in terms of potentially actions of illegal surveillance of Occupy actions in New York City and around the country. Thanks for being with us on Flashpoints. Have a happy holiday.

Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at http://www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch with the author at dbernstein@igc.org.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby chump » Tue Jan 01, 2013 4:13 pm

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/12 ... g-scandal/
The Preggo Debutante and the Invisible Occupy Mole: Terrorist Story Indemnifies Feds After Spying Scandel

Posted on December 31, 2012 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton

Yet another rich “terrorist” has been busted. (yawn)

This one is so obvious, you can’t help but laugh.

Morgan Gliedman is a wealthy little debutante born into a privileged upper West Side lifestyle. She also happens to be 9 months pregnant with the baby of the REAL evil “terrrrurrurururist”, a guy who reportedly is an organizer for the Occupy Movement. Of course, the Occupy people claim they never heard of him. That’s not to say he wasn’t a plant from day one. After all, after the recent disclosure, we know the Feds have been spying on the Occupy Movement since before the beginning and had plants inside the operation from the get go.

Oh wait… did I just write that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security recently got a rash of crap from various newspapers for infiltrating, brutally cracking down on and illegally spying on the Occupy Movement for the benefit of the very banks the Occupiers were protesting against? And wasn’t the New York City Police Department engaged in that coordinated attack on peaceful protesters for the benefit of Wall Street. Oh yeah… it’s called Occupy WALL STREET.

And now one of them gets busted with “high explosives”, high capacity clips and a shotgun?

Wow. What a coincidence that is.

A detective discovered a plastic container with seven grams of a white chemical powder called HMTD, which is so powerful, cops evacuated several nearby buildings… Additionally, investigators recovered a 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun, ammunition, nine high-capacity rifle magazines and a flare launcher, the second source said…

… The newspaper quoted a law enforcement source as saying that Greene was an Occupy Wall Street activist whose political views were “extreme.”

… Two spokesmen for Occupy Wall Street’s New York chapter said they had no knowledge of Greene. NBC News

This effort is obvious and laughable. They are trying to retroactively gin up a pretext for the feds spying on the Occupy Movement. so they got a rich guy’s daughter and her Harvard educated boyfriend to play along. Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?
...
User avatar
chump
 
Posts: 2261
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby Nordic » Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:48 pm

-- our culture is already a stage-managed masterpiece.


Best quote ever.

In fact, WR, your entire post containing that sentence was brilliantly dead-on.

I really have almost zero hope that change in this country can be affected by those not already doing the stage-managing. Maybe that's part of the reason I sat around in my pajamas all day doing nothing.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Jan 02, 2013 10:24 am

FourthBase wrote:I misread it as an internal government plan at first instead of a report on a third party threat but, right, why else would the identity be redacted?


Because they didn't bring charges, unless I missed something. Which could mean many things.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Jan 02, 2013 11:00 am

JackRiddler wrote:Which could mean many things.


....how many, though? I am reminded of the Fawlty Towers gag about the Roast Duck, the Broiled Duck, the Duck Special, and the Duck Surprise: technically, they're many things, but it's all just duck, innit?

Basically, the person making the threat was either 1) already a protected asset or 2) became a protected asset. If there are other flavors of duck I am missing, I'm interested, though.
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Jan 02, 2013 11:57 am

Wombaticus Rex wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:Which could mean many things.


....how many, though? I am reminded of the Fawlty Towers gag about the Roast Duck, the Broiled Duck, the Duck Special, and the Duck Surprise: technically, they're many things, but it's all just duck, innit?

Basically, the person making the threat was either 1) already a protected asset or 2) became a protected asset. If there are other flavors of duck I am missing, I'm interested, though.


Absolutely those are two of the possibilities, probably better than 50% together. Or it was baseless or exaggerated in the first place. One thing that's pretty likely is they let it through in the FOIA release as a taunt.

This matter constitutes an obvious follow up FOIA.

I agree and applaud with all your comments in this thread, especially this:

Wombaticus Rex wrote:Based on my own experience there is really no need to "set up" anything -- our culture is already a stage-managed masterpiece.

That said, I would love to be there sometime when a Black Bloc kid on mushrooms realizes that They Are The Problem. It would satisfy some part of my soul.

I do not grant the premise that "if only" some saner adults in the Occupy gatekeeping pantheon (or something, right?) had blocked the Bloc, the government would have had no excuses -- Swords to Plowshares has a long history with the FBI and they've never even tolerated the thought of being mean-spirited, let alone violent. (In fact, I'd argue that they provide a valuable red team service to DoD and should be paid for the work they do.)

FBI exists to defend Status:Quo - anyone who raises their eyes to the sky and contemplates a better world is a terrorist, period. I am not exaggerating or indulging in sarcasm.


As FourthBase added, "a pretense is so preferable it will be created if none exists, but no pretense however legitimate is ultimately required." The FBI has always been the political police.

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby FourthBase » Wed Jan 02, 2013 12:14 pm

If it's a third party, then the language describing it is peculiarly unhostile, unalarmed, almost collegial, e.g., "deemed necessary". It's how the report seems to possess both an intimate, confident knowledge of the threat and a lack of concern (unconcerned not so much with the likelihood of the reported plan, as much as with the nature and wisdom of it, i.e., the report doesn't really bother to assess the chances of it happening, instead just matter-of-factly noting that it didn't happen, even matter-of-factly explaining why, the why being that it was not deemed necessary) which is most unnerving. It might be instructive to see which entities have ever both appeared as suspects in unclassified FBI reports about comparable situations and been treated with such, uhhh...nonchalance, courtesy? Then again, I suppose I haven't read all that many FBI reports, so maybe it's just standard procedure, like, their house style or whatnot. Or maybe this is the written equivalent of the Three Tramps photos.
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight,
that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
User avatar
FourthBase
 
Posts: 7057
Joined: Thu May 05, 2005 4:41 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

Postby Luther Blissett » Wed Jan 02, 2013 5:47 pm

I had gone from being fairly certain that some keywords here were looked in on from time to time by living, breathing agents to being fairly certain that bots did most of the legwork of logging and flagging our content. With this, I'm back to tending towards the former. How likely is it that if Occupy Wall Street was being actively surveilled in the months leading up to the encampment at Zuccotti that we were part of that? The years 2009-2011 saw a lot of clear pre-Occupy language being discussed in a very sane and intelligent way.

Whenever there's a breakdown here, it's followed by an inevitable observation that this place is one of the best places on the Internet for rational discourse on uncomfortable topics. I was drawn here because I kept finding that it was the top search result when querying fringe topics or deep historical events. How many others were attracted to the original research conducted here or the unique rhythm of the threads? A lot of class warfare keywords pointed here during that time, as the subject was heating up without any foreseeable solution. That kind of climate always brings forth a lot of text spilled at Rigorous Intuition.

I'm not trying to make it seem like there's any "special little flower"ness about this forum, nor would I think it was "cool" to be monitored by the FBI, but Kalle and Micah wrote like they were on step one of this site's process — the next natural step in pursuit of those topics could likely be this place. It seems like we either operate on the assumption that we're not being surveilled by humans, or that it would be best to simply ignore it.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
User avatar
Luther Blissett
 
Posts: 4990
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:31 pm
Location: Philadelphia
Blog: View Blog (0)


Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 37 guests