RCMP / CSIA

<div>see trans mtn pipeline</div><div>nat am 1st nations</div><div></div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://theconversation.com/tc-energys-name-change-rebooting-canadian-pipeline-empires-132295">https://theconversation.com/tc-energys-name-change-rebooting-canadian-pipeline-empires-132295</a></div><div>
</div><div>Canada, the recent oil price crash has distracted attention from the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline project. Buried in that dispute is the recent history of TC Energy, Coastal GasLink’s parent firm.</div><div>
</div><div>TransCanada changed its name to TC Energy just after the January 2019 Unist'ot'en stand-off between the RCMP and land defenders in support of a Coastal GasLink injunction. It was also within 10 days of the Unist’ot’en house group of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation alleging violations of their territorial rights at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples.</div><div>
</div><div>TC Energy’s name change also overlapped with the renegotiation of controversial TransCanada pipeline contracts in Mexico.</div><div>
</div><div>While TransCanada says the change would better represent its increasing activities in Mexico and the United States, it also distanced the firm from controversial projects, among them the Keystone XL project that aimed to expand the Keystone pipeline system in Canada and the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div>Keystone XL a flashpoint</div><div>Keystone XL has been a key target of global environmental activism against the oilsands and, for a time, resulted in Alberta oil being labelled the Earth’s most carbon-intensive and dirtiest fossil fuel. It also turned public attention to the violation of Indigenous territorial rights in which North American pipeline projects are mired.</div><div>
</div><div>[pix] </div><div>
</div><div>tC Energy now acknowledges that Keystone XL may never be built.</div><div>
</div><div>As opposition to Alberta’s oilsands, associated pipelines, environmental injustice and carbon emissions have ramped up in Canada over the past 15 years, so has North American production of natural gas for energy and export. In this shift, TC Energy’s role as a conduit for U.S. natural gas to Mexico is notable.</div><div>
</div><div>TC Energy’s name change also dissociates the firm from Canada. In Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, Canada’s human rights reputation has plummeted due to violence associated with Canadian mining companies.</div><div>
</div><div>Negative image</div><div>Canada’s negative brand image in Latin America emerges from a long history of the Canadian government backing its extractive sector at home and abroad. TC Energy’s activities across North America are heavily financed by Canadian entities, including Export Development Canada, private banks and a network of influential board members who lobby the Canadian government for financial and diplomatic support.</div><div>
</div><div>Read more: The role of Canadian mining in the plight of Central American migrants</div><div>
</div><div>Mexico had been a net exporter of hydrocarbons to the United States for three decades. But the U.S. shale-gas boom and Mexican energy reform shifted energy trade dramatically and helped foster Mexico’s increasing dependence on American natural gas.</div><div>
</div><div>The pattern is reminiscent of Mexico’s abrupt dependence on U.S. maize following the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico shifted from being self-sufficient in this food staple to becoming dependent on imports. The same process has transpired in hydrocarbons, compromising Mexican energy sovereignty.</div><div>
</div><div>The privatization of Mexico’s energy sector, which proceeded at a slow creep for decades and accelerated drastically in 2013, has been a flashpoint for protest throughout the country due to high fuel costs.</div><div>
</div><div>Helped AMLO get elected</div><div>It helped elect opposition leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the Mexican presidency in 2018 and factored into the renegotiation of NAFTA.</div><div>
</div><div>Read more: Why Mexico's historic elections may bring about big change</div><div>
</div><div>TC Energy is among the firms facilitating the growing American and Canadian involvement in the Mexican oil and gas sector. A TransCanada representative was the co-chair of the intergovernmental Canada-Mexico Partnership’s energy sub-committee in 2016.</div><div>
</div><div>While TransCanada described a welcoming environment when it shifted activities to Mexico, this has soured with increasing opposition, including Indigenous mobilization, against pipeline projects in Mexico.</div><div>
</div><div>Shared risks across the continent</div><div>
</div><div>Shortly after López Obrador’s election in 2018, but before he took office, TransCanada suspended pipeline projects in four states due to protests. López Obrador has renegotiated terms associated with various pipeline contracts, including TC Energy, reportedly saving Mexico US$4.5 billion dollars.</div><div>
</div><div>In both Canada and Mexico the ecological and financial risks of pipeline projects are shouldered by local residents and pension holders.</div><div>
</div><div>As Canadian investment in Mexico’s energy sector has increased, the global financial hazards of locked-in hydrocarbon consumption, which are risky given their financial implications for carbon mitigation measures, have also been more broadly distributed to Mexicans.</div><div>
</div><div>In northeastern British Columbia, earthquakes from natural gas fracking threaten dams and pose a risk to the area’s residents, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The carbon emissions from the first phase of the LNG Canada project that would receive fracked gas via Coastal GasLink are estimated at 3.45 megatonnes per year.</div><div>
</div><div>This is a large portion of the province’s future emissions. British Columbia has said it would cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, to about 13 megatonnes.</div><div>
</div><div>The Coastal GasLink project also poses risks to those whose pensions finance the project if the project is unable to proceed.</div><div>
</div><div>In December, TC Energy sold a 65 per cent interest in Coastal GasLink to a consortium involving AIMCo (Alberta Investment Management Corp.) and KKR, a private U.S. financial company operating in partnership with the National Pension Service of Korea. AIMCo manages the funds that secure future income for more than 368,000 public sector employees and pensioners in Alberta and the rest of Canada.</div><div>
</div><div>Read more: Coastal GasLink and Canada's pension fund colonialism</div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, the inter-governmental Canada-Mexico Partnership has promoted Alberta’s approach to securing “right of way from Indigenous peoples to Mexico. This entails replicating the divisive model that industry has used to get consent from Indigenous peoples in Canada in Mexico.</div><div>
</div><div>Given TC Energy’s trajectory over the past decade this is problematic.</div><div>
</div><div>TC Energy’s behaviour in Wet'suwet'en has resulted in a nationwide crisis. The Canadian government and Canadian firms should not facilitate the export of those behaviours to Mexico.</div><div>
</div><div>tags: Indigenous</div><div>Mexico</div><div>Keystone XL pipeline</div><div>First Nations</div><div>Andrés Manuel López Obrador</div><div>Wet'suwet'en First Nation</div><div>TransCanada</div><div>Wet'suwet'en</div><div>Coastal GasLink</div><div>Alberta oilsands </div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/">https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/</a></div><div>
<div>fail:  <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/3/headlines/report_disappearance_and_murder_of_1000s_of_indigenous_women_a_canadian_genocide">https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/3/headlines/report_disappearance_and_murder_of_1000s_of_indigenous_women_a_canadian_genocide</a><div id="more_headlines" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><article class="headline" id="report_disappearance_and_murder_of_1000s_of_indigenous_women_a_canadian_genocide" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/NewsArticle" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding: 15px 0px 45px;"><div class="headline_body" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline;"><div class="headline_summary" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: calc(100% - 95px); display: inline-block; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: top;">In Canada, a national inquiry found that the disappearance and murder of thousands of indigenous women and girls over decades amounts to a “Canadian genocide.” The report, which was obtained by CBC News ahead of its official release today, says that “We do know that thousands of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date” and are the result of “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.”<div class="topics" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 30px; width: 635px; vertical-align: top;"><div class="label" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: bottom; text-transform: uppercase; display: inline-block; margin-right: 10px; font-weight: 900;">TOPICS:</div><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top; display: inline;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline-block;"><a data-ga-action="Headlines: Topic" href="https://www.democracynow.org/topics/canada" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Canada</a></li><li class="bullet" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 4px; height: 4px; background-color: rgb(236, 238, 239); margin: 7px 5px 2px; display: inline-block; list-style-type: none; vertical-align: baseline;" /><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline-block;"><a data-ga-action="Headlines: Topic" href="https://www.democracynow.org/topics/indigenous" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Indigenous</a></li></ul></div></div></div></article><a href="https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/evm8m7/canada-is-using-private-intelligence-contractors-for-its-special-forces">https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/evm8m7/canada-is-using-private-intelligence-contractors-for-its-special-forces</a>3/18rivate intelligence contracts between the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) — the most elite branch of the military — and private intelligence consultants provide a rare glimpse into its secretive operations.The government issued calls for nearly one million dollars worth of contracts to provide private intelligence advice for Canadian commandos, according to federal documents <a href="https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/search/site/special%2520intelligance%2520advisor" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">released online</a>.<div class="lazy-vice-ad" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><div class="vice-adcontainer vice-adcontainer--border" data-reactroot="" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-align: center; clear: both; margin-bottom: 30px;"><div id="shortform-top_evm8m7_1" class="vice-adad" data-ad-unit-path="/16916245/oo_web/vice/news/article" data-change-correlator="true" data-slot-id="shortform-top" data-targeting="{" topic="topic" private-security="private-security" keywords="keywords" politics="politics" vice-news="vice-news" news="news" canada="canada" military="military" security="security" intelligence="intelligence" special-forces="special-forces" spies="spies" aid="aid" canada-is-using-private-intelligence-contractors-for-its-special-forces="canada-is-using-private-intelligence-contractors-for-its-special-forces" pagetype="pagetype" unsanitized-long-form="unsanitized-long-form" country="country" en_ca="en_ca" brand_name="brand_name" vice="vice" section_name="section_name" utm_source="utm_source" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 0;"></div></div></div>The contracts show that CANSOFCOM isn’t immune to the <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">growing trend in government budgets</a> of major NATO countries and their top secret agencies, to pay for private intelligence.<a href="https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/award-notice/PW-15-00707919-001" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">One of those contracts</a>, worth close to $200,000, was awarded to Ottawa-based company Lansdowne Technologies for, “expertise on unique Special Operations Forces Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)” in 2016.Calian, another Canadian defense company, <a href="https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/award-notice/PW-17-00764513-001" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">received a contract in 2017</a> worth over $212,000 for the same special intelligence services. All of those contracts refer to a call for the same intelligence advisor and mentions CANSOF, showing the years-long need for these services.INCREASED OUTSOURCINGThe contracts underscore an increasing dependence within the Canadian military of outsourcing key defence purchases to private companies, which amounts to millions of dollars in annual spending. A 2016 report in the <a href="http://www.army-armee.forces.gc.ca/en/canadian-army-journal/army-journal-index.page" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">Canadian Army Journal</a> observed the <a href="http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2016/mdn-dnd/D12-11-16-2-eng.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">trend within the Department of National Defence (DND)</a> to use private contractors instead of internal resources. It advised Canada to implement new oversights on contractors and to better consider human rights records when awarding business....Since 2013, other similar contracts were awarded; <a href="https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/award-notice/PW-13-00357876-002" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent;">two contracts for a “Special Security Advisor”</a> went to ADGA Group Consultants Inc. for over $185,000 and to Calian for $217,000....Since the 2010 FBI assessment was written, the specter of environmental extremism has been trotted out by both law enforcement and energy-industry security teams to describe a wide variety of grassroots groups opposed to the continued extraction of fossil fuels. In 2011, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP ) <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/RCMP.pdf" rel="shadowbox" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">published a report</a> [4] titled, “Environmental Criminal Extremism and Canada’s Energy Sector.” The RCMP warned that environmental extremism posed a “clear and present criminal threat” to the energy industry. While both the FBI and RCMP reports make an effort to distinguish between lawful protest and criminal activity, they often conflate the two – in the RCMP report the terms “violence” and “direct action” are used interchangeably – and suggest opposition to the energy industry will lead to extremism. (The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division declined to answer questions about the 2010 bulletin.)...<div style=""> https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/07/canada-indigenous-anti-pipeline-protestersno lnx...The pipeline project has previously faced numerous delays, after a group of protesters constructed a blockade – named Unist’ot’en Camp – in order to prevent construction vehicles from accessing the area.
On 14 December, a British Columbia court granted TransCanada an injunction permitting them access to the construction site and ordering the removal of the blockade. Within days, activists erected the new barrier, named the Gidimt’en checkpoint.
On Sunday, Unist’ot’en Camp issued a statement of support for the Gidimt’en checkpoint: “The RCMP’s ultimatum, to allow TransCanada access to unceded Wet’suwet’en territory or face police invasion, is an act of war. Canada is now attempting to do what it has always done – criminalize and use violence against indigenous people so that their unceded homelands can be exploited for profit.”
Both the Unist’ot’en and Gitimd’en are part of the five clans which make up the Wet’suwet’en.
In recent years, British Columbia has been the site of a number of high-profile legal cases surrounding the issue of land title. Because few of the province’s First Nations signed treaties with colonial governments, the courts have often been the arbiters of land rights disputes.
The Delgamuukw v British Columbia case – which covers part of the Wet’suwet’en territory – previously found that indigenous rights to their historical territory are not “extinguished” for lack of a treaty.
Wet’suwet’en claim they retain title to the land and as a result, have sole authority to deny or grant access to the territory.

[Trudeau's environmental record on the line in Canada election year Read more]The pipeline feud comes as energy companies in Canada are facing numerous delays and barriers to their infrastructure projects, including environmental assessments and adequate consultations with indigenous communities on whose territory the projects would pass through.
Another high-profile pipeline project, Trans Mountain, was halted over the summer after a federal court determined indigenous communities had not been adequately consulted during the approvals process.
British Columbia premier John Horgan, who made headlines for his fight against the Trans Mountain pipeline, has cheered on the C$40bn liquid natural gas project – of which the Coastal GasLink is a critical piece – citing the large number of jobs and revenue that will result from its completion.
While the provincial government has said the facility will be the cleanest of its kind in the world, a report from the Pembina Institute found that the project would increase the province’s emissions by 8.6 megatonnes by 2030.
Protesters at the Gitimd’en checkpoint have vowed to prevent the project from being built on their territory....<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="">The presentation divided groups into categories of "radicals" "idealists" "realists" and "opportunists" and outlined how to engage with them. <a href="http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.15s, border 0.15s, background-color 0.15s;">Rising Tide North America</a>, <a href="http://priceofoil.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.15s, border 0.15s, background-color 0.15s;">Oil Change International</a> and the <a href="http://www.ienearth.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.15s, border 0.15s, background-color 0.15s;">Indigenous Environmental Network</a> were labeled as radicals. <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.15s, border 0.15s, background-color 0.15s;">Sierra Club</a> and <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.15s, border 0.15s, background-color 0.15s;">Amnesty International</a> were among groups called idealists, while groups including Pembina and the <a href="http://worldwildlife.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.15s, border 0.15s, background-color 0.15s;">World Wildlife Fund</a> were called realists.Some of the groups mentioned have recently been the targets of surveillance in Canada coordinated by the federal energy regulation board, the National Energy Board. cf <a href="http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/05/news/spies-our-midst-rcmp-and-csis-snoop-green-activists">http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/05/news/spies-our-midst-rcmp-and-csis-snoop-green-activists</a>=Spies in our midst: RCMP and CSIS snoop on green activistsBy Bruce Livesey in News, Energy, Politics | May 5th 2017Both the RCMP (left) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (right) have been caught spying on environmentalists, writes investigative reporter Bruce Livesey. File photos by The Canadian PressThis is the first installment in a two-part investigative series on governments, spies, and the oil and gas industry. See here for part two.“Mr. Tremblay, do you remember me?”Ron Tremblay was just walking out of the Lord Beaverbrook hotel when a young woman in a dark-blue pantsuit approached him. The Lord Beaverbrook is a beige, unremarkable edifice that sits in downtown Fredericton, kitty-corner to the New Brunswick legislature. On this summer morning last August, a panel of Canada’s federal energy regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), was holding hearings at the hotel about the proposed Energy East pipeline – which is designed to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to New Brunswick’s port city of Saint John.As the Grand Chief of the Wolastoq Grand Council – whose territory Energy East would cross – Tremblay had gone to listen to fellow opponents of the pipeline give a presentation before the NEB panel. When the young woman caught up to him, she introduced herself as RCMP Constable Joanne Spacek, working for a “Special Projects Unit” out of Moncton, NB.“I was wondering if we could have a coffee sometime,” Spacek asked Tremblay.A stocky, friendly, open-faced man in his mid-50s who wears dark-rimmed glasses, Tremblay agreed to meet with her.An unmarked van parked outside his house  A couple of months later Tremblay met with Spacek in Fredericton. “I didn’t hide anything from her,” he recalls about their discussion. “I told her we want to protect our sacred ways, land and water and not want it poisoned.” Spacek, however, had her own concerns: namely the RCMP didn’t want the "wrong people" causing disturbances over the construction of resource development projects like Energy East. Tremblay understood what she was referring to: namely warriors from First Nations’ communities and other environmental activists. After awhile, Tremblay felt Spacek was trying to pump him for information about plans for any protests.This was not the first time Tremblay has confronted the RCMP. In 2013, he was arrested by the Mounties while peacefully participating in a blockade near the village of Rexton, on the east coast of New Brunswick. For weeks, a group of mostly Native anti-shale gas protesters blocked a compound where a fracking company’s vehicles and equipment were being stored, along with other actions. This protest galvanized opposition to fracking, leading to a moratorium in the province.During the blockade, Tremblay says he was followed by vehicles, which he presumed were RCMP, when he drove back and forth from his home in Fredericton to Rexton. And for three months after the protest ended, a white unmarked van was explicitly parked outside of his house.“When I would leave for work, the van would be there,” he says, and then would drive off soon afterwards. “I was on their radar list,” he remarks.Ron Tremblay, Robert Van Waarden, Grand Chief Ron Tremblay of the Wolastoq Grand Council in New Brunswick has been followed around by mysterious vehicles that he believes were RCMP. Photo courtesy of Robert Van Waarden, Along the Pipeline project"Do I know you?"Yet Tremblay was not the only opponent of Energy East that Spacek approached last summer – and since then. A few days before the NEB arrived in Fredericton, the RCMP constable was in Saint John attending the Board’s hearings held at the city’s trade and convention centre. There, Spacek introduced herself to a number of environmentalists, including Lynaya McKinley, the 37-year-old spokesperson for a local group opposed to Energy East.“All of a sudden she started talking to me and she said my first name – and she even knew how to say my first name, which is unusual,” recalls McKinley. “And she said ‘Oh you are with the Council of Canadians aren’t you’ and I said ‘Do I know you?’”Spacek asked McKinley if she wanted to take her business card, suggesting she could call her any time. McKinley declined.“I felt it was quite intimidating,” she says. “It makes me wonder ‘Are these people spying on me? Do they have a file on me somewhere? Why would this person know my name?’… I thought it was an invasion of privacy, really.” McKinely says Spacek told her she had seen McKinely at a march against Energy East held the previous year.More recently, the Council of Canadians drafted a letter to the RCMP saying that this past January Spacek, “invited herself to a meeting organized by Red Head residents with the Saint John Fire Department and Police Department, a meeting dedicated to Emergency Measures (e.g. warning notices, evacuation) issues of concern to the residents."This meeting… was not an open, public meeting but was arranged through invitation to Red Head residents…During the meeting, Constable Spacek never introduced herself, or her role, at the meeting, and spent the meeting observing and making notes in a black hardcover note book. Constable Spacek approached some residents after the meeting and asked if she could contact them for a meeting.”The RCMP officer also telephoned Saint John environmentalist and businesswoman Sharon Murphy several times at her home, wanting to meet with her.“She wanted to discuss my participation in the energy projects,” recalls Murphy, “in that there were lots of things we could do which were legal, but that there were other things that weren’t and she would be happy to discuss these and meet with me. Like she wanted to be some sort of guide.” So far, Murphy has not met with Spacek.When reached by National Observer, Const. Spacek — who is Indigenous herself — said that she's been in the Special Unit for two years and her job is: "liasioning with First Nations groups and with industry. Just sharing information. And when they organize events that everyone is safe and when they do it, they do it lawfully as well. So, really, my role is liasioning with them... It’s to build relations with industry and First Nations. On a positive note."Spacek acknowledged there have been poor relations between First Nations and the RCMP. "I know there is a lack of trust and my role is to liase and rebuild those relations," she says, adding that she's been received positively by people she has spoken to. "I am enjoying what I am doing and have not been received negatively."
A well-funded apparatus of espionageStill, this kind of outreach and surveillance by the RCMP of Indigenous and environmental activists is just one aspect of the work carried out by the federal government’s massive, sophisticated and well-funded apparatus that carries out espionage aimed at opponents of oilsands, pipelines, fracking and mining.“It’s a vast network – a surveillance system of ministries and departments within the government that are all holding close hands with corporations,” says Shiri Pasternak, a Canadian studies professor at Trent University who has been studying this issue.Documents released through Canada’s access to information laws – requested by media, academics and NGOs – reveal who the government is spying on, how they do it, whom they select as targets, and by which government agencies. The espionage network includes the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), along with the National Energy Board (NEB), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and departments of Public Safety, Natural Resources, Transport, Indigenous Affairs and Defence. It also involves provincial police, such as the Sûreté du Québec and Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), as well as some municipal police forces.Moreover, these agencies and departments share the information they gather with one another and, more importantly, with numerous energy sector companies, such as Enbridge Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., to name two. In fact, evidence suggests the federal government has, in effect, become the security arm of the energy industry.By far the bulk of this spying is aimed at First Nations’ activists and communities. Recently VICE News reported CSIS was monitoring the protests at Standing Rock reservation, where the Sioux having been trying to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, worried about its Canadian implications.“There is disproportionate targeting and criminalization of Indigenous peoples compared to the rest of the public,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation in Manitoba, who works as a tar sands campaigner with the climate change organization 350.org. Thomas-Muller has been the target of RCMP surveillance himself. This focus on First Nations, he notes, is because resource development projects “tend to be in places where Native people live.”Clayton Thomas-Muller, a tar sands campaign and activist at 350.org, is a prominent voice in the media in the battle against the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. He is seen here in a screenshot from the Green Heroes 'Home Lands vs. Tar Sands' video series.More crucially, Indigenous people have proven effective at stopping or slowing down resource development projects, such as pipelines, especially in places such as BC, Quebec and on the east coast. And as pipelines such as the Energy East, Keystone XL and Kinder Morgan ramp up, Native opposition is expected to be the biggest obstacle the energy sector will face.
RCMP's Project SITKAThe scope of the espionage was revealed last year when researchers at the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) and Carleton University pried loose an RCMP document describing “Project SITKA”. Written in early 2015, the report says Project SITKA was designed by the RCMP to focus on providing “a snapshot of individual threats associated with Aboriginal public order events for the year 2014” as well as map out the potential networks among Native groups, identify protesters and events they attended.In total, Project SITKA identified 313 people of interest, of whom 89 were considered to have met the criteria of “criminality associated to public order events.” This latter group had extensive profiles – including headshots, phone numbers, email addresses and details of their mobility within Canada – that were entered into a databank that could be accessed by “frontline officers”, divisional analysts and other police agencies.“(Project SITKA) gave us a first real glimpse into how powerful the databanks were,” says Jeffrey Monaghan, a criminologist at Carleton University who has researched this espionage for years.The report said the Mounties had asked various government departments to provide a list of activists, including their actions, in some cases going back years. “They were able to go back into the data banks, make up lists of who were at demonstrations, who were at events, who was talking on social media and they were able to backtrack for five years and make these lists,” says Monaghan.Ottawa-based criminologist Jeffrey Monaghan has researched espionage targeting environmental and First Nations acvtivists for years. He is seen here at Carleton University. Photo by Alex TétreaultAmong the many organizations or movements Project SITKA identified as being of interest were Idle No More, the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, American Indian Movement, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Defenders of the Land, along with the Council of Canadians, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and media co-ops in Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax.“It’s a remarkable little window into how much data they have accumulated on these movements and how they essentially conduct quasi-criminal investigations of people without ever notifying them, no one knows they are in there, no one can challenge the data,” says Monaghan. “So it gives a frightening idea of how much data is being stored."In a response to questions about Project SITKA, the RCMP said in a statement to the National Observer: "Project SITKA was not a surveillance operation. Project SITKA used open-source information along with local knowledge to identify individuals for whom there was an objective means to demonstrate criminal and violent intentions. If information presented itself that one of these individuals would attend a particular protest, that information was shared with local police for awareness and to ensure the safety of all parties... As noted in the conclusion of the Project SITKA report, the information contained in it would help inform the RCMP in terms of developing a way forward that recognizes the differences in large-scale public order events that sometimes involve Indigenous people."
Harper ramps up espionagePolice and intelligence agencies like the RCMP, CSIS and Canada's signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), have a long history of spying on all manner of activists. But the current focus on Native and environmental protesters is rooted in changes to the Canadian economy.By the mid-2000s, with the decline of its manufacturing base, Canada’s economy was shifting towards resource extraction – in particular developing Alberta’s oil sands. Soon the federal government was labeling such projects “critical infrastructure” – meaning highly important to the economy.Moreover, Stephen Harper’s election in 2006 signaled the ratcheting up of spying against opponents of this sector. “In general what Harper wanted to do was use the state to minimize dissent and remove obstacles to resource development and resource extraction,” says Russell Diabo, an Ottawa-based analyst and consultant on Indigenous issues.
Stephen Harper, New Delhi, Donald Trump, former prime ministerFormer prime minister Stephen Harper arrives at his Langevin office in Ottawa in October 2015. File photo by The Canadian PressIndeed, by 2007, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) had been given a lead role on spying on First Nations’ communities to identify leaders, participants and supporters of protests. INAC shared the information they gathered with the RCMP, CSIS, Transport Canada and Natural Resources Canada, among others, holding weekly conference calls to discuss "in real time" First Nations protests, such as blockades and occupations. INAC created a “hotspot” reporting system with the purpose of “continuous information dissemination of existing and emerging risks,” according to a report they produced. The hotspots included Native bands across Canada, and were "related to lands and resources," according to an INAC report.Meanwhile, numerous documents refer to the threat that Indigenous protesters posed to the energy sector’s interests. For example, the 2007 minutes of a meeting at CSIS headquarters with the RCMP, various intelligence services and energy company executives, reveal that one of the top items on the agenda was “Aboriginal Protests and Occupations.” In a 2014 RCMP report entitled “Criminal Threats to the Canadian Petroleum Industry” it notes that “Due to the environmental and land-use implications, the anti-petroleum movement… has been able to align itself with violent aboriginal extremists.”Overall, such documents show the role of the government was clear: to shield the energy sector from such protests. As a 2011 RCMP report from its “Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team” noted, it is “incumbent upon federal and provincial authorities to share responsibility for the protection of Canada’s energy sector with the private energy sector stakeholders.”Meanwhile, the RCMP and CSIS and other government departments embraced the ideological mindset of energy companies on things like climate change, environmental activism and resource development. The RCMP often uses language in their reports to describe civil disobedience as “criminal” populated by “extremists” and refers to “violent extremists” – despite furnishing few real examples.For instance, in the RCMP's 2014 “Criminal Threats to the Canadian Petroleum Industry” report, it says “governments and petroleum companies are being encouraged, and increasingly threatened, by violent extremists to cease all actions which the extremists believe, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.” The document seems to suggest that climate change was a problem only of interest to groups like Greenpeace and Sierra Club of Canada – failing to mention it’s of concern to climate scientists, NASA, the United Nations and most governments around the world.Yet, the same document references the position of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), noting that “all forms of energy production must increase to meet growing demand.”In 2012, Tim O’Neill, a senior criminal intelligence research specialist with the RCMP’s Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team (CIIT), wrote an email to colleagues, saying that “CIIT assesses that environmental extremists pose a significant criminal threat to Canada’s energy sector.” Among those groups he believed fit this category was Greenpeace. “Greenpeace activists engage in criminal activity targeting government offices, international conferences, and industrial complexes, to protest against the continued use of fossil fuels,” O’Neill wrote.For the head of Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaign, Keith Stewart, this sort of characterization reveals how divorced from reality the RCMP has become. “We have a 46-year unbroken history of nonviolence,” he says. “We’re very proud of that.” Stewart says the RCMP “associate nonviolent protests, that might be unlawful, with violence.”
RCMP creates the Aboriginal Joint Intelligence GroupThe fact that First Nations were specifically being targeted is reflected in the RCMP creating the Aboriginal Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) in 2007, composed of members of the force’s National Security and Criminal Intelligence divisions.The JIG billed itself as a “central repository” of information about First Nations protest activities – such as blockades, protests and demos – assisted by an “extensive network of contacts throughout Canada and internationally” and an undisclosed number of field operatives acting as its “eyes and ears”, according to a JIG slide presentation. It had the mandate “to collect and analyze information, and produce and disseminate intelligence concerning conflict and issues associated with Aboriginal communities.”
Elsipogtog First Nation, fracking, protest, oil and gas, New BrunswickThe Elsipogtog First Nation protests a fracking proposal on their native land in New Brunswic in March 2013. File photo by The Canadian PressThe JIG reported weekly to approximately 450 recipients in law enforcement, government, and the energy sector. These included CSIS, municipal police forces and the departments of Indigenous Affairs and Natural Resources. An annual Strategic Intelligence Report from June 2009 indicates the surveillance focused on 18 “communities of concern” in five provinces across the country, including Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), Ardoch, Grassy Narrows, Six Nations and Tyendinaga bands. The JIG boasted to other government personnel that the unit can “alleviate some of your workload as we can help identify trends and issues that may impact more than one community.”Reports produced by JIG on Native communities were extremely detailed, indicating who the chief was, number of residents, and specific incidents over land issues. The JIG was particularly alarmed about potential disruptions at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario during that period.The RCMP claims the JIG was dismantled in 2010, but further information shows its work has continued under different guises, such as the National Intelligence Coordination Centre.
How the intelligence is gatheredSo, how exactly does this intelligence apparatus gather its information?None of the documents reveal if various movements and groups are, or have been, infiltrated by undercover officers. Monaghan says they would never have received such information through access to information requests. However, “based on the historical record, there’s no reason to think that they aren’t doing these practices,” he remarks. “During the G20 in 2010, there was (police) infiltration going on, and that was documented… If you talk to groups, there is a lot of anecdotal and experiential comments about infiltration.”Some of the information is simply culled from the mainstream media and activists’ own social media output and what they put on-line. “Social media, to a certain extent, has replaced the need to go covert," says Monaghan. "It allows the security apparatus to catalog and track the movement in real time, which other social movements have never been subjected to. Social media is mapping the activists.”Linda Heron has seen this firsthand. In 2011, a company was proposing to build a hydroelectric project on the Vermillion River near Sudbury, Ontario, close to where she lives. Heron started the Ontario Rivers Alliance to oppose the project. On her website, she mentioned that her group had participation from “First Nations citizens”.That summer, while attending a public hearing at a nearby town, she noticed two clean-cut men watching her. “No sooner had I got home and my phone rang and it was an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer and they wanted to let me know they had been there that night and wanted to talk to me,” recalls Heron. The OPP was particularly keen to learn about the Native members in her group, she recalls, and told her: “We have these web crawlers that goes through the Internet and your press release came out and said that it had First Nations’ members.”“It just made me angry,” says Heron. “It definitely put red flags that there was something fishy going on here.”Information is often collected in a more direct fashion: RCMP and CSIS officers will approach people in person. Mark Calzavara, an organizer with the Council of Canadians – an organization targeted by the RCMP – says agents usually approach people in a friendly, non-threatening manner. “All of them are very charming and interesting people and want to draw you into conversations,” he explains. “There’s no whiff of intimidation. They say they are trying to help you, they will offer to get you permits for your next protest. It’s a way to form relationships.”Not that this always goes smoothly. One day in the fall of 2013, Mohawk activist and lecturer Clifton Nicholas received a telephone call at his home at Kanesatake. This Mohawk community near Montreal was at the center of the 1990 Oka crisis. The person who rang him introduced himself as Francois Allard of CSIS, asking if Nicholas would have a coffee with him.“For what end?” asked Nicholas (who taped most of the conversation).“There are a couple of things I would like to talk to you [about],” said Allard.When Nicholas said he wasn’t interested because he didn’t trust CSIS and “and I am not a rat,” Allard replied he wanted to discuss a trip Nicholas had taken to Greece. Earlier that year, the activist had spoken at a festival in Athens about mining, the tar sands and its impact on Indigenous communities. Nicholas also visited a village in northern Greece that was being affected by a mine built by a Canadian company.When Nicholas still resisted, Allard suddenly got aggressive, his tone turning derisive. “Wait, wait, wait one more thing I want to talk to you [about], how do you reconcile your Native roots with your anarchist activities?”
“That is my business,” said Nicholas.
“How can you reconcile both?” said Allard. “I would like to have your information on that.” Allard then went on to suggest that Nicholas was exaggerating the role he played during the Oka standoff. “Why do you claim all the time you were behind the barricades in 1990 when the people involved back in 1990 say you weren’t involved at all, why do you keep making that claim?” said Allard, who fastened on this issue, saying “I am telling the truth, admit it.”
The conversation was soon over. Today, Nicholas said the CSIS agent’s aggression was puzzling. “I thought it was really a mind fuck,” he says. “Either it’s a ‘You don’t want to answer my questions? Well then fuck you.’ Or else it’s they were trying to figure out what are my soft points - what points do I feel sore about.”
Nicholas says this was not his first encounter with CSIS. In 2007, after giving a lecture at Concordia University in Montreal, an agent approached him and asked to have a coffee. But when he discovered she worked for CSIS, “I got so spooked I just left…They were kind of trying to recruit me.”
Barbara Low also had a curious run-in with a CSIS agent in the late spring of 2014. She is a Mi’kmaq who lives in picturesque town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and is a long-time Native and environmental activist. Low had participated in the anti-fracking blockade in New Brunswick the year before.
Low says she first noticed something was amiss when her garbage and recycling bags went missing. “I thought that’s weird because no one else’s garbage had been taken,” she says. Then in mid-June, she says a man knocked on her door, carrying a clipboard and flashed a CSIS badge. He said his name was Andrew McGinty.
Low says that what followed was a bizarre conversation. “I know there are two reasons why they are there,” she remarks. “They are there to intimidate or to turn. And I thought that they might be trying to turn me.”
Low says McGinty refused to say what exactly was the purpose of his visit, other than to explain that CSIS was concerned about “critical infrastructure and border security.”
“He was a bad spy, I am telling you,” says Low. “He asked that I not tell anyone he had been there. And impressed upon me that RCMP did not know he was there.”
Afterwards, Low made an access to information request to CSIS to find out why McGinty visited her – and was denied any information on the grounds that “it relates to the efforts of Canada towards detecting, preventing or suppressing subversive or hostile activities”, according to the letter she received back.
In response to questions from National Observer about conducting such surveillance, CSIS spokesperson Tahera Mufti noted: "CSIS does not investigate lawful protest or activism. It should be noted that the 2009/2010 SIRC review recognized that CSIS had long exercised special care when undertaking intelligence investigations that affect — or even appear to affect — fundamental societal institutions. SIRC found that CSIS’ fundamental institutions policy and its implementation were strong."
The RCMP, in a statement to the National Observer, said that "As part of its law enforcement mandate the RCMP does have the requirement to identify and investigate criminal threats, including those to critical infrastructure. The RCMP, through the National Critical infrastructure Team, assists in the identification of criminal threats to Canada's critical infrastructure and develops information products that may be used by first responders and the private sector to assess and mitigate risks associated to these threats."
Low, on the other hand, observes: "My assertion is that the Canadian government is working specifically for the oil and gas industry. It is completely intertwined. And that needs to be exposed."
Part Two: Government spies collude with energy sectoridle no more panics <a href="http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/18/news/canadas-spies-collude-energy-sector">http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/18/news/canadas-spies-collude-energy-sector</a></div><div style="">---3/15
<div class="print-content" style=""><div id="node-1033850" class="node node-story view-mode-print clearfix" about="/fracking/inside-big-energys-alliance-intelligence-clamp-down-fracking-opponents" typeof="sioc:Item foaf:Document" style="position: relative;"><div class="the_body body_environment clearfix" style="">In August 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit distributed <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/fbiBulletin.pdf" rel="shadowbox" style="">an intelligence bulletin</a> [3] to all field offices warning that environmental extremism would likely become an increasing threat to the energy industry. The eight-page document argued that, even though the industry had encountered only low-level vandalism and trespassing, recent “criminal incidents” suggested that environmental extremism was on the rise. The FBI concluded: “Environmental extremism will become a greater threat to the energy industry owing to our historical understanding that some environmental extremists have progressed from committing low-level crimes against targets to more significant crimes over time in an effort to further the environmental extremism cause.”Not long after the bulletin was distributed, a private security firm providing intelligence reports to the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security cited the FBI document in order to justify the surveillance of anti-fracking groups. The same security firm concluded that the “escalating conflict over natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania” could lead to an increase in “environmentalist activity or eco-terrorism.”Since the 2010 FBI assessment was written, the specter of environmental extremism has been trotted out by both law enforcement and energy-industry security teams to describe a wide variety of grassroots groups opposed to the continued extraction of fossil fuels. In 2011, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP ) <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/RCMP.pdf" rel="shadowbox" style="">published a report</a> [4] titled, “Environmental Criminal Extremism and Canada’s Energy Sector.” The RCMP warned that environmental extremism posed a “clear and present criminal threat” to the energy industry. While both the FBI and RCMP reports make an effort to distinguish between lawful protest and criminal activity, they often conflate the two – in the RCMP report the terms “violence” and “direct action” are used interchangeably – and suggest opposition to the energy industry will lead to extremism. (The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division declined to answer questions about the 2010 bulletin.)Yet even as the resistance to “extreme energy projects” has grown in size and scope, there is little evidence to support the breathless warnings about “eco-terrorism.” There has been no upward spiral in criminality among environmental activists. To the contrary, arson, property destruction, and other acts of violence most closely associated with the radical animal rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s have become all but nonexistent. According to figures compiled by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) at the University of Maryland, there has been only a handful of incidents defined as eco-terrorism since 2010. In fact, between 2010 and 2013, the latest year for which the GTD has published figures, out of a total of 54 terror incidents in the United States, five were attributed to the Animal Liberation Front. The last recorded incident carried out by the Earth Liberation Front – the bulldozing of two radio transmission towers in Washington – was in 2009. Earth First! hasn’t appeared in the database since 1994.Instead, environmentalists have largely relied on classic social change strategies such as choreographed nonviolent civil disobedience, carefully planned protests, and divestment from the fossil fuel industry. “Overall we’ve seen a decline in activity, in terms of violent criminal activity” among environmentalists, an FBI intelligence analyst told <cite>The Washington Post</cite> in 2012.Nevertheless, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and many state law enforcement agencies continue to promote the idea that environmental extremism is on the rise. The oil and gas industry is spending more on security than it ever has. According to a 2013 report by Frost & Sullivan, a marketing research and consulting company, annual spending on global oil and gas infrastructure security is expected to top $30 billion in just a few years. (In comparison, $30 billion is roughly what South Korea spends on defense annually.) “Surveillance will continue to dominate the oil and gas infrastructure security market,” a summary of the report states.At the same time, numerous intelligence-sharing networks between the private sector and law enforcement have been established at every level of government, giving rise to an unprecedented energy-intelligence complex. They range from project-specific and regional networks like the Nebraska Information Analysis Center’s Keystone Pipeline Portal community and the Marcellus Shale Operators’ Crime Committee, to federal programs like the FBI’s Oil and Natural Gas Crime Issues Special Interest Group and the Department of Homeland Security’s Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council. These public-private partnerships, coupled with a revolving door between intelligence agencies and the more lucrative energy industry, have created a new kind of foe for the environmental movement. The fossil fuel industry is now an economic behemoth firmly hitched to the national security state.It is true that environmentalists pose a threat to the energy industry – just not in the way the FBI or RCMP believe. The threat to the industry is existential and economic, not extremist. If the movement to end our reliance on fossil fuels prevails, the oil and gas industry will lose trillions of dollars in forecast profits. According to an estimate by the <a href="http://www.carbontracker.org/" target="blank" style="">Carbon Tracker Initiative</a> [5], if we hope to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the energy sector would have to leave more than $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels in the ground. “The oil and gas industry is doing everything they can to ensure they’re in business for the next 30 to 50 years and doing so at a time when we should be, as a nation, collectively figuring out how to stop using those same fossil fuels over the next ten years,” says Wes Gillingham, program director of <a href="http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/" target="blank" style="">Catskill Mountainkeeper</a> [6].Conflict between fossil fuel interests and environmentalists is inevitable. But as the contest becomes ever more stark, there seems to be little effort to distinguish between lawful political activism and illegal activities. The fossil fuel industry’s reasonable concerns about the strength of its political opponents have morphed into a kind of paranoia, one that threatens to criminalize constitutionally protected dissent.In the years since the FBI and RCMP reports, unconventional oil and gas development has been met with sustained protest, from small scale tree sits and encampments to massive nationwide demonstrations. The opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is only the most high-profile example of resistance to the fossil fuel industry. The term “Blockadia” has been used to describe the loose network of citizens seeking to disrupt the continued exploitation of fossil fuels. Tactics vary depending on the region and political backdrop, but the emphasis has been on nonviolent civil disobedience, legal action, and ballot measures to hamper pipeline projects, ban fracking, and prevent or slow down tar sands extraction. A handful of pipeline projects – including Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain and Williams Companies’ Constitution pipelines – have been stymied. In mid-December, after several years of intense organizing, lobbying, and direct action campaigns, New York became the first state with substantial shale gas reserves to ban fracking. Towns in Colorado, Texas, and Ohio have passed restrictions that limit oil and gas drilling.Such successes have emboldened these groups and inspired action elsewhere. (Of course it should be noted that oil and gas development has hardly been halted; it continues apace throughout North America.) Rather than lead to an increase in criminal activity, as the FBI predicted, opposition to the oil and gas industry has, in some ways, become more mainstream. “Five years ago you would have never seen the faces of rural farmers and ranchers and tribal leaders on the front lines of climate actions,” says Jane Kleeb, director of <a href="http://boldnebraska.org/" target="blank" style="">Bold Nebraska</a> [7], an environmental group opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline. “This unlikely Cowboy and Indian Alliance that is also working shoulder to shoulder with big green groups is changing the way America looks at the issue of land, water, and climate change.”But the new face of the environmental movement seems not to have registered with an industry intent on steamrolling its critics. In 2011, in comments that have been widely cited, a spokesman for Anadarko Petroleum described the anti-fracking movement as an “insurgency” and suggested that industry insiders download the US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual as a guide to dealing with it. Less well known is the fact that Anadarko has built up a team of former intelligence operatives to combat what it views as an insurrection. The company’s southwest regional security manager was an officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he was involved in undercover work. Another Anadarko security manager, LC Wilson, was regional commander of the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2009 to 2011 and oversaw law enforcement statewide. Anadarko has also been involved in the creation of at least two Oilfield Crime Committees, one in Texas and one in Pennsylvania, both of which are headed by former law enforcement officials. The South Texas Oilfield Crime Committee and the Marcellus Shale Operators’ Crime Committee have gathered intelligence on environmental activists and routinely exchange information with law enforcement.Anadarko is not alone. Most large energy companies have security teams run by former FBI, Secret Service, or law enforcement personnel. The director of corporate security at Devon Energy, for example, was a special agent with the Secret Service for 14 years. Chevron’s chief security officer was the former head of the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service. And BP’s head of Government and Political Affairs from 2007 to 2012 worked for MI6, Britain’s top spy agency.In most cases these security teams have been deployed to manage crises overseas. In Indonesia, for example, ExxonMobil ran its own intelligence operations and consulted regularly with the country’s military leaders as it sought to protect its assets amid destabilizing political conditions. In 2012 <cite>The Guardian</cite> reported that Shell Oil maintained a 1,200-person police force plus a network of undercover informants in Nigeria and spent tens of millions of dollars on security in the region.As shale oil and gas development has expanded in North America, the frontlines of the energy wars are no longer overseas, but rather in places like Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Range Resources, one of the largest drillers in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, has admitted to hiring veterans of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in psychological warfare – or Psyops – to engage with local communities.Neither Anadarko nor ExxonMobil nor Range Resources responded to requests for comment.Even as the energy industry has beefed up its own in-house intelligence operations, it has established increasingly close ties with law enforcement agencies. This is partly a result of the post-9/11 national security state and the premium placed on information sharing. The Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC), established by the Department of Homeland Security in 2006, holds quarterly meetings to facilitate information sharing between the private sector and government agencies. (Meetings are exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which means there is no public oversight. Indeed, the Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002 stipulates that information voluntarily submitted by industry to the DHS or DOE is protected from public disclosure.) Within CIPAC there is an Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council and an Energy Government Coordinating Council. According to minutes from an August 2013 CIPAC meeting, the DHS has been working to provide more security clearances to the energy industry. “Currently DHS is working to enhance policies to share more classified information both cyber and non-cyber related,” the document states. Anadarko, Kinder Morgan, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute are frequent participants and sponsors of CIPAC meetings.In addition to CIPAC there is a Homeland Security Information Sharing Network for the Oil and Gas Industry (HSIN-ONG), a web-based platform that allows companies to communicate with each other and with law enforcement. It also gives them access to Suspicious Activity Reports and other intelligence related information. Around the same time that the information-sharing network was being created, the Department of Justice launched its National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative to “improve the sharing of suspicious activity reports among state, local, tribal, and federal law-enforcement organizations, as well as private sector entities.”Intelligence-sharing systems also have been developed at the state level. The Nebraska Information Analysis Center (one of more than 70 Homeland Security “fusion centers”) has its own network that focuses on “possible unlawful tactics and techniques of individuals/groups opposed to Keystone XL pipeline.” According to documents obtained by <cite>Earth Island Journal</cite> through a public records request, oil infrastructure company TransCanada has its own page in the HSIN portal where suspicious activity reports can be posted. TransCanada representatives, FBI agents, county attorneys, local sheriffs, and the US assistant attorney general all have access to the Keystone pipeline network.Despite the numerous federal, state, and regional information-sharing networks established during the past decade, the industry has been reluctant to participate in programs that might be subject to public oversight. Thus last summer the oil and gas industry announced the creation of its own information sharing and analysis center, or ISAC, which allows member companies to submit intelligence anonymously and is exempt from public disclosure.The industry’s fear of transparency is part of a larger pattern. Oil and gas firms often express alarm about having their facilities photographed or filmed by citizen watchdogs, which can lead to official investigations. For example, in 2011 the Rocky Mountain Energy Security Group (yet another regional intelligence sharing network) issued a security report that described activists in Pavillion, Wyoming who had photographed a natural gas processing facility. The report, which was disseminated to law enforcement and security professionals in the industry, defined the behavior as “suspicious activity” and said that the information was being circulated in order to determine “whether the activity has any underlying criminal or terrorism nexus (or intent).”In recent years the FBI has pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho for little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations.In 2011, after receiving an anonymous tip, the FBI went after Texas activist Ben Kessler, a member of the direct action environmental group <a href="http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/" target="blank" style="">Rising Tide North America</a> [8]. In November 2013 and February 2014, a Pennsylvania state trooper and member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force visited anti-fracking activists at their homes in New York and Pennsylvania under the pretext that they had trespassed while taking photos of a gas compressor station. More recently, members of Rising Tide in the Pacific Northwest have been contacted or visited by FBI agents. (The energy companies’ fear of transparency is in some ways similar to the livestock industry’s exposé anxiety, which has led to the passage of so-called ag-gag laws that prohibit the filming of farms and ranches.)The frontlines of the energy wars are no longer overseas, but rather in places like Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania.But what happens when the private sector’s assumptions about criminal activity are wrong or misleading? In Pennsylvania the oil and gas industry has driven speculation that environmental organizations were behind several acts of vandalism at or near drilling sites, even though there’s no evidence of any link whatsoever. The unfounded assertion has spilled into the local press. In February 2014, The <cite>Williamsport Sun-Gazette</cite> in northeast Pennsylvania ran a story about the crimes headlined, “Ecoterror Target: Gas companies bolster security in response to threats.”Jeff Monaghan, a PhD candidate in Sociology at Queen’s University in Ontario who writes on issues of surveillance, says the RCMP document reflects how deeply intertwined the suspicions of energy companies and intelligence agencies have become. “The broader context of this document is a very, very close working relationship between the Critical Infrastructure Protection team and the energy corporations. As the relationship develops the underlying belief is that environmentalists are first-and-foremost a threat to the economy. It’s really about protecting shared values of economic growth.”Or, as the RCMP report put it, “Canada’s economic growth … and the objectives of environmentalists are in direct conflict.” Environmental activists wouldn’t disagree with that, especially given the aggressive pro-energy policies of the Harper government. What they take issue with is the highly provocative claim that their opposition to the energy industry will likely lead to criminal activity. As the interests of the state and energy sector become increasingly close, however, this perception is taking hold. Activists worry that it is shaping law enforcement’s approach to the movement and could lead to a crackdown on legal protest.“It doesn’t surprise me that the industry is trying really hard to paint the environmental movement as fringe or dangerous, because it’s their last resort,” says Catskill Mountainkeeper’s Gillingham. “It’s behavior based on a losing argument.”The conflict over the Keystone XL pipeline has reinforced the narrative that economic prosperity and environmental protection are mutually exclusive. Pipeline proponents like to paint the opposition as job killers and, yes, extremists. In April 2014, Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, described the pipeline as “a project that is being blocked purely by environmental extremism.” More recently, US Senator Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, called anti-fracking activists campaigning for a moratorium “radical environmentalists.” A major Washington PR firm, Berman and Co., has launched an ad campaign bankrolled by the energy industry called “Big Green Radicals” that seeks to smear high-profile activists.But the demonization of environmental advocates goes far beyond mere polemics. TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, has worked closely with law enforcement along the proposed pipeline route from the very early stages of its development. A certain amount of collaboration with law enforcement is to be expected with any major infrastructure project. But TransCanada has gone further. The company has pressured attorneys general to prosecute environmental activists under terrorism statutes. It has given local law enforcement advance notice of meetings with landowners whom the company describes as hostile. And the company has held workshops with local law enforcement and the FBI, including a daylong “strategy meeting” in Oklahoma with the FBI in 2012.According to documents obtained by <cite>Earth Island Journal</cite>, the FBI distributed a bulletin in early 2013 “regarding threat concerns by environmental extremists against the Keystone Pipeline expansion project” to law enforcement across Nebraska. In its strategic plan for 2014-2017, South Dakota Homeland Security identifies what it considers to be extremist enclaves in the state, through which Keystone is proposed to pass. According to the document, “Uranium mining in the southwest part of the state and a proposed oil pipeline in the western part of the state garnered the attention of extremist environmental groups.” The report does not describe or name the groups, their intentions, or tactics. A public records request for additional documents or communication regarding “extremist environmental groups” in South Dakota was denied.(Read the FBI bulletin <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/fbiBulletin.pdf" style="">here</a> [3].)In 2013 <cite style="">Earth Island Journal</cite> <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/undercover_agents_infiltrated_tar_sands_resistance_camp_to_break_up_planned/" style="">reported on the infiltration of a Tar Sands Resistance training camp</a> [9] in Oklahoma. Two undercover officers from the Bryan County Sheriff’s office attended the weeklong event and shared intelligence with the Oklahoma Department of Homeland Security Fusion Center. Law enforcement was tipped off and a planned act of civil disobedience was preempted. During that same week TransCanada’s corporate security advisor was in frequent contact with the Oklahoma Fusion Center and made comments on a classified situational awareness bulletin.In many ways Texas, where the Keystone pipeilne would terminate, is the heart of the American oil and gas industry. Not surprisingly, activists there are routinely harassed by law enforcement and corporate security for nothing more than keeping tabs on the industry. In East Houston, the city’s industrial hub and most polluted neighborhood (Houston itself is one of the most polluted cities in the country), environmental activist and community organizer Bryan Parras has been questioned by the police on several occasions and once was contacted by a Coast Guard special agent assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston. The organization he helps run with his father, <a href="http://tejasbarrios.org/" target="_blank" style="">Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services</a> [10] (or TEJAS), has been closely watched. Parras frequently takes activists and journalists on what he calls “toxic tours” – a survey of the neighborhood’s refineries, chemical plants, and shipping ports. He’s made a point of documenting the air pollution caused by the flaring at the refineries that flank the neighborhood. He says the images “compel people to action.”They’ve also made Parras a subject of interest for industry and law enforcement. He is routinely questioned by the police or harassed by security representatives from Valero Energy, a major refining company and one of the industries Parras monitors. In 2013 Parras got a text from a friend, Tish Stringer, saying that an agent had visited her home and wanted to know about her relationship with him. The Coast Guard special agent, David Pileggi, told Stringer he’d been tipped off by Valero.“It’s nothing new,” Parras says. “Since 9/11 we’ve been harassed repeatedly and pulled over for taking pictures or video of the facilities.”In an emailed statement, Bill Day, vice president of communications at Valero, said the Houston refinery is designated by Homeland Security as “critical infrastructure” and therefore must meet enhanced security requirements. “One of those requirements,” he wrote, “is that when we see people taking photos or video of our facilities, we ascertain the purpose of that activity and then report it to DHS.” According to Shauna Dunlap, media coordinator for the FBI’s Houston Division, photographing and videotaping of critical infrastructures “can be a precursor of potential criminal activity.” The Joint Terrorism Task Force, she says, is “obligated to look into each and every suspicious activity report.”This kind of surveillance and intimidation, Parras says, is particularly chilling in an area with a large number of undocumented residents. Not only are they vulnerable to threats of deportation, but also they’re quite literally at the crossroads of environmental destruction and the risks associated with climate change. East Houston is home to a disproportionate number of the city’s largest sources of industrial pollution, four major highways, and the shipping channel that feeds into the Port of Houston. If built, the Keystone XL pipeline would terminate in East Houston; Valero has a contract with TransCanada to receive most of the oil. “On the basis of location alone these neighborhoods appear far more vulnerable to health risks than others in Greater Houston,” a 2006 study commissioned by the mayor’s office concluded. In addition, rising sea levels threaten to inundate the heavily industrialized shoreline. “It puts us at even higher risk because we’re on the coast,” says Parras. “All these facilities are right on the water.”In many ways, for activists like Parras the last line of defense lies in taking photos, documenting the impacts of industrial pollution, and simply bearing witness. TEJAS hasn’t even engaged in civil disobedience or direct action, he says. Still, his organization is on Valero’s watch list. TEJAS organizers have been followed and photographed or videoed by Valero security personnel. Local teachers who joined Parras on one of his toxic tours were bullied into deleting photos and video they had taken of the refinery. Journalists he has shown around have been threatened by Valero that they’ll be reported to the FBI.In the eyes of the oil and gas industry this is the new environmental extremism. And that view is being shared with law enforcement at every level.The intimidation and surveillance have had an impact. Parras says his advocacy has been compromised by Valero’s scrutiny of his organization and the refinery’s close relationship with law enforcement. “It’s difficult to get neighbors to want to engage and speak out,” he says. <div class="bio-new body_environment" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio">Adam Federman, recipient of a Polk Grant for Investigative Reporting, is a contributing writer to Earth Island Journal. His work has appeared in Salon, among other outlets.</div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div></div></div></div></div>