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Open in TheBrain

OCCUPY

capt bak 917

red is hard on eyes (cf bak)

see bak for new ?

BTB it cd happen here 1021 zucotti and oAKLand? human mic, gen'l assembly quaker, anarchist

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/it-could-happen-here-weekly-3-87556907/

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-30717896/

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gmail 7 26

Journalist Mila Atmos interviewed the organizers and activists who were part of the movement for her new 6-part series, which just debuted today. She joins us to connect the past to the present, where a majority of Americans are finally rising up, organizing, and trying to win back power from a corrupt elite that exploits our labor, resources, and talents for their own insatiable appetites.

https://kpfa.org/area941/program/storytelling-for-social-change-fall-2021/

https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/occupy-oakland-10-years-later/

Mitch Jeserich reports from Occupy Oakland, January 28th, 2012 including a lively public conversation between David Graeber (February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) anthropologist and author of,Debt, The Frist 5000 Years,with Andrej Grubacic, Professor of Anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies and author ofWobblies and Zapatistas, Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History.

...FBI's operating practice of political surveillance

In2012, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund uncovered hundreds of documents exposing that the FBI was treating the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency similarly acknowledged in its own reports that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence.”

ThePCJF obtained heavily redacted documents showing thatFBI 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 Parkand other Occupy actions around the country.

Other documents obtained and released by the PCJF demonstrated that the Department of Homeland Security and the sprawling network of Fusion Centers in the United States similarly expended huge resources monitoring, tracking and reporting on peaceful, lawful and constitutionally protected protest activities.

The FBI has recently been further exposed as monitoring and tracking, including through surveillance aircraft, the activities of the Black Lives Matter movement in cities around the United States.

Unlearned lessons and unfinished work of the Church Committee

...

gmail 7 26

Journalist Mila Atmos interviewed the organizers and activists who were part of the movement for her new 6-part series, which just debuted today. She joins us to connect the past to the present, where a majority of Americans are finally rising up, organizing, and trying to win back power from a corrupt elite that exploits our labor, resources, and talents for their own insatiable appetites.

OCCUPY! Episode 1: The Invitation — Future Hindsight

Episode 1: The Invitation

In 2011, a handful of skeptical New Yorkers answer a call to Occupy Wall Street. What they find feels less like a protest and more like a glimpse of a different world—one where people openly share stories of debt, hardship, and frustration. They start to build an anti-capitalist village in a tiny Manhattan park — under the watchful eyes of police.

Want to dive deeper? Listen to these episodes of Future Hindsight:

For a conversation on activism with a co-founder of Occupy Wall Street, tune in to this episode with Micah White:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/micah-white

For a recap of how American capitalism evolved into what it is today, listen to this episode with Kurt Andersen:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/americas-evil-geniuses-kurt-andersen?rq=capitalism

On solidarity and mutual aid, listen to this conversation with Manuel Pastor:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/solidarity-and-mutuality-manuel-pastor?rq=manuel

 yay

And yesterday, these 10 were found “not guilty” by New York City Criminal Court Judge Robert Mandelbaum. According to Flood Wall Street, Judge Mandelbaum ruled that the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) order to disperse violated the First Amendment. In his ruling, the judge also found “that by ordering protesters to leave the entire Wall Street area, police violated protesters’ First Amendment right to carry their message directly to its intended recipients: the Wall Street bankers who bankroll climate change.”

Defense Attorney Jonathan Wallace successfully argued that the Constitution protects Americans’ rights to “express political speech within proximity to the target of the protest. In this case, the NYPDfirst prevented protesters from entering Wall Streetbeforelater orderingthem to leave the area altogether.”This method of policing proved to be unlawful.

That is a victory in and of itself for the 10 individuals, as well as, the general American public and its right to protest.But the judge went even further “bytaking judicial noticethatclimate change is happening, is a serious problem, requires immediate action and is caused by human activity,”said Flood Wall Street.

“The importance of judicial notice is that the judge accepted climate change and the need to do something about it as a fact without the necessity of any evidentiary support or proof at trial,” said Defense Attorney Martin Stolar.“To the best of my knowledge, this is unprecedented and has significance for future litigation involving climate change.”

The ruling sets an important legal precedent in recognizing the constitutional legitimacy of mass civil disobedience actions protesting climate change, according to Flood Wall Street. The 10 defendants gave passionate testimony to the court, “affirming that their actions were justified.”...

http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/06/found-not-guilty-flood-wall-street

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/red-cross-feared-occupy-wall-street-after-hurricane-sandy

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As Trende observed, the Democratic political coalition “has become geographically narrow in the past decade, heavily concentrated among urban liberals and minorities who live in densely populated cities or are placed into minority-majority districts under interpretations of the Voting Rights Act that many minority groups pressed for in the 1980s and 1990s.” This concentration helps win some state-wide races and national electoral votes, but means that Democrats lose a lot of close races for the House.When Democrats do manage to win in the House, they often win by larger margins than Republicans do, which helps account for their national popular vote majority. Gerrymandering is part of the problem faced by the Democrats, but the other part is that, like the Republicans, they too are less inclined to appeal to those outside of their coalition. Democrats may not be as extreme as Republicans, but they are also less interested in compromise and consensus building than they used to be.

When we look at American politics we need to understand that our legislative branches represent places (districts and states) as well as people. The U.S. is a representative democracy yet by design is far from a pure democracy. Our constitution is designed to facilitate continuity and the translation of economic power to political power, but it is also designed to permit change when absolutely needed. In the past, dramatic change has taken place when the stability of the political system was threatened by the absence of change. These changes took place when the political center accepted them: the reforms of the progressive era, the economic policies of the New Deal, the changes brought about by LBJ’s Great Society. Typically, agents of change convince moderates to accept some part of their view. The exception that proved the rule was our Civil War.

In the past, the geographic orientation of our political system has led to moderate politics. In the U.S. system, an extreme party receiving 20 percent of the votes in every congressional district would send no one to Congress. Therefore, the political dynamic pushed candidates to the center where they build the largest coalitions generating pluralities or majorities. The growing presence of moderate independent voters continues that trend in general elections. But the growing importance of low-turnout primary elections has driven candidates further to the extremes. It is hard to believe that Eric Cantor was too moderate for the Republican base—but he was. The **Tea Party**has less than 20 percent of the national vote, but they have managed to skillfully work the seams of the political and media system to dominate the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. If the Occupy movement had been less politically pure they might have done the same thing on the left.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/05/fed-government-incapable-transition-to-renewable-economy/2/

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FBI ID sniper at Occupy Houston but did not inform

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/25/why_did_fbi_monitor_occupy_houston  Jason Leopold

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/03/iraq-war-vet-whose-skull-was-fractured

After he was struck with a lead-filled bean bag fired by a police officer from 20 feet away on Oct. 25, 2011, Scott Olsen, who was 24 at the time, suffered a skull fracture and permanent brain damage.

An Iraq war veteran whose skull was fractured by a police bean bag during the Occupy Oakland protest has settled with the city for $4.5 million, his attorneys announced Friday, as part of a federal civil lawsuit.

After he was struck with a lead-filled bean bag fire by a police officer from 20 feet away on Oct. 25, 2011, Scott Olsen, who was 24 at the time, suffered a skull fracture and permanent brain damage.

Today, Olsen can speak and do basic tasks. But, according to a recent interview with the East Bay Express, his memory, concentration and speech are still impaired, and he still owes $200,000 in medical expenses.

According to his suit, Olsen is unable to work as he once did as a computer systems administrator at Opswat in San Francisco.

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kpfa 6/3/13 anarchist 7 am; cops sent infiltrators to disrupt OWS with a script eg facilitator is racistreaction was learned who they were and shunned

: David Graber [spanish civil war; socialist wanted more $ and goods, anarchists wanted fewer hours)

cointelpro successfully created paranoia in left in 60's

 kpfa 6/7/13 8 am hodia dsag   Security Alliance Council corps

fbi corps CMD  warned that port shut cd ~ supply chain (esp if San Diego closes)

Courthouse News [1] / By Lorraine Bailey [2]

Ex-Marine Arrested for Wearing Wrong T-Shirt at Supreme Court!

July 4, 2013  |

Police had probable cause to arrest a Marine Corps veteran in the Supreme Court building for wearing a jacket that said "Occupy Everywhere," a federal judge ruled.

     Fitzgerald Scott, a Marine Corps veteran, entered the Supreme Court building on Jan. 20, 2012, wearing a jacket painted with the words, "Occupy Everywhere." The Occupy movement had scheduled that day for an organized protest outside of the courthouse.

While Scott was looking at the exhibits on display, Deputy Chief Timothy Dolan approached him and told Scott that he could not wear the jacket in the building because it was comparable to a sign or demonstration.

   Dolan told Scott he must either take off the jacket or leave the building. When Scott refused to do either, Dolan instructed another officer to place Scott under arrest for unlawful entry. Scott was released the same day, and charges against him were later dropped.

     Scott then filed suit [3], arguing that the "United States is liable for the false arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Scott because Pfc. Freeman arrested Mr. Scott without probable cause."

     U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson dismissed the action Tuesday, finding that the "Supreme Court Police had probable cause to arrest Scott for violating section 6135 because Scott's actions fell squarely within the plain language of the display clause: he was displaying a device (his jacket) in the building which had been adapted to bring public attention to the 'Occupy' movement." (Parentheses in original.)

Jackson noted that her ruling in this case is not based on "whether a court could ultimately find that the application of the display clause in this instance violated Scott's First Amendment rights, but whether the officers knowingly ignored settled, indisputable law when they made the determination on the scene to effect the arrest."

     Scott has no First Amendment ground for his claims because "at the time of Scott's arrest, the application of section 6135 - and its predecessor 40 U.S.C. § 13k8 - to individuals in the Supreme Court building and plaza had been upheld as constitutional," the 14-page opinion states.

     "The fact that long after Cohen [v. California], this statute had been upheld as constitutional on its face and as applied to individuals in similar situations defeats Scott's assertion that his arrest violated clear constitutional law," Jackson added.

See more stories tagged with:

supreme court [4],

occupy movement [5],

Marine Corp Vet [6],

freedom of expression [7]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/vet-arrested-wearing-wrong-t-shirt

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Washington Lobbyists Crafted $850,000 Secret Plan For Bank Lobbyists To Undermine Occupy Wall Street

By Zaid Jilani on Nov 21, 2011 at 9:45 am

This weekend, the MSNBC showUp! With Chris Hayesbroke a stunning storyabout how Washington lobbyists are scrambling to undermine the protesters on Wall Street and across the country.

Hayes’ report, which can be viewedhere, details how the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firmClark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford(CLGC) compiled a secret plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street for the American Bankers Association (ABA).

The plan, which CLGC was demanding $850,000 to implement, was presented in a secret memo that was leaked to Hayes’ staff.The memo warns that Occupy Wall Street, particularly if it is embraced by the Democratic Party, threatens to “have very long-lasting political, policy, and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

Interestingly, the memo also cautioned that Tea Party protesters may join forces with Occupy Wall Street because “well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where [Occupy Wall Street] protesters and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism.[...] This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.”

In order to combat Occupy Wall Street’s growing movement, the firm offered to engage in research and advocacy to “undermine their credibility in a profound way.” This included researching activists’ financial histories and civil and criminal information, and monitoring social media. The goal of this research was to “create negative narratives of the [Occupy Wall Street] for high impact media placement to expose the backers of this movement”:

“Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal – it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way,” said ABA spokesperson Jeff Sigmund to Hayes’ show. However, CLGC admits on its website that it has had ABA as a client before in the past, in addition to the Financial Services Roundtable, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fidelity Investments, and other financial players.

Tags:

  http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/21/373143/washington-lobbyists-occupy-wall-street/?mobile=nc

salon: 

An Anonymous group, identifying itself as Par:AnoIA (aka Anonymous Intelligence Agency) has released 14 Gigabytes of data, code and software that it claims shows how Bank of America employed security firms to monitor hackers and activists.

In a Wednesday press release, Par:AnoIA stated that the data “shows that Bank of America and others are contracting other companies to spy and collect information on private citizens.” The release also notes, however, that the “overall quality of the research is poor and potentially false.”

The data was not obtained through any hack, but was “stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs.”

Leaked documents reveal that TEKSystems assembled  reports on both:{Occupy  Wall Street:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:online activityand hackers throughout 2012. But  the hackers group called such “intelligence” “sloppy, random and valueless”:

Apparently a key word list was used to match for items of interest on IRC, Twitter and other social media. While the list has over 10.000 entries only 1125 keywords seem to be genuine, the rest are simply Wikipedia references.

>

This aspect of leaked information is reminiscent of internal DHS reports obtained revealing the agency’s monitoring of Occupy in late 2011. At the time I noted “my shock… at the cursory and complacent nature of the document. This is spying? The sources cited for Occupy information are almost entirely mainstream media reports (from the AP, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Reuters and others).”

FBI documents obtained earlier this year through FOIA by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund revealed that an FBI program specifically dedicated to the partnership between the FBI, DHS and the private sector monitored the Occupy protests, providing information and tips to corporate partners on interacting with and combating Occupy groups.

DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”

The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how state/regional "fusion center" personnel monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012.Personnel engaged in this activity at fusion centers include employees of municipal, county and federal counter terrorism/homeland security entities. Such entities include local police departments, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration).

The report also examines how fusion centers and other counter terrorism entities that have emerged since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have worked to benefit numerous corporations engaged in public-private intelligence sharing partnerships.

While the report examines many instances of fusion center monitoring of Occupy Wall Street activists nationwide, the bulk of the report details how counter terrorism personnel engaged in the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC, commonly known as the "Arizona fusion center") monitored and otherwise surveilled citizens active in Occupy Phoenix, and how this surveillance benefited a number of corporations and banks that were subjects of Occupy Phoenix protest activity.

While small glimpses into the governmental monitoring of the Occupy Wall Street movement have emerged in the past, there has not been any reporting-- until now-- that details the breadth and depth of the degree to which the nation's post-September 11, 2001 counter terrorism apparatus has been applied to politically engaged citizens exercising their Constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights.

The report reveals for the first time:

The report is authored by Beau Hodai, DBA Press publisher and Center for Media and Democracy contributor.

Little evidence has emerged, in the years since the horrific violence of 9/11, of any widespread threat from al-Qaeda within the United States. Nevertheless, politicians have used that potent memory to fund an enormous domestic surveillance infrastructure. The result of this trough of money and excess capacity -- the turning of "counterterrorism" resources against law-abiding American citizens -- was utterly predictable.

It has been more than 30 years since Congress acted with deep skepticism regarding government agents deployed to spy on Americans. The last thorough and truly independent investigation was after Watergate, when theChurch and Pike Committeesspent months intensively investigating the ways in which prior administrations had violated Americans' privacy and trampled civil liberties under the guise of national security.

In 1976, then-Attorney General Edward Levi promulgated the "Levi Guidelines," investigative guidelines developed in response to domestic surveillance abuses, such as COINTELPRO, perpetrated by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Since the Carter administration, however, there has been an accelerating erosion of protections from domestic surveillance. The "Levi Guidelines" were later largely countermanded through changes by John Ashcroft and his successors at the Justice Department.

With the post-9/11 shift from enforcing the law to "intelligence gathering," numerous public rules as well as secret guidelines were altered to maximize the gathering of information about Americans without requiring any criminal predicate. The new rule appears to be that almost everything is fair game without probable cause, except for home searches and phone taps (but even the rules for electronic surveillance and the acquisition of intelligence information are now subject to enormous loopholes due to changes pushed into law in 2008 by Director of National Intelligence-turned-B:{ooz Allen Hamilton:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Vice Chairman Mike McConnell, with help from AT&T, Verizon, and others).

It was a stroke of misfortune that, on 9/11, then-Vice President Dick Cheney served as the de facto head of the national security hierarchy.Cheney's "dark side" approach created a climate in which longstanding rules intended to protect basic rights were replaced with an array of questionable, if not absurd, interpretations of domestic and international law.

As President Ford's chief of staff, Cheney, with the aid of then-Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman, tried to thwart essential reforms of surveillance agencies. Silberman was later appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and, at the urging of his former law clerk, then-Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, helped facilitate legal opinions instrumental to the George W. Bush administration's expansion of domestic surveillance activities by redefining Americans' Fourth Amendment rights.  Unfortunately, much of this backsliding has been embraced and further entrenched by the Obama administration.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide "counter terrorism" apparatus emerged. Components of this apparatus include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (U.S. DHS), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), ODNI's "National Counterterrorism Center" (NCTC), and state/regional "fusion centers."

"Fusion centers," by and large, are staffed with personnel working in "counter terrorism"/ "homeland security" units of municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/"public safety"/"counter terrorism" agencies. To a large degree, the "counter terrorism" operations of municipal, county, state and tribal agencies engaged in "fusion centers" are financed through a number of U.S. DHS grant programs.

Initially, "fusion centers" were intended to be intelligence sharing partnerships between municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/"counter terrorism" agencies, dedicated solely to the dissemination/sharing of "terrorism"-related intelligence. However, shortly following the creation of "fusion centers," their focus shifted from this exclusive interest in "terrorism," to one of "all hazards" -- an umbrella term used to describe virtually anything (including "terrorism") that may be deemed a "hazard" to the public, or to certain private sector interests.And, as has been mandated through a series of federal legislative actions and presidential executive orders, "fusion centers" (and the "counter terrorism" entities that they are comprised of) work -- in ever closer proximity -- with private corporations, with the stated aim of protecting items deemed to be "critical infrastructure/key resources" (CI/KR, typically thought of as items such as power plants, dams or weapons manufacturing plants).

As detailed in a report from DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy (DBA/CMD), "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street," through 2011 and 2012, "fusion centers" and other "counter terrorism" agencies engaged in widespread monitoring of Occupy Wall Street activists.

Records obtained by DBA/CMD indicate that, in some instances, these "counter terrorism" agencies worked in partnership with corporate interests to gather and disseminate intelligence relating to the activities of citizens engaged in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ironically, records indicate that corporate entities engaged in such public-private intelligence sharing partnerships were often the very same corporate entities criticized, and protested against, by the Occupy Wall Street movement as having undue influence in the functions of public government.

"Operation Tripwire" -- the FBI, the Private Sector, and the Monitoring of Occupy Wall Street

by Beau Hodai[1] — December 31, 2012 - 1:15am

Part One. Records obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy (DBA/CMD) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request indicate that the FBI employed tactics under a "counter terrorism" initiative called "Operation Tripwire" in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists.

[Note: records referenced in this article were obtained by DBA/CMD on November 8, 2012, as a partial response to a FOIA request submitted by DBA/CMD to the FBI on June 7, 2012. DBA/CMD have been analyzing these incomplete materials along with other public records to tell a more complete story of the pattern of domestic surveillance that has been underway.]

"Tripwires," Mall Cops, and "Radical Cheerleaders"

On October 19, 2011, an FBI agent filed a report, titled "Domain Program Management [,] Domestic Terrorism," detailing an October 11 briefing given to "Jacksonville Executive Management" (EM) and a supervisory special agent (SSA) "Counter Terrorism Program Coordinator." The subject of the October 11 briefing had been the potential growth of the OWS movement throughout north/central Florida. (All agent names were redacted from this, and other, FBI reports.)

"During the 11 October intelligence meeting, writer advised EM of the Occupy venues and further advised that they may provide an outlet for a lone offender exploiting the movement for reasons associated with general government dissatisfaction," wrote the agent, who went on to say that special areas of concern were Daytona, Gainesville, and Ocala, where "some of the highest unemployment rates in Florida continue to exist."

As such, the report's author recommended that the Counter Terrorism Program Coordinator, "consider establishing tripwires with the Occupy event coordinators regarding their observance of actions or comments indicating violent tendencies by attendees" (emphasis added).

Interestingly, the report went on to discuss the author's sharing of information obtained from the FBI Houston field office -- as an example of such potential "exploitation" -- with the Jacksonville Counter Terrorism Program Coordinator. The FBI Houston information related to the "exploitation" of Occupy Houston by an individual (name redacted) who had allegedly plotted to "kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire." (It is worth noting here that one of the few other instances of a credible threat identified by the FBI in relation to OWS contained in the DBA/CMD FOIA records relates to an October 2011 instance in which a person reportedly threw a "chemical bomb" made from tinfoil and Drano at "Occupy Maine" protestors after shouting "get a job!")

What the FBI Has Said Operation Tripwire Is ...According to the FBI, "Operation Tripwire," established in 2003, focuses on "information and intelligence-sharing operations from the NJTTF's [National Joint Terrorism Task Force] participating agencies to help identify terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S." Such information is obtained through intelligence provided by various private sector "critical infrastructure stakeholders," along with apparent networks of informants established through regional JTTF "community outreach" activities.

An example of Tripwire's intended use at the time of its inception is as follows: a suspicious pattern of chemical purchases might be provided to the FBI by a merchant.

This information would be relayed from a regional JTTF to NJTTF. The NJTTF, originally situated within the FBI Strategic Information and Operations Center ((SIOC), the same FBI office that issued a request for information to :{vendors:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: [10] in January 2012 for the development of a social media application capable of trolling Facebook, Twitter, and other social media for certain keywords and other information), is currently situated within the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC). NCTC, an entity of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), is the lead agency on "counter terrorism" intelligence information sharing. NCTC is comprised of staff from partner intelligence agencies. Such agencies include: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI, Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Homeland Security.

"Tripwire" information provided to NJTTF by the merchant informant would then be evaluated, possibly investigated, and shared with other NJTTF/"counter-terrorism" personnel.

According to the FBI, NJTTF is comprised of representatives from at least 35 law enforcement/"public safety" agencies. This counter-terrorism intelligence cooperative is fed information through the nation's 104 JTTFs (which work, in turn, with regional law enforcement agencies through state "fusion centers"), each of which may gather intelligence through tactics employed under Operation Tripwire. In practice, this equates to the cultivation of informants, the sharing of FBI intelligence with commercial informants, and the gathering of information about people without any predicate of wrongdoing by them. FBI investigatory thresholds were lowered by the executive branch during the George W. Bush administration; however, it is not entirely clear what investigative guidelines/thresholds Operation Tripwire is operating under.

Although the October 19 FBI briefing report seems to describe the potential application of Operation Tripwire in the cultivation of informants within the north/central Florida OWS community, another Florida FBI report relating to OWS activities shows that business sector "tripwire" informants were utilized in the Gainesville area for the purpose of monitoring local OWS activity. The report shows that advance intelligence relating to OWS protests was provided to this business sector tripwire informant, who was expected to reciprocally supply independently gathered information.

In the December 5, 2011 FBI Jacksonville report, titled "Trip Wire Initiative [,] Intel Briefing/Squad 7 [,] Gainesville Resident Agency," the report's author documents contact with a security employee at Gainesville's The Oaks Mall, in reference to an upcoming OWS protest event.

"On 11/10/2011, the writer telephonically contacted [redacted] The Oaks Mall, at telephone number [redacted]. The purpose of the contact was to advise her of the pending 'Occupy Wall Street' protest which was scheduled to shut-down various banks on 1/17/2011 [sic]," wrote the report's author.

"[Redacted name of mall security employee] advised that the initial Occupy Gainesville protest was a minor distraction for the mall and she would be ready for the pending protest. [Redacted] advised that she would contact writer if there were any anomalies.

The following month, as reported [11] by the Gainesville Sun, a group of about a dozen individuals, identified as being members of Occupy Gainesville, entered The Oaks Mall on the morning of November 25, 2011 ("Black Friday") and began chanting slogans. Mall security asked the group to leave. The group promptly left.

[ On October 30, 2011, nine members of Occupy Gainesville (the "Occupy Gainesville Radical Cheerleaders") appeared in the cafeteria of The Oaks Mall and performed a corporate greed-themed dance/cheer routine (a popular form of entertainment and/or protest known as a "flash mob"). The dance group, which consisted of college-aged adults, was asked to leave by mall security following the completion of the routine. During this interaction, mall security personnel tried to ascertain the names of the cheerleaders.The group declined, politely, to provide their names, thanked the security officer, and promptly left]

It is not clear if Occupy Gainesville ever returned to The Oaks Mall.

It is not clear how this application of federal law enforcement time and resources through Operation Tripwire benefits non-commercial interests within the United States in any way, let alone efforts to protect the nation from a terrorist attack.

FBI records obtained by DBA/CMD go on to discuss the JTTF monitoring of OWS groups in northern and central Florida. The primary objects of this surveillance appear to have been Occupy Gainesville and Occupy Tampa. The two groups had coordinated with each other in a number of events -- including dance events staged by the Occupy Gainesville "Radical Cheerleaders."

As such, a November 4, 2011, FBI report entitled "Domestic Terrorism Control File [,] Liaison [,] Field Intelligence Group [,] Liaison Matter" states that, during a November 3 "Tampa Bay Area Intelligence Unit" briefing, various representatives from area law enforcement agencies discussed numbers of attending OWS protestors at peaceful bank protests that had occurred on October 29.

Also discussed during the briefing, wrote the report's author (a member of the Tampa JTTF, name redacted), were suspected firearms purchases by members of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, the burglary of 50 storage units, and a string of robberies in the Tampa area. Those issues, however, were only peripheral subjects of interest to the JTTF, as is evidenced by the amount of evident discussion dedicated to the subject of area OWS activists.

The Tampa JTTF report went on to state that the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office had determined certain individuals (names redacted) to be the leaders of Occupy Tampa, and that these individuals would be traveling to Gainesville for an "anarchist planning meeting at the Civic Media Center" on November 5.

The report went on to indicate that the JTTF/Tampa Bay Area Intelligence meeting had closed with a briefing from Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) personnel. According to AFOSI, Veterans for Peace had invited Occupy Tampa and Occupy St. Petersburg to join them in an anti-war demonstration outside of one of the MacDill Air Force Base gates during "Air Fest," to be held on November 5 and 6.

The Occupy Threat? "Disrupt" and "Dox"

The FBI was briefing Wall Street about OWS at least a month before it launched. (The image is from the film poster for George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece '1984')But, what was the perceived threat that may have prompted the application of Operation Tripwire to OWS activists? Records cite two themes of perceived OWS threats: the possible disruption of "normal business operations of financial districts," and the possible embarrassment of bankers. A critical mind might wonder what either of these two perceived threats has to do with "terrorism."

Speaking to the perceived threat of disruption, FOIA records obtained from the FBI by DBA/CMD indicate that the bureau had been in the business of alerting financial institutions to the planned protest activity of OWS groups as early as August 2011 -- nearly a month prior to the launch of the OWS movement on September 17, 2011.

Records indicate that on August 19, 2011, an FBI task force officer (TFO) met with a representative of the New York Stock Exchange (described as "NYSE/Euronext," located at 11 Wall Street, New York City) to discuss the "planned Anarchist protest titled 'Occupy Wall Street', [sic] scheduled for September 17, 2011." (Which task force the agent represented is unknown due to redactions.)

"The protest appears on Anarchist website's and social networking pages on the internet [sic]," wrote the TFO.

"Numerous incidents have occurred in the past which show attempts by Anarchist groups to disrupt, influence, and or shut down normal business operations of financial districts," claimed the TFO.

And, speaking to the looming specter of banker embarrassment: FBI records obtained by DBA/CMD, show that, on October 6, 2011, an FBI intelligence analyst (IA) contacted security personnel with Zions Bank, based in Salt Lake City, to warn of an alleged "possible threat posed by hacktivist Anonymous" posed to Zions Bank executives. Occupy Salt Lake City had been formed the very day the FBI delivered this warning to Zions Bank.

"Anonymous" is the name of a collective of internet-based activists, some of whom are said to be hackers, who have largely aligned themselves with the OWS movement.

"IA [name redacted] informed [redacted name of Zions Bank security personnel] that the FBI had no specific intelligence indicating a specific threat to Zions Bank; however, the FBI wanted to make surein [sic] light of the upcoming Salt Lake City protestthat [sic] Zions Bank information security personnel were aware of recent hacking incidents perpetrated by Anonymous hacktivists in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest" (emphasis added).

"IA [redacted] informed [redacted name of Zions Bank security personnel] that the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase had been 'doxed' by an actor claiming Anonymous affiliation. IA [redacted] explained that doxing is Internet slang for maliciously releasing public [sic] information regarding an individual on the Internet."

The use of the word "public" before the word "information" in this report's description of theso-called "doxing"of JP Morgan Chase President/CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is not a typo. The "actor claiming Anonymous affiliation" referenced in this report posted data sheets listing nothing but publicly-available information about Dimon [12] and Blankfein [13] to Pastebin.com on September 27 and 29, 2011 (respectively). Such information contained in the short Dimon and Blankfein documents included the names of family members, some of the executives' known addresses, some details from corporate filings, some records of campaign finance contributions, and some court records.

All of this material is available to anyone as a matter of public record.Information relating to an individual's family members can be obtained through a number of public records (including birth records, property records, court records and Google searches); addresses can be obtained through a number of public records (including campaign finance records, property records, court records and corporate records); corporate filings can be obtained through a number of public sources (primarily through the offices of secretaries of state/corporation commissions and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission); public records relating to campaign finance spending can be obtained through either state elections offices/secretaries of state, or the Federal Election Commission; and court records are typically obtained from publicly-funded courts of public (civil and criminal) law -- whose records are generally a matter of public record.

Given the fact that neither the alleged "hacktivist" postings, or available FBI records, indicate any criminal activity related to the collating and posting of public information, it is likely that no "hacking incidents" took place -- as is claimed in the Zions Bank FBI report.

As demonstrated by this report, FBI "intelligence analysts" apparently made it their business to notify bank executives that "actors" sympathetic with entities sympathetic to OWS might post public records relating to executives online. This is not a criminal offense. As a matter of course, journalists (journalists who are worth a damn, at least) utilize all of the aforementioned public records in research and reporting on a daily basis.

Given this fact, it is interesting to note that the portion of the report that details how such "actors" gather their data is entirely redacted.

Part Two in this series is forthcoming.

(Material from the DBA/CMD FOIA requests referenced herein is available for download below.)
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FBI-OWS-3-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-3-1056423.pdf [15]330.32 KB
FBI-OWS-4-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-4-1056395.pdf [16]191.08 KB
FBI-OWS-5-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-5-1056426.pdf [17]84.76 KB
FBI-OWS-6-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-6-1056555.pdf [18]128.15 KB
FBI-OWS-7-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-7-1056580.pdf [19]1.91 MB
FBI-OWS-1-1175251-001-319X-HQ-A1487718-MWOfficer-Safety-Bulletin-Section-1-1096521.pdf [20]299.53 KB

Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Phone: 608-260-9713 • Fax: 608-260-9714

Source URL: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11924/operation-tripwire-fbi-private-sector-and-monitoring-occupy-wall-street

Links:

[1] http://www.prwatch.org/users/35302/beau-hodai

[2] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/activism

[3] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/banking

[4] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/war-peace/terrorism

[5] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations

[6] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/democracy

[7] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/human-rights

[8] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/us-government

[9] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prwatch.org%2Fnews%2F2012%2F12%2F11924%2Foperation-tripwire-fbi-private-sector-and-monitoring-occupy-wall-street&linkname=%22Operation%20Tripwire%22%20--%20the%20FBI%2C%20the%20Private%20Sector%2C%20and%20the%20Monitoring%20of%20Occupy%20Wall%20Street

[10] https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=c65777356334dab8685984fa74bfd636&_cview=1

[11] http://www.gainesville.com/article/20111128/articles/111129567

[12] http://pastebin.com/k82dLgj4

[13] http://pastebin.com/NVWbxk9f

[14] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-2-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-2-1056413.pdf

[15] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-3-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-3-1056423.pdf

[16] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-4-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-4-1056395.pdf

[17] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-5-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-5-1056426.pdf

[18] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-6-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-6-1056555.pdf

[19] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-7-1175251-001-Occupy-Wall-Street-Section-7-1056580.pdf

[20] http://www.prwatch.org/files/FBI-OWS-1-1175251-001-319X-HQ-A1487718-MWOfficer-Safety-Bulletin-Section-1-1096521.pdf

ALEC is like a speed-dating service for lonely legislators and corporate executives," says Mark Pocan, a Democratic state assemblyman in Wisconsin, where ALEC played a role in last year's efforts to cripple public-sector unions. "The corporations write the bills and the legislators sign their names to the bills. In the end, we're stuck with bad laws and nobody knows where they came from." 

Prominent bills drafted by ALEC include Arizona's SB 1070 (the nation's strictest anti-immigration legislation) and proposals introduced in 38 states to undermine Obama's health care lawby making it illegal to penalize residents for failing to obtain health insurance. A recent study of ALEC's impact in Virginia found that it was responsible for 50 bills introduced there, including legislation to require people to show identification before voting, encourage schools to contract with private education companies, and legalize the use of deadly force in defending one's home.

Democratic lawmakers inArizona and Wisconsin are fighting back. Their proposed ALEC Accountability Act would require the group to register as a lobbying organization, thereby forcing it to disclose its financiers. Pocan, the Wisconsin assemblyman, went so far as to crash an ALEC convention in New Orleans andpost his findings on YouTube.

In the works since January, today's protests are just as much about the broader issue of corporate control of politics. "We are rejecting a society that does not allow us to control our future," says a call to action on Shut Down the Corporations, the umbrella website for the protests. Here is a rundown of some of the planned actions:

...

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/alec-occupy-wall-street-protest-f29

luntz: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/occupy-rhetoric_b_1133114.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

hightower 

gop attacks:

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2822

At some point we're going to have to consider Texas a failed state. There should be a limit to just how dumb your representatives can be before it runs afoul of some trigger mechanism, somewhere, after which all the people who voted for that particular moron are stripped from voting again until they satisfactorily re-complete the fourth grade—but one problem with that, I suppose, is that we'd end up with the most unstable, heavily armed group of mustachioed fourth graders to ever grace our poorly funded public schools, and nobody wants to see that.

Rep. Steve Stockman is one of those representatives. Put more simply, his reelection should be taken as a sign that certain areas of Texas are still bitter at Somalia's success, and even more bitter that they can't just elect outright crooks like Tom DeLay anymore. Mostly known for being a nutcase one-term Congressman back in the nineties, Stockman made a brief name for himself with Waco conspiracy theories, gun fetishism, gun fetishism about Waco conspiracy theories, and a relationship with the NRA and anti-government militias that even for the 1990's was fairly goddamn nuts.

How nuts? Oh, pretty nuts:

A Republican member of Congress from Texas has suggested that the Clinton Administration staged the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., to convince Congress that it should ban assault weapons.

"Waco was supposed to be a way for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) and the Clinton Administration to prove the need for a ban on so-called 'assault weapons,' " the Representative, Steve Stockman, who is a strong opponent of gun control, wrote in the June issue of Guns & Ammo magazine.

And here's a post-Oklahoma-City-bombing Los Angeles Times article on his behavior after receiving a note thought to be linked to that bombing:

Stockman and his staff denied that they had delayed passing the note--which seemed to convey information about the Oklahoma blast--to the FBI. But they faced troublesome questions about why Stockman's staff also gave the note to the National Rifle Assn. and why Stockman in March wrote to the Justice Department objecting to what he said was an impending federal raid on "citizen militia" groups, apparently akin to the kinds of anti-government groups that seem to figure in the background of at least one suspect in the Oklahoma bombing.

Before and after that short and entirely unhinged shift in Congress, Stockman hasn't had a political career so much as an ambitious, decades-long string of political failures punctuated by a few lucky breaks and more than a little friendly wingnut welfare (with an emphasis on molding young conservative minds via things like the Campus Leadership Program, and no, I do not know why that creeps me out as much as it does.) Still, for some reason a passel of ultraconservatives in Texas felt that it was finally time to give the obvious crazy person another shot in the big boy office, and Stockman is quickly making those Texans proud by being, well, as big a goddamn crackpot as he can manage without being hauled off for professional supervision.

Below the fold, let's consider his absolutely insane one-month record so far:

He was only one of a handful of House Republicans to vote against John Boehner, boldly managing a "present" vote as the most spectacularly incompetent congressional coup of all time collapsed around its supposed planners.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School murders, his response was to introduce legislation repealing the gun free zones around schools, and for the same reason as the similar NRA blustering—because what we needed, according to both, was to have many more people wandering around school zones with guns, and that would probably work out just fine.

He was abruptly cut off in a Fox News interview after comparing Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein, thus managing to rank as one of the few crackpot Republicans too nuts even for Fox News to stomach.

When Obama introduced a set of executive actions that included things like "finally appoint a permanent head of the ATF, even if that makes Republicans sad" and "government scientists should be allowed to research gun violence", Steve Stockman threatened in an exceptionally frothing statement to impeach Obama, if necessary, in order to stop such obviously scandalous things. This may have been the first, biggest sign that Steve Stockman is in fact a bona fide moron, but he quickly surpassed even that.

That brings us to Stockman's latest episode of Congressional Moron Theater. In response to other politicians inviting Sandy Hook first responders, children, and other figures to the State of the Union, decided to rebut the presence of those people by inviting Ted Nugent, a man whose unhinged, violent rhetoric even managed to garner a visit by the Secret Service:

Nugent in the past has threatened to kill President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

“I was in Chicago and I said hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk; Obama, he’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun,” Nugent screamed during a concert while brandishing two machine guns, “Then I was in New York and I said, ‘Hey Hillary you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch…. Then I was out in California and I thought, Barbara Boxer, she might want to suck on my machine gun, hey Dianne Feinstein ride one of these you worthless whore.”

You might ask which parts of that cause Steve Stockman, in his official press release about the stunt, to refer to Ted Nugent as "a patriot". I imagine it's those very threats, because nobody, anywhere, has any idea what the vigorously self-emasculated Nugent actually does these days aside from drunkenly threatening members of the opposition while waving guns around. My own opinion is that Steve Stockman referring to the gun fetishist and possibly-drug-addled Nugent as a "patriot" in a press release is quite possibly a worse sin than inviting him to a government function at all, but that is because my idea of "patriot", especially in the wake of the latest in a long string of horrific mass murders, does not revolve around telling the nation's president to "suck on my machine gun." For Congressman Stockman, it does. (And can you imagine any other actual member of Congress, in the past, so closely aligning himself with someone who wished violence against the government? Forget rebranding the party, Karl Rove, you may have your work cut out for you convincing Americans that Republicans aren't for outright treason, given a few more years of this. Even secession talk is considered tame, now that "Obama, he's a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun" is considered the high point of Republican "patriotism.")

There is another part of Stockman's press release regarding Nugent that I think even more perfectly encapsulates the man. It's unrelated, but that's all right: the spurious addition merely adds to the Stockmanesque mood of being absolutely batshit crazy all the time, about every subject:

Stockman will also be unveiling this week The Obama Failometer, a ten-foot-long billboard that will objectively measure the failure of Obama’s economic policies.  The Obama Failometer tracks four monthly economic indicators from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; jobs created, civilian labor force participation rate and black and Hispanic unemployment.  The figures are mathematically weighted to provide a measurement, on a scale from 1 to 1000, of just how badly Obama’s economic policies are failing.  The inaugural Monthly Obama Failometer Score is an off-the-charts 1,179.

That's right. Steve Stockman's new 1-to-1000 metric of how badly he thinks Obama is failing starts off at the Spinal Tappish 1,179, thus proving the Texas Republican innumerate as well as nuts. I would not be overly surprised if Texas schools are now teaching that 1,179 is between 1 and 1000, possibly because to believe otherwise marks you as an evolution supporter, but to have Steve Stockman come up with his own chart that says so really just encapsulates the man. Texas Republican Steve Stockman, once drummed from the party for being nuts, now the future of the party again.

Given material like this to work with, there's nothing Rove or anyone else can do to paint the new Republican Party as anything more than a collection of humiliating hucksters, dullards and outright morons, and the only thing left now (while waiting the possible downfall of the republic, of course, possibly because entire vast swaths of the population forget how to dress themselves or that gasoline should not be used as a dessert topping) is to grab the popcorn and watch them try.

Spying on Occupy Activists

  16

By Matthew Rothschild, June 2013 issue

(Editor’s Note: This article is derived from research and writing conducted by Beau Hodai, published by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy in the report “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”)

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, the Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement officers have engaged in widespread domestic spying on Occupy Wall Street activists, among others, on the shaky premise that these activists pose a terrorist threat. Often, Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies have coordinated with the private sector, working on behalf of, or in cooperation with, Wall Street firms and other companies the protesters have criticized.

Thousands of public documents recently obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy add new evidence to an increasingly powerful case that law enforcement has been overstepping its bounds. The documents, obtained through state and federal open records searches and Freedom of Information Act requests, demonstrate that law enforcement agencies may be attempting to criminalize thousands of American citizens for simply voicing their disapproval of corporate dominance over our economic and political system.

The anti-terrorist apparatus that the U.S. government established after 9/11 has now been turned against law-abiding citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. This apparatus consists not only of advanced surveillance technologies but also of “fusion centers” in state after state that coordinate the efforts of law enforcement up and down the line and collaborate with leading members of the private sector. Often, the work they do in the name of national security advances the interests of some of the largest corporations in America rather than focusing on protecting the United States from actual threats or attacks, such as the one at the Boston Marathon on April 15.

“The government has built a giant domestic surveillance apparatus in the name of homeland security that has been unleashed on ordinary Americans expressing concern about the undue influence of corporations on our democracy,” says Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the former senior legislative strategist on national security for the ACLU. “Millions and millions of our tax dollars are being squandered violating the rights of innocent Americans who dare to dissent about legal policies and who have zero connection to any violent crime intended to cause terror.”

The documents reveal many instances of such misdirected work by law enforcement around the country. The picture they paint of law enforcement in the Phoenix area is a case in point. The police departments there, working with a statewide fusion center and heavily financed by the Department of Homeland Security, devoted tremendous resources to tracking and infiltrating Occupy Phoenix and other activist groups.

In October 2011, Jamie Dimon, the president and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was coming to town. A giant on Wall Street, Dimon heads the largest bank in the country, which played a pivotal and disreputable role in the collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008. Dimon was holding an event with thousands of his employees at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, in downtown Phoenix. Four days before the meeting, JPMorgan Chase’s regional security manager, Dan Grady, called detective Jennifer O’Neill of the Homeland Defense Bureau of the Phoenix Police Department and told her of the impending event. The two of them were primarily concerned that activists who had recently formed the group Occupy Phoenix might try to disrupt the event—or otherwise inconvenience Dimon.

O’Neill made it her job to monitor possible “terrorist” activity by Occupy Phoenix connected with Dimon’s visit.

The monitoring of social media for JPMorgan Chase is just a glimpse into the widespread snooping on Occupy activists that Arizona law enforcement engaged in, often on behalf of the private sector.

O’Neill serves as the coordinator of the “Community Liaison Program” of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, which is the state’s fusion center. That center consists of representatives from the Phoenix, Mesa, and Tempe police departments’ homeland defense units; the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office; the Arizona Department of Public Safety Intelligence Unit; the FBI Arizona Joint Terrorism Task Force; Arizona Infragard, an FBI-business alliance; and Homeland Security. The fusion center received $30,000 in funding from Homeland Security in 2012 for “advertising” its work, and expanding private sector participation in it.

O’Neill often shares intelligence from this center with the security chiefs at banks and other corporations. The stated purpose of the liaison program is to prevent terrorist activity, to identify terrorist threats, protect critical infrastructure, and “create an awareness of localized security issues, challenges, and business interdependencies.” But records indicate that it was often used as an advance warning system to alert corporations and banks of impending Occupy Phoenix protests.

O’Neill had good intelligence on Occupy Phoenix, since the police department had sent an undercover cop to attend some of the earliest meetings of the group. The impostor presented himself as a homeless Mexican national named Saul DeLara, and he attended the Occupy Phoenix planning meeting held on October 2 at a local coffee shop. He delivered a detailed report on the activists’ plans to Sergeant Tom Van Dorn of the Phoenix Police Department’s Major Offender Bureau Career Criminal Squad. Meanwhile, the Phoenix Police Department was continually monitoring the group’s Facebook page at the urging of Van Dorn.

The Phoenix Police Department held an “Occupy Arizona Event Planning Meeting” in early October 2011, which was attended by two detectives from the department who also worked as Terrorism Liaison Officers for the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. The Phoenix Convention Center’s head of security was also invited to the meeting. The department came up with an “incident action plan” to handle protests, which included “mass arrest” teams and the possible formation of a “mobile field force” or “tactical response unit” empowered to use pepper spray and chemical agents.

Detective Christopher “CJ” Wren, one of the Terrorism Liaison Officers, was designated as the “group supervisor” of the incident action plan. He worked with the Phoenix Fire Department as well as the Phoenix Drug Enforcement Bureau, which assigned thirteen undercover vice unit officers to the Occupy Phoenix events.

The Phoenix Police Department was also working closely with the Downtown Phoenix Partnership. That group “exists to strengthen Downtown Phoenix development and to encourage an environment of activity, energy, and vitality,” says its website. Among its board members are executives from such financial institutions as the Alliance Bank of Arizona, the consulting firm Ernst & Young, the huge mining company Freeport-McMoRan, and Republic Media, which owns the state’s largest newspaper, The Arizona Republic, as well as the Phoenix NBC affiliate.

The Phoenix Police Department called this downtown group a “strategic partner” in preparation for Occupy Phoenix events. The police department briefed downtown banks about planned protests and, according to one document, vowed that it would continue to work with them on this issue.

On October 14, about 300 protesters assembled at Civic Space Park in downtown Phoenix and marched peacefully to Chase Tower, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo Plaza. The police made no arrests that day.

On October 15, some 1,000 protesters gathered in Cesar Chavez Plaza, and several hundred of them marched to a nearby park, where police officers began issuing warnings to protesters to disperse at 11 p.m. The police arrested forty-five protesters for refusing to leave the park, and three more at Cesar Chavez Plaza—one for trespassing and two for “creating an unsafe hazard in the street.”

The Phoenix Police Department spent $245,200.08 in taxpayer funds on the policing of Occupy Phoenix between October 14 and October 16, 2011, according to the documents obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy.

But that wasn’t the end of the surveillance. In an October 17 e-mail, the Phoenix Police Department assistant chief in charge of the Homeland Security Division, Tracy Montgomery, asked another officer to “gather intel” from “folks monitoring social media, and any other intel streams and give an update on our potential for ongoing ‘Occupy’ protests this week” and insisted on figuring out a “plan for monitoring these individuals long term.”

The long-term monitoring meant police were watching Occupy Phoenix members’ Facebook conversations and personal social media use well into 2012.

One member of the Phoenix Police Department seemed to do little else during the fall of 2011 and much of 2012 besides keeping tabs on Occupy Phoenix. Brenda Dowhan is with the department’s Homeland Defense Bureau and serves as a Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards intelligence analyst with the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. Much of her work involved the monitoring of social media sites such as Facebook to track individuals connected to Occupy Phoenix. She distributed the information she gathered to other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.

“Tracking the activities of Occupy Phoenix is one of my daily responsibilities,” Dowhan wrote in one e-mail to FBI agent Alan McHugh. “My primary role is to look at the social media, websites, and blogs. I just wanted to put it out there so that if you would like me to share with you or you have something to share, we can collaborate.”

During the October 2011 events, she drafted alerts to Downtown Phoenix Partnership Members and advised other business members to contact police if they experienced “problems with demonstrators.”

When a Mesa detective told her that a Mesa city councilmember had said that he had been invited to join a Bank of America protest by members of Occupy Phoenix, Dowhan alerted other officers at the Phoenix Police Department and at the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center.

On November 3, 2011, the Mesa Police Department’s Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Unit issued a bulletin on “Bank Transfer Day,” the nationwide effort by the Occupy movement to get people to withdraw funds from the giant banks. O’Neill contacted Dowhan and asked whether there was “anything downtown banks need to know that would be more beneficial.” Dowhan responded: “Occupy Phoenix just updated their page saying that they will be marching to Wells Fargo, B of A [Bank of America], and Chase Tower. They are supposed to hold a ‘credit card shredding ceremony,’ but we haven’t identified which bank they will be doing that at. We will have to monitor their FB [Facebook].”

To facilitate Dowhan’s work, other Phoenix police officers regularly fed her logs containing the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, physical descriptions, driver’s licenses, and home addresses of citizens arrested, issued citations, or even given warnings by police in connection with Occupy Phoenix.

Dowhan also used facial recognition technology to try to identify individuals believed to be involved with the Occupy group. Dowhan grabbed photographs of activists on Facebook and then ran them through their facial recognition system.

Here is one example of the use of facial recognition. On November 18, 2011, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center got an anonymous tip about an “Occupy nut” who was allegedly making vague violent threats. “Since I’m aware no crime has technically been committed,” the tipster wrote, “I’ve got an actual crime for you as well: illegal possession/use of marijuana. I’ve seen her smoking it on camera. I will attempt to get a picture in the future.” The tipster proceeded to get a photograph of the activist at her computer.

Dowhan tried to take it from there. “We have a Facebook photo and tried to do facial recognition, but she was wearing glasses,” wrote Dowhan in a December 23 e-mail.

Dowhan didn’t confine herself to Arizona. She compiled a spreadsheet from data supplied by thirty-one fusion centers from around the country of the emerging Occupy movement in fifty cities and twenty-six states. Whatever the excitement this work might generate for a busybody like Dowhan, a summary of that report noted that “the vast majority of the participants have been peaceful, cooperative, and law abiding.”

One citizen who complained about the Phoenix Police Department’s crackdown on Occupy immediately became a subject of inquiry by the department. On December 14, 2011, a concerned citizen by the name of David Mullin wrote an e-mail to the department.

“Dear Sir or Madam,” the e-mail began. “Please consider leaving the Occupy movement alone. They speak for me and I suspect a large portion of America who are upset with corporate greed and the ability to purchase politicians and their votes. We are going to take America back for its citizens, and it would probably be better for your careers not to get in the way. Thanks, David Mullin.”

Mullin was apparently reacting to a police raid on Occupy Phoenix’s small camp in Cesar Chavez Plaza on December 8, when police arrested six activists on charges of violating the city’s “urban camping” ordinance.

Within minutes of sending his e-mail, Mullin caught the attention of the Phoenix Police Department’s assistant chief in charge of the Homeland Security Division, Tracy Montgomery, who wrote in an e-mail: “Interesting e-mail threatening our careers. Anyone know the name?”

That very evening, the department’s Homeland Defense Bureau commander, Geary Brase, told Lieutenant Lawrence Hein to have someone check out the e-mail. That someone was Dowhan.

At 6:51 the next morning, Dowhan e-mailed a link to Mullin’s Facebook page to Hein. One fellow officer sent Dowhan a note of congratulation: “Great work Brenda!”

As she continued her spy work, Dowhan became concerned that she might be detected online and asked her superiors if they could get her a “clean computer,” possibly one with an “anonymizer.”

Meanwhile, Dowhan’s undercover colleague, Saul DeLara, was having a harder time remaining anonymous.

In July 2011, a Phoenix-area activist, Ian Fecke-Stoudt, mentioned that “a creepy guy who looked like he was probably a cop” had been hanging around Conspire, a coffeehouse in downtown Phoenix. (In 2010, it won the title of “Best Hangout for Anarchists, Revolutionaries, and Dreamers” by the Phoenix New Times but has since gone out of business.)

According to Fecke-Stoudt, the man was clean-cut and middle-aged. He introduced himself as “Saul DeLara.” Despite a fit appearance, he claimed to be homeless—and commented frequently on trouble he had had with police during his life on the street. He said he was a native of Juarez, Mexico, but seldom disclosed any other details of his personal life other than to mention that he had ties to anarchists there.

In an October 3 e-mail, Sergeant Van Dorn of the department’s Major Offender Program wrote that “Saul attended the ‘#OccupyPhoenix’ meeting at Conspire on 10/2.” Van Dorn circulated DeLara’s notes of items from the meeting. One item the activists mentioned was “working with police.” They even discussed making “You are one of us signs.” In a November 3 e-mail, Van Dorn wrote: “Saul will be spending today and tomorrow hanging out in the Plaza and with the Anarchists to try and gather additional information.”

DeLara continued to inform on Phoenix activists until November 9, 2011. In his final month, much of his attention was centered on a pending protest against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). That protest, which occurred on November 30, took place outside the gates of the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, where ALEC was holding its States and Nation Policy Summit.

ALEC claims to have 2,000 state lawmakers as members, who meet with representatives from the nation’s leading corporations and conservative think tanks to come up with “model” legislation. It has sparked criticism in recent years for disseminating voter ID bills and especially “Stand Your Ground” legislation, which created a controversy following the 2012 shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

In Arizona, activists denounced ALEC for promoting the “No More Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act.” The nation’s leading operator of for-profit prisons and immigrant detention facilities—Corrections Corporation of America—was a longstanding member and underwriter of the ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force. The second and third largest private prison and detention center operators—the Geo Group and the Management and Training Corporation—also have had ALEC ties.

And so, when law enforcement got wind of the ALEC protest, it sent Saul on a mission.

An e-mail to police higher ups about that meeting stated: “Bosses: Saul attended an organizational meeting for the disrupt ALEC movement last night at [redacted]. The flyers they handed out for upcoming meetings, locations, and planned events can all be found on their website. . . . Members of the Occupy movement are joining in the effort to protest and disrupt at the ALEC conference as well. Information to follow on their FB [Facebook] page soon. . . . Because ALEC helped write/sponsor SB1070, the Hispanic community is joining in on the efforts as well. . . . In addition to the Kierland Resort several other locations are being targeted for disruption and are listed on the above website.”

Members of the Phoenix Police Department met with the head of security for the Westin Kierland at the Arizona fusion center to go over the upcoming ALEC protest. And the Phoenix Police Department came up with a “Face Sheet” about activists involved in the planning for the ALEC protest. Fecke-Stoudt was on it, with his driver’s license photo. So too was Jason Ohdner, a Quaker street medic who was present at the November 9 ALEC protest meeting.

But DeLara’s time as an infiltrator was up. After the meeting, an immigrants’ rights activist approached him and confronted him about his life as a cop. According to the activist, she had worked as a barista at a Phoenix Starbucks years ago that DeLara often patronized. When she confronted him, DeLara denied having ever seen her before and angrily denied being a cop. Nevertheless, word of DeLara’s law enforcement background spread, blowing his cover. While he was at it, though, he rubbed elbows not only with members of Occupy Phoenix and the ALEC protesters but also with faith-based organizations and immigrant and indigenous rights groups.

Here is the response the Phoenix Police Department gave me to questions I asked about DeLara and its tracking of the Occupy movement.

“Occupy presented itself with a great deal of civil unrest over a long period of time," wrote Sergeant Trent Crump in an e-mail to me. “We monitored available Intel during that time, as it is used for Intel-driven policing. Intel dictated resources and response tactics to address, mitigate, and manage the ongoing activity, which was fluid and changing day to day. This approach ensured that citizens could exercise their rights, but with our efforts of protecting the community and their property at the same time. I will not confirm any information about a possible plainclothes or undercover officer of this department.”

The Arizona fusion center’s and the Phoenix Police Department’s obsession with the Occupy movement and the ALEC protest led them to monitor a visit by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. He was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the “We Are One” conference on December 2, 2011. It was sponsored by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and numerous other labor and civil rights groups.

Phoenix police officers working with the fusion center noted that Jackson got to town early and met with members of Occupy Phoenix on November 30.

“At approximately 2100 hour, Jessie [sic] Jackson and a few staff members arrived at the protest and spoke with demonstrators,” an internal police department e-mail states. “He stayed for a little more than an hour, and a couple of media outlets arrived and filmed the visit.”

The police department’s counter-terrorism officers were concerned that Jackson was also going to join the ALEC protests and participate in an Occupy Phoenix march to the offices of Freeport-McMoRan. (Freeport-McMoRan served as a sponsor for the ALEC State and Nation Policy Summit.)

Jackson did go to those events. When the crowd got to the Freeport-McMoRan building, Jackson said, “We are the people who care about and love this country,” according to the Downtown Devil, a student newspaper of Arizona State University’s Phoenix campus. “March on day after day until there isjustice and love and healing in the land.” The march headed to Cesar Chavez Plaza, where Jackson added: “Occupy is a spirit—a spirit of patriotism and democracy. That spirit cannot be jailed or pepper-sprayed.”

The intrusive and ridiculously wasteful anti-terrorism effort in Phoenix is just one snapshot in a huge album of information that DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy have uncovered about law enforcement and counterterrorism resources being used to track peaceful protesters. According to the documents, police departments around the country, along with the FBI, were monitoring the Occupy movement.

They also were coordinating their responses. On October 11, 2011, “representatives from thirteen police agencies took part in a telephone conference to address shared concerns” about “the growing protests,” said one e-mail circulating in the Phoenix Police Department. “The conference call ended with the understanding of continued efforts by all agencies involved to work together to come up with effective strategies to address issues that arise from the Occupy Wall Street protests in future days and weeks.”

And the documents reveal that law enforcement, from Homeland Security and the U.S. Capitol Police Office of Intelligence Analysis down to the Phoenix Police Department, monitored activists who opposed the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the President the right to toss any person into jail and deprive that person of due process.

The documents obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy jibe with other evidence about the role of Homeland Security, the FBI, and local law enforcement in tracking the Occupy movement and other leftwing activism.

An early April release of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund shows that Homeland Security included in its daily intelligence briefing a report on “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations.” Their documents note that the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential terrorist threat. They show Homeland Security surveillance of protests in Asheville, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Jacksonville, Jersey City, Lincoln, Miami, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City.

What emerges is a “disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

Other bits of the story have come from various news organizations, including WikiLeaks. In February of 2012, it released a Department of Homeland Security document, dated October 2011, that was entitled “Special Coverage: Occupy Wall Street.” The first sentence, in bold, reads: “Mass gatherings associated with public protest movements can have disruptive effects on transportation, commercial, and government services, especially when staged in major metropolitan areas. Large scale demonstrations also carry the potential for violence, presenting a significant challenge for law enforcement.”

It noted “the peaceful nature of the protests,” but warned that “the growing support for the OWS movement has . . . increased the potential for violence.” The document, first reported on by Rolling Stone, concluded that “heightened and continuous situational awareness” was required.

The surveillance of the Occupy movement is part of an alarming pattern of infringement of Americans’ civil liberties since 9/11. Law enforcement agents from campus police all the way up to the National Guard and the Pentagon have gotten into the act, treating lawful political protest as tantamount to terrorism. The creation of Joint Terrorism Task Forces and fusion centers has spawned the widespread sharing of personal information on perfectly innocent demonstrators. The close relationship between these law enforcement groups and the private sector (as well as the FBI-business association Infragard) has blurred their allegiances.

Fusion centers, in particular, have become founts of faulty information. An October 2012 report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs concluded that “fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality—oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” In fact, in the thirteen-month period that the committee studied fusion centers, it concluded that it “could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat.

Matthew Rothschild is editor of The Progressive. Read the full DBA Press/Center for Media and Democracy report on Sourcewatch: http://ows.sourcewatch.org. And read the full report and view the document archive on DBA Press: http://dbapress.com/dissent-or-terror.