UNDER SURVEILLANCE
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Source: Yes! Weekly (NC Triad)
Anyone who has ever been involved in grassroots organizing, a social movement or activism has probably wondered at least once, if not frequently, about if they are being watched. Though police surveillance is no secret uniformed officers regularly videotape legal protests, for example what happens with the intelligence is usually a mystery to the public.
Eventually the curiosity got to me, and I filed a request with the city for e-mail records with my name as the keyword. Ive never been arrested, but I knew assumptions of surveillance werent just paranoia.
The results were disappointing there was almost no information about police surveillance so I kept digging. The departments criminal intelligence work is shrouded in mystery, and the lack of transparency made me determined to see what else I could find.
In some cases, the documents were jarring police infiltration of Occupy Greensboro, a council member reporting on activist meetings and a list of the surveillance successes at an anarchist conference in town.
Read more: http://www.yesweekly.com/triad/article-15466-un-der-su-rvei-llance.html
This is a local story, but with national implications since it seems all our local police departments have their own little STASI wannabes wasting taxpayer resources looking for fake criminals while ignoring real crime.
I was involved in the Occupy movement in my area and am now quite sure I have a "file" with these idiots and will be subject to "scrutiny" in the future. The most aggravating aspect of this story is that a local politician used the Occupy movement to help get herself elected to the city council by sucking up to them, all the while she was ratting us out to the police.
slackmaster
(60,567 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)I had a run in with either an undercover USSS agent or a GPD cop during Obama's visit to Greensboro at the beginning of the OGSO actions.
They were desperately trying to provoke me into something they could arrest me for.
Assholes.
slackmaster
(60,567 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)"You can't fix stupid."
aptal
(304 posts)Welcome to the police state.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)but when I point that out, I am set upon by folks calling me provocative and/or alarmist. They get especially upset when I say it has gotten worse under Obama.
aptal
(304 posts)I sure hasn't gotten any better.
forestpath
(3,102 posts)rwsanders
(2,598 posts)Nicholson's character, to the end, believed he was protecting the country without realizing that he was destroying the principles it was founded on.
I think there needs to be an internet campaign to educate the police, the CIA, the NSA, etc. that not only to we not want them, we don't need them. That they are the danger to the constitution. If they want to monitor something, give them something to monitor. a website that states what they are doing and how it is wrong in terms a 5 year old could understand.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)See what come up. Create your own NSA file, if you don't have one already!
patrice
(47,992 posts)(and going to DOE hearings, and tracking weapons trains, and standing shouting on street corners, and yelling at candidates at meets-&-greets, and . . . )
I don't give a crap what the government knows about me and I decided whatever they do know is worth what I do.
What I resent is employers right to discriminate against me; it's called "at will" employment and I know I'm not the only one who has ever lost employment over my religious and/or political views.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)after DU front paged an installment of my 9/11 series, "How U.S. Counterterrorism Failed on 9/11" in September 2002. http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/26_failed.html I didn't work there very long thereafter. At my next job it was an FBI Counterterrorism Task Force agent who bumped his sidearm on my desk, just to make some sort of point. That job also quickly ended.
I guess I'm in pretty good company when it comes to that sort of thing, patrice.
patrice
(47,992 posts)be keeping good company!
Out now to go help out with a women's international event scheduled for Valentine's Day.
Talk to you later, leveymg.
formercia
(18,479 posts)The 'Boys' like to do that.
Wherever I go, there's always an entourage not far behind, ready to 'brief' anyone I make any substantial contact with. This has been going on for decades at who knows how much expense. It quit bothering me a long time ago.
I enjoy dragging them along on snipe hunts, just to know how miserable it is for them.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)When I was a student of Howard Zinn's at a Boston area university I organized busloads of demonstrators to attend Reagan's First Inauguration. Actually, a really nice day was had by all, including George Bush Sr. who poked his head out the sunroof of the armored limo as he passed the designated protest area they placed right in the shadow of the Hoover FBI Bldg. Anyway, Bush gave us all jabbing thumbs sideways as he rolled past. The crowd gave him stiff armed salutes in response.
My step-father who was federal agency mucky-muck got a courtesy call from the Boston FBI Office trying to wave me off my school assignment.
And, then, there was the anti-nuclear protest at the Seabrook, NH power plant and my Op-ed that got published in The Boston Globe about my adventures being chased around the woods by State Troopers and National Guardsmen during the occupation. That was back in the days when protestors could actually get onto a nuclear plant property without getting machine-gunned. That was in my Sophomore year studying with Zinn.
I got an A+ from Howard.
WHEN CRABS ROAR
(3,813 posts)Been an activist since the early sixties and have often looked directly into the eyes of the watchers, even knew some of them, with their assumed names.
Always wondered why peace upset and threatened them so much.
patrice
(47,992 posts)and became more active when I returned to university once the kids were big enough to go to school.
I was sensitized on the issues anyway by the '60s and by debating in highschool on an NFL topic having to do with controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world, so when I met Plow Shares in college, I was ready to go!!!
It was also a natural progression from nuclear weapons to environmental issues; though I knew of John Kennedy, I didn't become specifically political, as in identifying with a political party, until Bobby Kennedy.
I think if I'm going to be so obnoxious about a change that I want to see in the world, a BIG change that will affect EVERYTHING about everyone, present and future, I don't think it unreasonable that those whose ear I demand should know as much about me as possible.
I understand the privacy issues and don't disagree; I just don't personally care about it, for myself, except as it can affect my employment.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)identified.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)I have a MAJOR problem with police wasting taxpayer dollars spying on people who pose little to no threat to society.
loudsue
(14,087 posts)then you haven't been fully informed about how subversive we are considered to be. Anyone on DU who is consistently liberal in their views has a file.
On edit: Not you, personally, Dave. I know full and well you are informed.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Good to see you again.
I am pretty sure I know have a file with the USSS since I tried to present a bundle of letters from OGSO to Obama last year while he was in Greensboro.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)along with long-handled tennis rackets.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)snot
(10,524 posts)We're certainly less dangerous than actual criminals, at least to the individual surveillers (though not less dangerous to their masters' megalomaniacal goals).
Rhiannon12866
(205,309 posts)Interesting article, though, so please consider reposting in GD or Good Reads. Thanks!