How the Government Targeted Occupy

[marmar]

from In These Times:


How the Government Targeted Occupy
A new report reveals that the U.S. spent millions of dollars spying on Occupiers and other anti-corporate activists.

BY Lisa Graves


[font size="1"]Demonstrators take part in an Occupy Wall Street protest march in New York City's Financial District on September 26, 2011. (Paul Stein, Flickr/Creative Commons)[/font]


Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

In our new report, “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” written by Center for Media and Democracy contributor and DBA Press publisher Beau Hodai, we detail several ways in which our tax dollars are being squandered on law enforcement—or so-called “homeland security”—personnel monitoring Americans who dare to voice dissent against the extraordinary influence that some of the world's most powerful corporations have on on our elected officials.

Through this investigation we have documented:

* How U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded “fusion center” personnel have spent endless hours gleefully monitoring their fellow Americans though Facebook and other social media, and how fusion centers nationwide have expended countless hours and tax dollars in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street, bank activists and civil libertarians concerned about national security powers.
* How some of these “counter terrorism” government employees applied facial recognition technology, drawing from a state database of driver's license photos, to photographs found on Facebook in the effort to profile citizens believed to be associated with activist groups.
* How corporations have become part of the “information sharing environment” with law enforcement/intelligence agencies through various public-private intelligence sharing partnerships—and how, through these partnerships, the homeland security apparatus has been focused on citizens protesting these corporations.

.............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15028/how_the_government_targeted_occupy/

[villager]

1. Good ol' hope and change!

n/t

[gopiscrap]

2. Yup nothing like making the greedy fucking

multi national corporations nervous!

[Addison]

3. Download the report

It's worth a look.

That OWS was as successful in raising public awareness as it was, considering the overwhelming law enforcement stacked against it, says a lot about the resonance of its message.

[dreamnightwind]

4. Link here

http://www.prwatch.org/files/Dissent%20or%20Terror%20FINAL_0.pdf

[applegrove]

5. Which they did because Occupy groups practice civil disobedience and such. Just like

the IRS looked into the tea party groups where some of the phony baloney charities could be found. See...government doing different things depending on the way groups break rules. That being said I don't see the government spying on the Koch brothers as they plot to destroy the the middle class.

[forestpath]

6. The Obama administration's mission is to serve and protect the 1%. Period.

[TXleigh]

7. I'm not disagreeing with anything in the article you posted but...

I never really understood what the specific goals of the OWS movement are/were. I tried looking into the websites, and watching quite a few interviews of the participants but neither provided any sort of concrete explanation. To go further I went to the occupy site in downtown Dallas as when it was in full swing and tried asking some of the protesters what their mission in being there was. It would be an understatement to say that I was less than impressed with the respondents and the answers they gave (A lot of people who couldn't provide any specific reason why they were there, rampant incoherent rambling, anti-democracy private-college students, and screw people who make money diatribe). I would be very appreciative if someone could give me some insight as to what the specific goals of the organization are. TIA!

[Addison]

8. I hear you

I never went to an OWS encampment, but I generally supported them.

Every movement will have "groupies" who aren't sure why they're there and are just living out some personal narrative. That however doesn't mean the movement is without a true philosophy or goals.

Wars are not so different; how many soldiers really understand the origins of the conflict they're in and their leaders' objectives? In most wars, it's very, very few.

Nevertheless I think a pretty clear message came out of OWS, namely that a very small minority of Americans enjoy disproportionate control over the economy and the government, and that this is corrosive of democracy. That's a powerful message that has been stated not just by OWS, but in every generation of every democracy going back to ancient Greece.

Average Americans are so engrossed in the rat race and need to make a living and/or the bread and circuses of mass media that it took a very symbolic act -- group takeover of the public square -- to get this ancient message across.

It's a message worthy of consideration, and under the right circumstances and for the right reasons, action.