We’re Being Watched

[Joe Shlabotnik]

How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists

In February 2010 Tom Jiunta and a small group of residents in northeastern Pennsylvania formed the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC), an environmental organization opposed to hydraulic fracturing in the region. The group sought to appeal to the widest possible audience, and was careful about striking a moderate tone. All members were asked to sign a code of conduct in which they pledged to carry themselves with “professionalism, dignity, and kindness” as they worked to protect the environment and their communities. GDAC’s founders acknowledged that gas drilling had become a divisive issue misrepresented by individuals on both sides and agreed to “seek out the truth.”

The group of about 10 professionals – engineers, nurses, and teachers – began meeting in the basement of a member’s home. As their numbers grew, they moved to a local church. In an effort to raise public awareness about the risks of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) they attended township meetings, zoning and ordinance hearings, and gas-drilling forums. They invited speakers from other states affected by gas drilling to talk with Pennsylvania residents. They held house-party style screenings of documentary films.

Since the group had never engaged in any kind of illegal activity or particularly radical forms of protest, it came as a shock when GDAC members learned that their organization had been featured in intelligence bulletins compiled by a private security firm, The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR). Equally shocking was the revelation that the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security had distributed those bulletins to local police chiefs, state, federal, and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and PR firms. News of the surveillance broke in September 2010 when the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, James Powers, mistakenly sent an email to an anti-drilling activist he believed was sympathetic to the industry, warning her not to post the bulletins online. The activist was Virginia Cody, a retired Air Force officer. In his email to Cody, Powers wrote: “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.”

The tri-weekly bulletins featured a wide range of supposed threats to the state’s infrastructure. It included warnings about Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, pro-life activists, and Tea Party protesters. The bulletins also included information about when and where groups like GDAC would be meeting, upcoming protests, and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy. The raw data was followed by a threat assessment – low, moderate, severe, or critical – and a brief analysis.

Much more at: http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/we_are_being_watched/

A very good read. Just what return on investment do corporations spending $100 Billion/year for security and intelligence expect? They expect to win; decisively. How far will they go?

[lastlib]

1. EVERYBODY needs to read this!!! Can you pls cross-post to GD?

This is important, folks. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but this sent chills down my spine! It is SCARY sh1t!

[limpyhobbler]

2. We must spy on people with ideas, because ideas could lead to activism, and activism could lead to

terrorism

From the article

“What changed after 9/11,” the ACLU’s German says, “was the lowering of the threshold for FBI investigations and the promulgation of these radicalization theories that while specifically written about Muslim extremists – the same theory that people move from ideas to activism to terrorism – justified increased surveillance against activists and against people who were just part of the environmental rights movement but had no association with violence or criminal acts.”

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/we_are_being_watched/


They're using the terrorism scare to intimidate eco-activists. Much the same way they used the communism scare to intimidate labor and civil rights activists in the 20th century. It's crap I tell ya.

It's straight out of 1984. "Big Brother is watching you". So watch what you say and try not to draw attention to yourself.

Thought police be gone.

[SamKnause]

3. Watched

How far will they go you ask ?

Murder
coups
wars
assassinations
sabotage
propaganda
deliberate lies

[JimDandy]

4. Off to the greatest with thee.

Just stunning...Homeland security protecting fracking companies and their shareholders. Wow. No conflict of interest there.

[RobertEarl]

5. Not new to me

Last edited Wed May 29, 2013, 06:03 PM - Edit history (1)

A group of us were wiretapped 15 years ago. In 2001 the FBI was pouncing on enviro-activists all over the US. It goes with the territory when you might cost somebody some serious money.

It is one reason suffering enviro-fools is so hard to do. We enviro-activists have enough battles, eh?

[happyslug]

6. If you read Labor history, this would NOT be new to anyone.

Now, the use of Computers are new, but the basic concepts of looking at moderate groups is very old. Companies now the Labor movement grew out of larger, non-labor groups for example Churches, Beneficial societies, and just the local bar. People would meet at these organizations and find other people with similar problems and talk about them. Then they would get together with others to talk about the problems, and other would join them. Next thing you knew, you had a Union demanding a solution to the problems of its members.

Thus for decades, bars in areas around Steel mills or coal mines were either company owned, or so in league with Management that the people who ran those bars would report what people in the bar were doing (In fact one of the reason for the massive support for Prohibition was do to how these bars were used to control labor and voters).

Prohibition weakened the control of the Bars in company towns and along with the Wagner Act which made many of the previous actions of management illegal, thus you did not hear of these activities that much in the Post WWII era.

On Management was still anti-Union, but they decided other tactics to handle Labor was required. One wasy was Management's embracing the Automobile for its workers. Technically the automobile permitted workers to move away from the old company towns and thus gave more "Freedom" to the workers, but on the other hand it was no longer easy to walk into the bar on the way home and talk to your fellow workers. Once in a car, the driver had to find parking, hard to find in the old Coal and Mill towns, so the workers stop meeting except in formal meetings called by the Union. Formation of Unions AND its real strength was in the ties form in the informal after work meetings, not the formal union meetings at the Union Hall. Automobiles help destroy such meetings and thus a movement to the Suburbs, which required a car, was encouraged by management.

DISCLAIMER: I do not want to sound sexist or racists, but the next observations can and have been so construed. Thus these items are often "Taboo" to mention when in comes to organizing. In labor relations Management relies on this "Taboo" so these are not mentioned, thus making it easier to use these anti-union activities to prevent formation of a union or even to break a union. Please notes the following are Tendencies not absolute rules. Mother Jones was a well known union organizers, as while Cesar Chavez (Who organized the Farm Workers in California).

Women:

Women tend to be more individualistic then men. Yes, right wing men like to say they are "individualistic" but in most cases they belong to groups because they want to belong to something. Women tend to NOT join unions (through often support they Husband's participation in Unions). Unions learned this and was one of the forces to get women out of the work force in the late 1930s to the 1960s. Despite these efforts, various "Pink Ghettos" developed from the 1930s onward, secretaries, teaching, nursing, health care workers etc. Some of these groups did organize unions (Teachers and Nurses are the biggest groups) but most women tend NOT to form a union (i.e. join an existing union, but NOT do what is required to form a union).

Hispanic and African Americans:

Hispanics are another group that tends NOT to join unions. On the other hand African Americans are quick to form and join an union. African American have learned through their history the only way they received anything was when they were organized, and thus see the advantage to be a member of a union. Hispanics tend to be ex-farmers and thus have less of a history of working with others for the general good, thus less likely to join a Union.

The above "Trends" leads to Management who wants to avoid unionization to avoid African Americans (Easier then you think) hire Hispanics, and often prefer to hire women over men (and is one of the reasons women earn less then men, the most anti-Union companies tend to be the same companies that want to pay their workers the least and thus tend to hire more women then men).

People from certain backgrounds are suspect, people from Union Households (or people from areas with high union membership), people who read certain books (and today certain web sites), people who join certain groups (mostly groups that help their fellow citizens, for example I once talked to a Social Security Administrative Law Judge and his comment was a lot of the old time locals did not join in the Soccer Leagues that were becoming popular locally. I told him that was the result of the old coal mine owners NOT hiring people who were "Joiners". "Joiners" are people who volunteer to help out the Local Little League, any better community group, and other similar non-labor related groups. "Joiners" not only tend to join and form such groups, they also join and form unions. In many ways Churches were suspect for the same reason, thus tolerated only if their members behaved themselves in the old coal towns).

If you read about the Homestead Strike of 1892 and its aftermath, you see that the Union was formed by the same people who formed all of the social groups in Homestead. That afterward these same groups slowly died as the workers who had formed them were terminated. By 1919 Homestead had become a place that would make the old Soviet Union look like a haven of Free Speech and Freedom of assembly. This was typical of the Coal and Mill Towns of the US from the 1860s till the 1930s. Spies and informers were everywhere. Everything was reported to the Company. If you were thought to be a union organizer you were even NOT allowed within the City Limits (during the 1930s the US Secretary of Labor could NOT find a place to make a Speech in Homestead, for it was ILLEGAL by local law, she had to make her speech on the steps of the US Post Office, being a Federal Building and her being a Federal Official the only place she could give a speech AND NOT BE ARRESTED FOR IT).

After WWII, such actions were no longer tolerated (Through if it could be labeled "Communist, it was NOT tolerated and you be surprised what was labeled "Communist), but other efforts were adopted (In many ways the Red Scare was more an anti-union action then it was a fight against Communists).

Just some comment, that such invasion of privacy has always been the rule in Corporate America. It was downplayed till Reagan and NOT officially done on a large scale till after 9/11, but it has always been done.