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In the United States at least, there are recent well documented cases of this exact tactic:
2008 Democratic Party Convention
2004 Republican Party Convention
Older uses of the same tactic are included in the reports of the Church Committee.
But yeah, that's all wild conspiracy theories.

One of the basic rules of political protest: If you're at a peaceful demonstration, and somebody starts suggesting violence, (A) don't listen to him and certainly don't take his advice, (B) identify him as likely police, and (C) make sure protest organizers are alerted to what's going on.

I BREAK FOR WATER BOARDING! :: PsyOps ::
+ http://www.pipeline.com/~psywarrior :: The Office of Strategic Services :::
+ http://guardianspies.com/
+ http://osssociety.org/
+ http://ossreborn.com/
+ http://ossog.org/
+ http://ossinitaly.org/
+ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/oss.htm :: CIA ::
+ http://www.zoklet.net/totse/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/index.html
+ http://cryptome.org/0005/cia-iqt-spies.htm
+ http://www.youtube.com/user/ciagov
+ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov
+ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004145-1,00.html
+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUBARK
+ https://www.cia.gov/ ::: WoW! :::
+ http://publicintelligence.net/
+ http://cryptocomb.org/
+ http://www.cryptome.org/
+ http://www.cryptogon.com/
+ http://afio.com/
+ http://www.afcea.org/signal/signalscape/
+ http://rijmenants.blogspot.com/

He was quoting, actually. From a COINTELPRO report. Made famous by the Rage Against the Machine song, which was featured in The Matrix. The actual line can be heard at about 5 minutes in.

It's a situation where the Tea Party has been trying for the last 50 or more years to overthrow the government under various names like the American Liberty League, or the John Birch Society. They now are forming militias controlled by industrialists like the Koch Bro's which was a similar tactic to the one they used in the attempted coup of FDR during the infamous business plot.

And of course that resulted in COINTELPRO.

If you want to know how the Feds are going to handle this situation just look at how they handled it in the 60s. The church committee report details what the feds could do in the 1960s. Joel Byran Harris is an ordinary individual who pissed off a high level bank executive in the 1990s and he has been subject to a constant harassment and psychological operation ever since.

Here are the links for anyone who thinks I'm full of it.

http://www.jbhfile.com/index.html [jbhfile.com] and http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm [icdc.com]

Just ban them from listening in on Americans, as an official policy, and don't worry about it.

I'm sorry but that's purely wishful thinking on your part.

In 1976, the Church Committee reports found NSA obtained copies of millions of private telegrams sent from, to or through the United States in its SHAMROCK program.

On August 17, 2006, District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled in ACLU v. NSA that NSA violated the First and Fourth amendment by warrantless tapping American citizens in the aftermath of 9/11.

In April 2009, intelligence officials admits that NSA had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. In one extreme case they even wiretapped a congressmen while he was overseas.

Please note that I am not wearing tinfoil hats and all my sources came from either from Congressional hearings or court rulings.

Many American's, whether they are democrat or republican aren't very happy with Obama because he promised two major things with healthcare: he would not force people to buy insurance and that he would televise healthcare discussions with insurance and big pharma companies.

He did a complete 180 on both of those promises. Many democrats realize what Congressman Dennis Kucinich said, that the current healthcare bills are bailouts to the insurance companies and wall street.

On topic for the FBI; they have always broken the law in very deliberate ways. Go read about the FBI's COINTELPRO operations.

You can watch this documentary: COINTELPRO: The FBI's war on black America

Or you can read this Church Committee Report on how the FBI illegally spied on Martin Luther King Jr. for years, using the Communist scare to justify their actions (the more things that change...)

There are plenty of legitimate reasons why people don't trust their government and it has nothing to do with what color fish people enjoy consuming. This country was founded on the principle of treating government actions with a large dose of skepticism.

In practical reality, our society relies on corporate input to serve the people as well as accumulate wealth in the country.

No. The sole desire of large publicly-traded corporations is to grow, not to "serve the people". And the wealth they accumulate goes to a minority owning class, doing little for most of the country.

(Yes, there's some trickle down. But the fact that poor people can benefit by eating scraps out of the trash cans of the nobility, is no reason to not overthrow the fsckers (peacefully, of course) and institute a more just system where nobody has to eat out of trash cans.)

The corporations do not rule the people.

The corporations rule the government. (Yes, the linked story is from 2005. Let's not pretend things are fundamentally different with Democrats in the majority.) The government, by definition, rules the people.

The government is not out to get you.

Me specifically? Proabably not. (Well, other than that it would put me away for years if it had evidence of all of my "crimes" of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.)

But the government is clearly willing to screw over the middle class and the working class to the benefit of the wealthy.

And it's clearly willing to screw political dissidents who might change the power structure - I direct you to the Church report on COINTELPRO activity, which found that "covert action programs have been used to disrupt the lawful political activities of individual Americans and groups and to discredit them, using dangerous and degrading tactics which are abhorrent in a free and decent society."

Don't pretend it can't happen here - it already has. Many times.

According to James M. Atkinson, a Massachusetts-based expert in counterintelligence who has advised the U.S. Congress on security issues, its not that hard to take remote control of a wireless phone. You do not have to have a strong technical background for someone to do this, he said Tuesday. They probably have a technically gifted kid who probably is in their neighborhood.

According to James M. Atkinson, a Massachusetts-based expert in counterintelligence who has advised the U.S. Congress on security issues, its not that hard to take remote control of a wireless phone. You do not have to have a strong technical background for someone to do this, he said Tuesday. They probably have a technically gifted kid who probably is in their neighborhood.

I'm sure this'll get results. The current executive branch has been pretty respectful of legislative and judicial checks on its power thus far.

I agree with your assessment, that one should not believe everything one reads, but the spying on King and others was well documented by the Church Commision. I only used the previous link because it was succinctly stated and did not wish belabor the reader with unneeded verbosity.

While I believe the actions going after the "whistleblowers" in this case may be quite overzealous. They did release classified information, and that has always been wrong. Whether or not that information should be classified is debatable, and whether or not the government should be collecting it is also debatable. But anyone charged can have that debate during their trial.

That debate is pointless if the law explicitly states that state secrets trump press freedom in all cases. The Chilling Effect is already present and all that is left is for the brave to sacrifice themselves needlessly. I believe that the balance of power should always be in the favor of the people and not in favor of the appointed guardians of the people.

If the Rosenbergs had given the details on the bomb to a newspaper to be printed, instead of handing it over to the Soviets, do you think they should have been protected just because a newspaper has a right to publish under the first amendment?

No, in that case the secret of the state was a particular weapons technology. That we had such a device was already public knowledge. The people in fact had a right to know that we had the bomb once it was used. The implementation details of how to make such a weapon however did not need to be as it was not a significant threat to the liberty of the people to be deprived of such knowledge. No political party or movement could be persecuted or intimidated and democracy is not threatened by nuclear weapon implementation details.

That's an essential difference between these two example. However, a program that spies on the activity of Americans that was kept secret from the people is another thing because it is ripe for abuse. In this case, the state secret is that it is acting in a manner that is arguably counter to the interests of the people. That sort of secret should never be kept.

Given the actions of the current administration against peace groups and the historical precident of what happened to civil rights leaders during the 1960s, I cannot trust the government not to ever use this power against its own citizens for "ends justify the means" purposes.

To let the executive branch should have the power to simply quash all public debate on its actions by slapping a security clearance on its programs is extremely dangerous. It's a Soviet-like power grab. To say that the people do not have a right to know (and thus be able to protest) some of the actions of their government is to forfit all your power over government in these areas. Any place in government where the people do not have control is a crack in the levee and will widen over time as our current adminstration is making more and more clear each day.

And lets not forget the domestic programs like secret spying by the FBI using it's COINTELPRO program against people we regard as heroes now like Dr. Martin Luther King and John Lennon. See:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.h tm

And for recent abuses of the governments shroud of secrecy see:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek /

and

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/index.html

Still think government secrecy is a good idea? Or perhaps world peace and protecting the bill of rights is a little more important than being an apologist for the governments cover ups of it's abuses both here and abroad?

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus. And you've got to make it stop.

Do you actually know anything about the FBI's history, or are you just one of those "corporations are bad, mmm'kay?" types?

Start with COINTELPRO and then tell us more about these "checks and balances". If you're not worried about domestic intelligence abuses then you simply don't have any clue what's going on.

Do you really think this will only be used for its stated purpose? The US government has a long history of spying on the people. See for example, COINTELPRO which "conducted 740,000 investigations of 'subversive matters' and 190,000 investigations of 'extremist matters.'". If any of your acquaintances is acquainted with someone who is being investigated, you can bet you'll be investigated too.

Do you really think this will only be used for its stated purpose? The US government has a long history of spying on the people. See for example, COINTELPRO which "conducted 740,000 investigations of 'subversive matters' and 190,000 investigations of 'extremist matters.'". If any of your acquaintances is acquainted with someone who is being investigated, you can bet you'll be investigated too.

Think of this utopia: The government is honest, never abuses info collected about the people,... Now would you really mind having a lot of data about yourself collected,... Collecting personal data by itself is harmless.

Ok, I'm thinking of your utopia. I'll even make it a better utopia: I'll posit that no business try to hack into the government databases for personal gain. And I'll go so far as to pretend that no government employee with access ever abuses that access for personal reasons.

Now, imagine that your utopia is The Netherlands. And imagine it's not May 15, 2004, but May 15, 1940 -- one day after The Netherlands surrendered to Nazi Germany. Note that in surrendering, The Netherlands legally turned over government control to the Nazis. Presumably that would included your database -- if the Nazis hadn't simply seized it outright.

Your utopian database contains the details of all residents, anyone who might join the Resistance, and all the Jews -- including Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne.
The Frank family managed to hide from the Nazis for two years; how long do you think they'd manage in your "utopia".

Now some will say that there's little chance of Nazi invasions these day, so we should feel safe with "utopian" databases. But it doesn't take a foreign invasion to radically change a government: sometimes it just takes an election, of an Anzar or a Berlusconi or a Blair & Blunkett team or a Bush or a Howard -- or a former war criminal like Waldheim.

Remember COINTELPRO?

you completely missed the AC's point: the problem is not that there are FBI agent outside of the US, the problem is that FBI agent conduct searches outside of the US!

No, I didn't miss the AC's point. Perhaps you didn't read my post clearly, or failed to grasp the implications:

"Legats not only help international police agencies with training activities, they facilitate resolution of the FBI's domestic investigations which have international leads. The Legat program focuses on deterring crime that threatens America such as drug trafficking, international terrorism, and economic espionage."

Seems to me that "facilitating resolution of the FBI's domestic investigations" and "deterring crime that threatens America" might reasonably include FBI searches outside the US.

The FBI has a long and sorry history of conducting illegal searches inside the US -- why would the agency use lesser capabilities abroad?

-kgj

• Studies have shown that camera operators differentially target people who "look like misfits" (predominantly youth and minorities) and tend to ignore others so the cameras are themselves biased and like all biased searches can be fooled by those who appear "normal."
• The data compiled by these cameras is typically retained indefinitely with little or no control on how it is used. Britain has recently faced several court cases surrounding the use of such survaillence data by "its owners" (the people who put up the cameras) for commercial purposes.
• Worse yet a great deal of this data can be and is retained for "fishing expeditions." Not being a Brit I will not comment on UK laws but in the U.S. the FBI has recently recinded a long-standing (self imposed) ban on non-criminal investigations, that is, investigating groups and individuals who have not committed and are not expected to commit crimes. This ban was imposed in the wake of the COINTELPRO wherin the FBI conducted undercover survaillence on and, in some cases sought to disrupt groups such as the Students For a Democratic Society, Martin Luther King's SCLC.
  
  The Survaillence included sending forged letters from Dr King asserting that he was under investigation by the IRS in order to cut off SCLC funding. It also included attempts (sometimes successful) to prompt the firing of teachers (at the University and High-School level), attempts to prevent the distribution of legal books and phamplets, and attempts to distrupt anti-war marches.
  
  One choice quote from the committee is: "One technique used in COINTELPRO involved sending anonymous letters to spouses intended, in the words of one proposal, to 'produce ill-feeling and possibly a lasting distrust' "
  
  In short the FBI used its powers to destroy and discredit groups whose only crime was opposing the current state of affairs and advocating nonviolent means to change it.
  
  I know what you are going to say in response to this so let me anticipate it. Yes, the FBI's COINTEL programs relied on a great deal of legal violations. In carrying out many of these attacks the FBI simply violated the law in order to do what it did.
  
  But, the key point is that the entire operation rested on a massive survaillence effort. The kind of large-scale trawling operations that CCTV and increased electronic survaillence (the FBI used a great deal of warrentless electronic Survaillence for COINTELPRO see here) makes possible. So before you go and say that you trust the government to make us safer keep in mind that the government is a large body of people who have their own agendas and frequently (hell typically) misuse said data.
  
  Consider also the WWII internment of peaceful Japanese-American Citizens by the U.S. Most of these people had committed no crimes, particularly the children, it was the Census that made rounding them up possible (see here).
• As you yourself stated the cameras can only record what has happened. They do not prevent crimes unless one is afraid of them. Smart Criminal

• Studies have shown that camera operators differentially target people who "look like misfits" (predominantly youth and minorities) and tend to ignore others so the cameras are themselves biased and like all biased searches can be fooled by those who appear "normal."
• The data compiled by these cameras is typically retained indefinitely with little or no control on how it is used. Britain has recently faced several court cases surrounding the use of such survaillence data by "its owners" (the people who put up the cameras) for commercial purposes.
• Worse yet a great deal of this data can be and is retained for "fishing expeditions." Not being a Brit I will not comment on UK laws but in the U.S. the FBI has recently recinded a long-standing (self imposed) ban on non-criminal investigations, that is, investigating groups and individuals who have not committed and are not expected to commit crimes. This ban was imposed in the wake of the COINTELPRO wherin the FBI conducted undercover survaillence on and, in some cases sought to disrupt groups such as the Students For a Democratic Society, Martin Luther King's SCLC.
  
  The Survaillence included sending forged letters from Dr King asserting that he was under investigation by the IRS in order to cut off SCLC funding. It also included attempts (sometimes successful) to prompt the firing of teachers (at the University and High-School level), attempts to prevent the distribution of legal books and phamplets, and attempts to distrupt anti-war marches.
  
  One choice quote from the committee is: "One technique used in COINTELPRO involved sending anonymous letters to spouses intended, in the words of one proposal, to 'produce ill-feeling and possibly a lasting distrust' "
  
  In short the FBI used its powers to destroy and discredit groups whose only crime was opposing the current state of affairs and advocating nonviolent means to change it.
  
  I know what you are going to say in response to this so let me anticipate it. Yes, the FBI's COINTEL programs relied on a great deal of legal violations. In carrying out many of these attacks the FBI simply violated the law in order to do what it did.
  
  But, the key point is that the entire operation rested on a massive survaillence effort. The kind of large-scale trawling operations that CCTV and increased electronic survaillence (the FBI used a great deal of warrentless electronic Survaillence for COINTELPRO see here) makes possible. So before you go and say that you trust the government to make us safer keep in mind that the government is a large body of people who have their own agendas and frequently (hell typically) misuse said data.
  
  Consider also the WWII internment of peaceful Japanese-American Citizens by the U.S. Most of these people had committed no crimes, particularly the children, it was the Census that made rounding them up possible (see here).
• As you yourself stated the cameras can only record what has happened. They do not prevent crimes unless one is afraid of them. Smart Criminal

Reasonable Suspicion can also come up in a political sense. Say I'm at a protest, standing around peacably but I or someone around me is wearing black, or lookingat the cops, or looking at the sky, etc. That would probably be enough to provoke "reasaonable supicion" that I am committing a crime, have just committed a crime or am about to commit a crime since I am, after all engaged in a protest.

At this point the cops would be free to demand my name and thus compile a list of "troublemakers" or arrest me for refusing to identify myself when I have done nothing wrong. This sounds like a handy tool for the suppression of dissent and the shutting down of peaceful protests.

Before anyone argues that this wouldn't happen I would point out that a) in the 1960's the FBI ran a program called COINTELPRO In which they devoted a great deal of time to spying on peaceful civil rights protestors especially Martin Luther King who they sought to "neutralize" as a civil rights leader.

More recently New York City began denying permits to protestors during the period of the Republican National Convention (aa here, Boston Announced plans to shut down roughly 40 miles of roads in and around the city for "security reasons" See also here here also for the choice quote "What is about to happen in Boston is the continuation of the democratic process and the American way, at a time when the country is at war,"

Lastly, during the G8 summit in Georgia, the governor declared a State of Emergency before the summit even began. This executive order made it possible for U.S. Military units to operate in the city and to photograph and harass all residents. See here, here, and here to see how peaceful protestors are treated in San Francisco.

Reasonable Suspicion can also come up in a political sense. Say I'm at a protest, standing around peacably but I or someone around me is wearing black, or lookingat the cops, or looking at the sky, etc. That would probably be enough to provoke "reasaonable supicion" that I am committing a crime, have just committed a crime or am about to commit a crime since I am, after all engaged in a protest.

At this point the cops would be free to demand my name and thus compile a list of "troublemakers" or arrest me for refusing to identify myself when I have done nothing wrong. This sounds like a handy tool for the suppression of dissent and the shutting down of peaceful protests.

Before anyone argues that this wouldn't happen I would point out that a) in the 1960's the FBI ran a program called COINTELPRO In which they devoted a great deal of time to spying on peaceful civil rights protestors especially Martin Luther King who they sought to "neutralize" as a civil rights leader.

More recently New York City began denying permits to protestors during the period of the Republican National Convention (aa here, Boston Announced plans to shut down roughly 40 miles of roads in and around the city for "security reasons" See also here here also for the choice quote "What is about to happen in Boston is the continuation of the democratic process and the American way, at a time when the country is at war,"

Lastly, during the G8 summit in Georgia, the governor declared a State of Emergency before the summit even began. This executive order made it possible for U.S. Military units to operate in the city and to photograph and harass all residents. See here, here, and here to see how peaceful protestors are treated in San Francisco.

Expect more associations between digital terrorism and Linux (as a catch-all media term for "free software"). The greatest threats to any revolution are:

1. Zealots who feel obligated to use violence or destruction as an end to their means.
2. Fools who fight the revolution because it is "fun", but who are not truly commited to the ideals.
3. Government (and these days, corporate) infiltrators who play the two above roles in order to destroy the revolution.
4. Power-hungry folk who bend the revolution to their own ends.

I strongly suggest people become more familiar with how government and industry have undermined and perverted various revolutions. Start with COINTELPRO, an FBI campaign of the 1960s and 70s. And then read a bit of the history of the Homestead strike.

From undermining the right to vote (via electronic "voting") to lying about WMDs in Iraq -- do you honestly think such people will ignore the threat posed by free software to the lucrative commercial software industry? SCO's assault on free software may only be the tip of an iceberg...

Why don't you go through some of the records of COINTELPRO? The reason we have so many of the restrictions we do (many of which are being undone by P.A.T.R.I.O.T.) is because our government has been caught-- relatively recently-- abusing its powers, and using them to spy on political dissenters.

The recent craziness regarding terrorist attacks has undone a lot of the protections that we've come to take for granted in the past couple of decades. We have to deal with the fact that freedom of speech and conscience are always going to be at risk, as long as we're willing to be careless about protecting them.

You don't even have to go back far enough to invoke Godwin here. In this country COINTELPRO is the most egregious disrespect for privacy outside of say, East Germany.

F-105 Thunderchief (this was originally designed for nuclear strike, even though that wasn't what it became famous for).

F-105. F-101 Voodoo (the toss computer was made by Mergenthaler Linotype of all people)!

B-47 Stratojet (a pretty big aircraft for this kind of maneuver).

Well..Dude, I have no idea what half the things you're talking (COINTELPRO, RICO) about are.

Vigilance, eternal, liberty, price of. Your ignorance will not protect you.

These are all well-documented activities of the federal government, and every American should be aware of them. A half-hour with Google would be very educational.

COINTELPRO was the FBI's covert program of spying on anyone to the left of J. Edgar Hoover. This included tapes of Martin Luther King's sex life. The Senate later found that

...The acts taken interfered with the First Amendment rights of citizens. They were explicitly intended to deter citizens from joining groups, "neutralize" those who were already members, and prevent or inhibit the expression of ideas.

...The tactics used against Americans often risked and sometimes caused serious emotional, economic, or physical damage. Actions were taken which were designed to break up marriages, terminate funding or employment, and encourage gang warfare between violent rival groups. Due process of law forbids the use of such covert tactics, whether the victims are innocent law-abiding citizens or members of groups suspected of involvement in violence.

...The sustained use of such tactics by the FBI in an attempt to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., violated the law and fundamental human decency.

RICO (the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), a law supposedly targeted at the Mafia that has been used instead to unconstitutionally seize assests without a trail, and turn minor crimes into federal felonies.

There are both very trustworthy and very untrustworthy people in and out of the government. My bro-in-law works for the state dept. and is a very good, trustworthy person. You have no more or less reason to trust him than I do Mr. Maher Hawash, no?

There is a world of difference between trusting a person, and trusting an organization.

And pray tell...what rights did the victims of real terrorists and serial killers have? What happened to their rights?

While rhetorically arousing, your question is a complete non sequitor. We're talking about the legal rights of people accused by the state of crimes. If you were accused of shooting me, would you think it was ok if you were deprived of your legal right to trial by jury to prove your innocence, because I was deprived of my moral right to life?

Apparently, the law allows for what's going on.

No, it doesn't. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It demands due processs, a speady and public trial, and all the other rights and liberties that we're (or at least used to be) proud of.

It's sad to me that people like this can be so well educatied and still not know about programs like COINTELPRO.

In order to protect all of us the FBI did what it could to discredit Civil Rights groups, Unions, Teachers...

I find it hard to swallow this hogwash since we have such great examples of our "protecors" turning on us, hiding their activities, and launching messianic crusades in the wrong directions.

But perhaps I'm just a luddite...

Irvu.

remember, in 1971 the citizens committee to investigate the fbi broke into the philidelphia fbi office and made off with all sorts of enlightening papers... a run down of all that is here.

You mean the one that murdered the men, women and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge? Or the one that shot down twa flight 800 and covered it up? Or maybe the one that still arrests people for marijuana possesion in states that have decriminalized/legalized it for medical use? Umm, maybe you mean the one that invented the "incident" in the Gulf of Tonkin to drag us into the vietnam war? Or the one that let the FBI infiltrate protest groups in the '60s, subverting their rights to free speach? Wait, you mean the government that setup this phony war in Afghanistan, so we can build an oil pipline?

You talk about the loss of rights under the constitution. You must not have read the PATRIOT act, which schreds what little there was left of the bill of rights. With its passage you lose the right to trial by jury, the right to be free from illegal searches and seisures, the right to confront your accusor in court, and the right to criticize the government.

Heres an idea for you, turn off MSNBC/CNN/Fox News and look at some news sources that aren't run by and for the government propaganda machine.

Personally, I hope to be ready when the rest of America wakes up and decides its time to throw off the chains we've put ourselves in.

Just because most people on a P2P network use it for piracy, it doesn't become a pirate-app. I can, and have, used programs that are under attack by the RIAA do download speeches, text documents, etc. At the early point of the 2000 Nader campaign, when he couldn't get 30 seconds of time on M$NBC (much less a place in the debates later on), I used Napster and Scour to find speeches he's given. And when the Department of Commerce kicked of it's 'Safe Harbor' privacy program by failing to put the confidential information provided by the companies involved on a secure site, I downloaded the pages in a zip file despite the site being closed for a fix. Using programs like Scour, I found reading material on scientology, COINTELPRO, and more, all the way up until the day that lawsuits shut them down.

Not to mention what happened the last time the FBI decided to abuse it's powers in blatant and utter disregard for the consitutionally guaranteed rights of the American people.

COINTELPRO

And this time we're GIVING the government this power by agreeing to be spoon-fed this 'for our own good' and 'war on terrorism' bullshit.

I say no thank you. If there was a tracking device installed subcutaneously on every single American citizen in the country, and our borders were closed, THEN would you people feel safe?

George Orwell? What about J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO? I hope this sort of thing never happens again. I'm afraid that out legislators are allowing it to happen though. This is really sickening.

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

This part.

"The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to this Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and to inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant."

This part.

"In June of 1996, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno asked that the Whitewater independent counsel's mandate be expanded to include an investigation of how the Clinton White House had come to hold about 900 files on former Reagan and Bush appointees. The files had been gathered in 1993 and 1994 by Livingstone, then-White House director of personnel security, and his aide, Anthony Marceca. The White House has always contended that the acquisition of the files resulted from a series of bureaucratic blunders and that there was no evidence that anyone was trying to dig up dirt on political enemies."

That's the tip of the iceberg. That's the part you can see in public. Imagine the daily abuse of FBI intelligence gathering that hasn't made the national news yet.

This is like saying to a kid, "We'll sit this cookie and these lima beans in front of you, but we're trusting you to only eat your lima beans and not even look at that cookie!"

And what about how using Echelon to spy on US citizens was circumvented by intercepting the information and giving it to foreign groups, which would do the same with their info? Who's to say that this info isn't going to be handed over just like that?

In today's news, a German corporate spy plunged 108 stories to his death while attempting to scale New York's World Trade Center in efforts to steal business plans.

Too bad we don't have an Echelon system.

"When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty."
-- Thomas Paine

You insist irrationally on being called "americans". But an american is someone from the continent of america, which spans from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

Second, your comment is a complete load of bullshit. The United States *is* a free (as in speech, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) country.

Tell that to the FBI. They seem to have forgotten it.

Anyway, the wealth of the US, and the "freedoms" that accompany it, are founded on economic exploitation and the support of murderous thugs in the third world. A beautiful idea of "freedom" you have, that stands on this basis.

"Megacorps" do not tell me when to wake up, when to eat and what to eat, when to sleep and what pillow to buy, and how many times a day I should pray.

Do you have a job at all? What do you eat and drink, and when?

Specifically, what you refer to with that statement is the content of the service. Unless they implement some kind of subliminal messages, I'm skeptical how many lives will be "shaped" by niche radio stations.

This is a truly stupid statement. Do you really believe that what you see and hear does not have any effect on you? Do you really believe that the way you interact with the people and institutions of your society has no effect on you?

The last statement in your comment is a rant about anonymous, unaccountable corporations making decisions for people. The company is hardly anonymous, and is probably accountable to investors who will no doubt closely monitor subscription rates.

You just proved my point. The corporation is not accountable to the listeners. And the decision making is anonymous and unexamined by the general public.

A corporation is a totalitarian organization. It is a private dictatorship. If you reject totalitarianism, you must reject corporations.

The fact that they will ultimately decide what the content is really isn't all that different from the current radio model. Listeners can call in and request songs, but the DJs and station owners still make the final choices of what to broadcast.

You have assumed that the current radio model is ok. And even worse, like a totally stereotypical slashbot "geek" with no social and communal conscience whatsoever, you have assumed that radio == music. Pathetic.

The fact is, the government and corporations have LONG been stepping and crushing people, but it's always been the poor. No one cares about the poor! Now they're invading your space. The middle and upper middle class. Crushing your rights and freedoms. Recently large numbers of people have been protesting things like the G8, and in November, the WTO in Seattle. University students protesting against sweatshop labor. Thousands and thousands of people. And they're all involved in these things DESPITE the fact the corporate media never mentions them at all. Somehow, people are fed up and have discovered ways on their own, to try to fight back. Right now the largest community run microradio station, KPFA, is protesting against Pacifica because Pacifica wants to sell KPFA because of it's large audience! People have been outraged and massive protests have been going on there.

Our government hasn't just now decided to become corrupt, it has long been so. it is just now invading the "freedoms" of the middle/upper class of the country, where as before it was only hurting the voiceless poor and people of other countries (and still is I might add).

From killing off native americans in the past and now, to using slave labor in the country, and now using slave labor in third world countries, raping the earth's resources for profits and to feed our addictive consumption rates, suppressing the rights of women, and long promoting right-wing Christian fundamentalism...how can it not be clear the US isn't perfect like they lie and make you believe? The US is f-cking evil...and if you don't believe me now, you will soon enough...when they limit your freedom, or put you away.

http://www.savepacifica.net
http://www.infoshop.org
http://www.protest.net
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.zmag.org
http://www.fair.org
http://www.foodnotbombs.org/
http://jya.com/crypto.htm
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel.htm
http://www.urban75.com
http://www.oneworld.org
http://www.mediafilter.org


There you go. Arm yourself with information. Don't believe the world is perfectly all right. Now apparently the short-sighted people are beginning to see they were wrong. Don't think you're alone for thinking something is wrong, there are millions out there who know it already. From those educated on the subjects, to those experiencing the abuses caused by this horrible corporate owned world, and their servant governments.

Yeah... spooky stuff, isn't it? And it wasn't only McCarthy involved. Everyone realized back then he was a loon, and fell into disgrace. But most other people who were involved in this suffered no ill effects. In fact, some went on to greater things, like Nixon and Reagan...

I also happen to be a Anarchist and spend a lot of my time visiting left and anarchist websites, as well as being on several mailing lists. This is very very very evil. All I can hope is that a bunch of Anonymous filtering websites come up that let you visit sites "anonymously" as well as send and receive email anonymously.

And not be corvertly set up by the gov't, as well. Don't you realize that such an "anonymizer" is perfect for surveillance? That way you can easily gather a good database of juicy info on people who use it. Even info on people you're not after is useful-- you can blackmail people into falsely testifying against people you're after. The FBI is known to have used such tactics.

Many people have also been observing student protests, and many protests in general have really been rising recently, and many new people have been joining existing organizations (say NOW for instance).

And you can be sure that among the people joining there will be agents, which can serve to gather info or as provocateurs. I did my BA at the Universtiy of Puerto Rico, where there's a very long story of that. Though nowadays it's cooled down somewhat, people I know who went there in the 70s can tell you the stories about the left organizations getting infiltrated. For example, in the mid 80s, when government files on political opponents were made public, one could see that many of the most violent, extremist "radicals" who were always calling for violence against the state were actually agents...

I'm wondering if they're planning on cracking down on government/corporate resistance. They're probably aware of the increases themselves. And the Internet has been a very usefull tool to unite organizations and struggles from all over the world. This is very f-cking scary.

That's what the FBI has historically dedicated itself to, and there's no real indicator that this has changed.

Really, this thing about monitoring the net is just extending current civillian surveillance to email messages and such.

Anyone who wants to know more about the FBI's history of surveillance and sabotage of civillian organizations, check out this page on COINTELPRO. The material there is actual declassified FBI documents.

Also, I've noticed that a couple of messages above show their posters to be completely ignorant with respect to Anarchism. I would suggest them to go check out the Anarchist FAQ Webpage.

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Scenarios like this are definitely not fiction. In fact, the FBI has been doing stuff like this for years. It's their bread and butter.

One of my best friend's uncles found out when he was in his 40s that in all the local government jobs he had applied to in his 20s he had been rejected for political reasons, despite his being top candidate for some of them. The government of Puerto Rico and the FBI used to keep (and probably still do) files of people considered to be "subversives"; those people were continuously harrassed by the authorities in many different manners. The criteria for being a "subversive" was opposing U.S. domination of Puerto Rico, and who was considered a subversive was established by means of surveillance, paid informers and covert agents, which also did sabotage operations.

This is all very well documented since both PR government and FBI files are now public.

I suggest you look at this page to find out more about COINTELPRO, the FBI's 60s-70s civillian surveillance program.

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