Slashdot Mentioned In Virginia Terrorism Report

megamerican alerted us to a leaked document (PDF) from a Virginia Fusion Center titled "2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment." The document is marked as "Law Enforcement Sensitive," not to be shown to public. Citizens for Legitimate Government has a write-up. Slashdot gets a mention on page 45 — not as a terrorist organization itself, but as one of the places that members of Anonymous may hang out: "A 'loose coalition of Internet denizens,' Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. ... Anonymous is of interest not only because of the sentiments expressed by affiliates and their potential for physical protest, but because they have innovated the use of e-protests and mobilization. Given the lack of a unifying creed, this movement has the potential to inspire lone wolf behavior in the cyber realms." According to the report, cell phones and digital music players have been used to transfer plans related to criminal activity, and therefore presumably could be grounds for suspicion. Podcasting is also suspicious.

Comments

Terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when were protests "terrorism"?

Re:Terrorism

[kiwimate]

Dry Runs/Trial Runs: Behavior that appears to be preparation for a terrorist act without actually committing the act. Activity could include mapping out routes and determining the timing of traffic lights and flow.

Dammit. A group of us did this in Auckland city one Friday night when I was a bit younger and we were bored. Any casual observer would've seen a group of six or seven of us carefully timing the traffic lights at the bottom of Queen Street for, oh, 20 or 30 minutes.

After we'd figured out the timing perfectly, we executed our nefarious plot. As soon as the lights turned red, we rushed into the middle of the intersection with a small couch, a couple of chairs, and a lamp, set up a mock living room, quickly took some photographs, and rushed back to safety just as the lights turned green.

And we thought we were just having some innocent fun on a Friday night!

That silly Constitution

[WCMI92]

How DARE citizens engage in the rights to:

Free speech
Assembly
Petition the government (or government institutions).

Why those subversives who not only wrote it into law, but preceded those rights with the words "Congress shall make no law abridging..." must have been terrorists or something.

No wonder this was marked "not to show to public". How dare we engage in such subversion of the LAW enforcement establishment.

The way I read this is that they are setting up pretexts for "probable cause" to detain and search people who engage in normal, legal behavior. Yet more evidence that the "war on terror" and the PATRIOT act are being used to expand law enforcement power over the law abiding, when instead such energy would be better spent guarding the porous borders or monitoring the FOREIGN FUNDED (Saudi) mosques (which is where most world wide terrorism originates).

Re:A.C.

[severoon]

Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as...

How can any member of Anonymous be "from" a site like fark? Do they issue Anonymous press pass credentials or something?

This gets the whole idea of Anonymous wrong. Anonymous isn't "from" anywhere. The moment you start thinking you know something about Anonymous, the moment you start trying to put Anonymous into a box, you're no longer talking about Anonymous...you're talking onymous.

Re:A.C.

[RobBebop]

From the U.S. Constitution, Ammendment 1:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble , and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The keyword is "peaceably", but TFS seems to imply that they are trying to prohibit people from assembling, which is unconstitutional.

The correct response, I believe, is to arrange a "peaceful assembly" on the front door of the "Virginia Fusion Center" and generate enough publicity from the press so these clowns in Virginia can be made to understand that internet sites like Slashdot.org don't make any attempt to rally any violent political movements.