Slashdot Mirror
UK Authorities Accused of Inciting Illegal Protest
jarran writes "Questions are being asked about the tactics being employed by UK authorities to monitor and control protest groups. Schnews reports on evidence that government IP addresses are posting messages to sites like indymedia, attempting to provoke activists into taking illegal direct action. Evidence has emerged recently that the police consider sex to be a legitimate tool for extracting information from targets, and senior police have been accused of lying to parliament about the deployment of undercover agents at protests."
Sign me up! I mean, I'm an activist with information relevant to the UK Police's Interests! Really!... Just don't send the guy in the article my way, he's really creepy...
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Here's a new rule. If the police tell you to do it, whatever you were told to do is now legal. That will rapidly put a stop to this kind of underhanded stuff. Also, weren't there all these laws in European countries regarding lying about your identity when you're sleeping around; or does that also just not apply when the police do it?
How do you kill that which has no life?
Agent provocateur
I thought one of the reasons behind using Tor was to aid people in government? If the story is true, how/why are government official's IP addresses being traced back to them? Learn and use Tor!
I fear the UK is removing freedom more and more.
the bad thing for me is that UK is part of europe, so their decisions about freedom ruining stuff has more influence on my country then for example chinas decisions.
War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!
"senior police have been accused of lying to parliament about the deployment of undercover agents"
But, it does sound like he was doing his job well. How could possibly lying to politicians be an offense?
I only RTFA with "sex" in the link text, but that one seemed a little bit ho-hum. I mean, if they're trying to infiltrate an organization (and accompanying social milieu) where there's a lot of sex, why wouldn't having sex be a legitimate part of their task? Like, duh? Next up, articles about how shocking it is that undercover cops infiltrating drug gangs sometimes handle drugs! And this is considered an appropriate police activitiy! Scandalous!
How addicted to the sinister police narrative do you have to be to have a problem with this? I mean, I like to criticize The Man as much as the next bloke, but I at least wait 'til there's something to criticize.
Now, off to read the other two articles...hopefully there's more meat to those stories.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
So it's part of their job to have sex? as in, they are getting paid to have sex? I wish there was a name for that...
Fact is, the police have been at this game since Victorian times,
My father, being an old communist, used to tell tales of the 'strange' characters that tried to infiltrate the local party, forgetting that this is a small town and that your history, and that of your family, were easily found out, and, if not, you were suspect.
Best laugh, one character turned down by the party on the grounds of 'known police informer', the next week joined the SNP, worked his way right in there as well, pity no-one from the SNP asked any of his neighbours about him and his background, you know, pertinant things like him being a member of the Orange order and a unionist...
Know for a fact, Dundee Uni vegetarian society in the mid '80s was infiltrated by the plods, and if I was a member of any animal rights group in the UK I'd want to do a deep background check on some of my fellow members...
A final parting note, at a Reading festival, was approached by a rather suspect character wanting to know if I had any acid for sale, next day, same character wanted to know if I wanted to buy any drugs..now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that as the number of arrests for possession on day 1 were too low this was a.plod selling stuff so that a.n.other.plod could then arrest the poor sap who bought it, but...
Being fair to the plods, this infiltration mularkey works both ways..
Agent provocateur?
It's called democracy in action.
Gee, wow!
Who would have thought! Fucking asshole power hungry cops inciting violence so they have a reason to ask for additional power and MONEY.
It's almost like they really DON'T care about who gets hurt or takes losses, so long as they get the authority and money.
The best part is that this HAS to be an INSTITUTIONAL action, approved from on high because none of the rank and file would risk their jobs doing anything this stupid just to get to crack heads. This is about the money and power folks. It's time to take the police management to task and find out exactly why they think that they are entitled to incite violence and disorder for their own gain.
Next up, articles about how shocking it is that undercover cops infiltrating drug gangs sometimes handle drugs! And this is considered an appropriate police activitiy! Scandalous!
Actually, like using, or selling drugs. And yes, this would be scandalous.
The irksome part about the police using agents provocateur is that the police are always complaining that they have insufficient funds to police the streets. If the police can spare a man to infiltrate a bunch of hippies for a number of years, how many undercover police are there in all the more disruptive groups? The figure of £250,000 a year was mentioned as the cost of running one agent, which is infuriating to anyone who has been told that the police have insufficient resources to visit their house when it has been burgled.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Know for a fact, Dundee Uni vegetarian society in the mid '80s was infiltrated by the plods
Who cares if some vegetarians at some UK uni got diarrhea?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
LOL. I suppose it's totally different where you live because a few hundred years ago some guys in wigs signed a piece of paper?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow
There was a case in Germany where a case against a party accused of being nazist collapsed because there were so many government agents in the leadership that it was impossible to distinguish between what they had produced and what the accused have. One government agent wrote a detailed anti-semitic tract. Haven't heard a single peep about that. Hence everyone knows that although this is a case where leftist individuals are opposed to infiltration, they would very much welcome and applaud the same tactics if applied to someone they dislike.
Also, the argument seems to be based on a rule-based criteria model where the rule to apply is that infiltrators in any organisation should not incite illegal action, or something bad has been done. This is a wordsmith trick - if the criteria is accepted generally it would obviously be impossible for all time to infiltrate organisations. The infiltrator would have to be a passive observer even in person, and all the genuine members would have to do would be to ask people to say something illegal or screen in those who have used the most criminal language. Hence a completely unworkable criteria presuming you are going to use infiltration as a method against any group, and just a specialist rule intended to reach a particular moral conclusion in this very particular case.
1. A bit of outrage and indignation
2. More stories by media pumping this story
3. Lots more outrage and parliament talking about rules and restricting police powers.
4. A Terrorist attack
5. More powers for the police not less.
In at least one of the demonstrations I have attended I have seen journalists pay people to incite a disturbance. This was an anti-Nazi league demonstration with money been given to a set of skinheads to break it up.
All hail the Emperor!
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
The police also have been shown to hide the evidence collected by the undercover agents if it does not help them lead to convictions or even shows that they are lying to the prosecution. http://policestate.co.uk/articles/109 As well as the undercover police inciting violence the normal police often do it as well at protests. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXNJ3MZ-AUo&feature=related As well as intimidating protestors with FIT teams and questionable tactics including ketteling.
article about how the comments were detected http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472622.html full list of comments http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472619.html
This is an old tactic called Agent Provocateur
IMHO, this should be illegal. IANAL, so maybe it already is illegal and they do it anyway. I wouldn't be surprised.
Now I guess that the police can anonymously post comments to a site then go in and seize their servers because of comments posted to that site and get information on all the commentators.
Trial by Stone!
For those of you unfamiliar with the 'Camden 28', a good example of a US Agent Provocateur can be found in this story-
camden28.org (film shown on PBS independent lens from time to time)
" ...
In the early-morning hours of Sunday, August 22, 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell announced that FBI agents had arrested 20 antiwar activists in and near a draft board office in Camden, New Jersey.
They also asked the jury to acquit on the grounds that the raid would not have taken place without the help of a self-admitted FBI informer and provocateur. The defendants emphasized that they had given up their plan, for lack of a practical means, until the informer-provocateur had resurrected it and provided them with the encouragement and tools to carry it out.
"
German police has been caught doing similar things. They dress up as protesters and start fights with their own colleges.
This way the government can point at all those violent protesters and their misguided cause.
Oh well just like most other western governments. By the sheep for the sheep.
I wonder what all the people will say now, will everyone call Schnews a bunch of conspirary theorists now too? When the G20 in downtown Toronto was here just recently - same thing was brought up and everyone on talk radio and the interwebz got laughed at as conspiracy theorists saying the police are out to get the protesters, so what now?... Is the media a bunch of nuts as well?
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Two explorers stumble upon a primitive tribe and somehow manage to offend them.
They're taken before the chief and he gives them the choice of death or "unga-bunga".
The first chooses unga-bunga. He is promptly raped by all the men in the tribe.
When given his choice, the second chooses death.
The chief smiles and pronounces sentence "Death by unga-bunga!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You'd probably find those conditions would make absolutely no difference.
Entrapment laws are incredibly strong in the UK and police are trained extensively not to fall foul of them. They may throw that stone, but they'll make sure, if they throw it, they'll be the last person who does. He may be part of an angry mob at a protest but he won't be someone at the front clashing with the police, he'll be standing back amongst a crowd of people.
Undercover operations are time consuming, expensive and embarrassing when they go wrong. The officers are trained heavily to ensure they're always 'going with the flow' rather than pushing it.
"The best way of stopping any liaison getting too heavy was to shag somebody else. It's amazing how women don't like you going to bed with someone else," said the officer...
"Captain Obvious" is clearly insufficient rank for this officer - for an insight of that magnitude, he should be at least a Colonel.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
When you are in fear of losing your police job, or other such government sponsored work....
Create a problem that doesn't otherwise exist and then be the solution.
Of the near 7 billion people on this planet its some fraction of 1% that is causing the rest of us all the world scale problems.
Though we already all know this, its how to stop them is the task.
"I wouldn't have done X, if they hadn't done Y first!"
Isn't "provocation" as feeble a defense as "I was seduced?".
Would you accept seduction as an excuse for your significant other screwing around on you? Would anyone? So why should society accept that as a defense?
I mean, you can't be tempted to do something you didn't want to do anyway.
-Styopa
In UK case there wasn't just sex. The undercover cop married and even had two children with the woman he was supposed to spy.
BTW, in Finland police quite recently got permission to do undercover operations. Soon afterwards there was a case where undercover police became the new boyfriend of a woman suspected (and later convicted) of killing his husband.
The article says that both male and female officers engaged in the practice, but public outcry is only about those poor women who were taken advantage of. What about the men? It's ok to take advantage of them? Their feelings don't get hurt?
Not only that thay also infiltrate activist groups and acting as agent provocateurs provoke them into illegal acts so as they can be arrested. Looks good on the cleanup records I suppose. When they're not doing that the police send out female undercover cops and try and sell drugs to the underclass so as they can go onto arrest them and up the arrest record. Else the Police are out escorting street cleaners at 4:00am as they go about hosing down the homeless under the pretext of cleaning the streets. No wonder poor people despise the police. Big society my ARSE !!!.
Actually, I half suspect that most of these activist groups are infiltrated by at least one member of her Majesty's Constabulary. I emailed a group recently stating how much I admired the Leader. The secretary emailed me back and said he would make a good leader except they couldn't keep him (der Leader) out of the pub. It's the oldest trick in the book, join something, ferment disagreement and then get the left-half to destroy the right-half. At least they (the Police that is) haven't yet started letting off bombs in shopping precincts. link
It's just like we've been warning them for years: socialism leads to dependence on the government so severe that even anti-government protestors sit around on their asses waiting for an agent provocateur to provide them with a suitably illegal protest plan. Pathetic.
Here in the good old land of yankee ingenuity, we just outlaw whatever internal sedition our plucky can-do citizens manage on their own, and then beat the shit out of it. If the supply proves insufficient, we ensure full employment for Our Heroes by surveilling those terrifying pacifist quakers(they might put the "fist" in "pacificist" at any moment, you can't be too careful) and the occasional pothead(Morally depraved, and responsible for 85% of Cheeto shoplifting incidents...).
we know that slashdot is full of virgin geeks (madam palm does not count)
Unless they were born in India before partition or Ireland before 1949, they're not 'subjects': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nationality_law
If the female protesters are willing, why not? This isn't even a tempest in a teacup.
Or, is Slashdot, the Guardian, and the submitter suggesting that women are incapable of making decisions about with whom to have sex and that pre-marital sex should be made illegal?
Or, are you suggesting that a woman who willingly engages in sex with a man should be able to retroactively claim rape when she finds out he is not the man she thought he was? I guess we should start arresting every man who has ever cheated on a woman and was found out; or who ever had sex with a woman and then never called her again; or who ever had a drunken one night stand.
And, I am sure no protesters have ever had sex to gain information or access to an area, too, right?
The Guardian, a liberal newspaper that supports the idea that female protesters are incompetent, stupid and should be chaperoned. And, Slashdot, samzenpus, and the submitter supporting the idea. What a lovely bunch of hypocrites.
why can't the local Bobby get some action in Greenpeace (Greenpiece?)
Don't be lyin' to Parliament! George Clinton will kick your behind!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I'll say. 3
In May 2007 two spies, Somali Young and Ryan Paterson-Rouse, were exposed in their roles working for a private security company, Thompson and Clark Investigations Limited, to infiltrate and supply information on activist groups here in New Zealand. The story was broken by Nicky Hager, the man that brought Echelon and Unit 8200 into the glare of daylight. He also holds copies of those Wikileaks cables relating to New Zealand.
This was small beans.
In October 2007, on the eve of the passage of another round of repressive anti-terrorism legislation in New Zealand, Police raids resulted in the arrests of activists up and down the country on terrorism and firearms charges.
The police took their case to the Solicitor General who told them that the terrorism charges were unsupportable and they were withdrawn.
Then, in April 2008, Nicky was approached by Rob Gilchrist who said he had been approached by Thompson and Clark and been asked to spy on activists.
However, Gilchrist was not all he seemed, and a short while later another story emerged after he asked his girlfriend, Rochelle Rees, to fix his computer. Rochelle discovered emails from his handlers, and being no slouch, copied everything and backdoored his machine and phone. Nicky once again broke the story in which sex again raises it's head (?!).
It turned out that Rob is a significant informant, and provocateur, in the "terrorism" operation.
Now, Thompson and Clark aint all that bright because late last year they were caught *again* but then Clark is rumoured to be head of an Armed Offenders Squad (SWAT team in US-ese) so we probably shouldn't expect too much.
What is with all this stuff about dragon tattoos anyway?
the police have been fucking us for years.
you don't have to be an idiot or drunk to see what this article is really.. what do the opposition want to provoke... very well timed
Link here
Free Martian Whores!
Sometimes it comes off this way, sometimes it doesn't.
I've wondered whether activism for a "disadvantaged minority" is really activism against an "advantaged majority", and if some problems stem from merely assuming they're an "advantaged majority" to begin with.
Conversely, I've wondered if it could actually good for everybody, especially but not only the "disadvantaged minority", when done right.
(Heterosexual Caucasian male here, BTW...)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
David Cameron, is that you?
Sorry, but anyone that believes that clearly doesn't know any British history. We have many inalienable rights, starting with habeas corpus and including the Bill of Rights (1689) which is the basis and inspiration for the American bill of rights that was drafted nearly 100 years later.
Despite the attempts by our latest politicians to remove them from us - you will never convince us that we didn't have them at them some point.
Divorce court decision won't remote the trauma children will suffer because of this unethical spying operation.
It was illegal, but still the law wasn't able to prevent it. There is no reason blindly to believe that the law will not be broken again in the future.
LOL. I suppose it's totally different where you live because a few hundred years ago some guys in wigs signed a piece of paper?
It certainly should be. But the "living Constitution" theory has largely gutted the reality.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Take a look at almost any of the much-ballyhood "terrorists" we've captured in the last decade (Islamic, right-wing, enviro, etc) and you will find unstable people who have been goaded, often for months or years, by federal agents or informers working on the behalf of federal agents - who are also usually the ones to provide the plans and materials for any destructive devices.
I think we should have started to realize that having the police entrap people like this isn't a great idea back after the /first/ WTC bombing, when the feds quietly admitted that yes, they helped obtain and cook up the explosives, but they had intended to substitute inert materials at the last minute. Oopsie!! (no, this is not a conspiracy theory from Alex Jones, this is from the NY Times, among other sources)
They are British Subjects. They don't have inalienable Rights. Their privileges are whatever the government thinks they should be.
Britons have been citizens, not subjects, since 1983. See the British Nationality Act of 1981.
We have had statutary rights since 2000, see the Human Rights Act of 1998, and arguably since 1215, see Magna Carta.
Rights may or may not be inalienable, but if there's no legal penalty for aliening them...
That's not to say the British state is not authoritarian. In fact that's one of the reasons I left the country.
Regarding the actions of the police under the covers, are these activities in general efficient uses of police time and taxpayer money? Why are undercover police spending seven years infiltrating environmental activists? Not terrorists, mind you, but activists. Another officer spent 4 years infiltrating an anti-racist group. Not racists, but people against racism. Really?
Seems like in seven years agents could infiltrate various government or corporate entities and expose enough graft that the program could pay for itself.