Slashdot Mirror
FBI: Burning Man Testing Ground For Free Speech, Drugs ... and New Spy Gear
v3rgEz writes: The 29th annual Burning Man festival kicks off this week in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. Among those paying close attention to the festivities will be the FBI's Special Events Management unit, who have kept files on "burners" since at least 2010. One of the more interesting things in those, files, however, is a lengthy, heavily redacted paragraph detailing that the FBI's Special Events Management Unit gave Las Vegas Police Department some specialized equipment for monitoring the week-long event, as long as LVPD provided follow up reports.
I'll bet a lot of people love the fact that all this "free speech" will be taking place hundreds of miles out in the desert, where it's completely disconnected from most of the electorate. Kind of a self-imposed "free speech zone" like the kind we'll enjoy seeing miles from the upcoming (D) and (R) national conventions.
Has free-thinkers and weirdos ever caused an actual revolution? Changed the course of government that they were able to rid it of corruption and incompetence?
So why put all this effort in monitoring them?
It can't make them feel better. It seems to only make those in authority more paranoid than before. It makes them jump at their own shadow to think that someone, somewhere that might be different from them is plotting against some abstract institution.
Why exercise this kind of authority over people that aren't doing anything disruptive of their lives?
They're out in the desert not hurting anyone and trying to feel normal for a few minutes. The best thing you could do is ignore them and concentrate on troubles you can do something about. Like poverty or something.
But that's the point. Poverty and other societal issues present as difficult things to solve. Those problems involve changing some base portions of how our society functions. So here we see the real reason for this sort of harassment. To make it look like something is being done about the ever present other.
I remember when all of America was a testing ground for Free Speech.
Increasingly the FBI is reverting to fascism and keeping files open on everybody just because they can. The only real solution is to shoot them on sight.
Wake up, America. You don't live in a free country, and your law enforcement has decided they're allowed to do anything they wish.
If you're going to keep ignoring shit like this, then you're too fucking stupid to deserve to continue to call yourselves a free country. But then, we already know this.
I love the city, but Burning Man time is a total freakshow.
So have we come full circle where the FBI just keeps files on everybody?
This sounds awfully creepy, and smacks of an organization obsessed with tracking everybody they can.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So, what, I guess this is stingrays on drones overhead? Collect IMEI numbers of every person there, drop them in their little database of "umamerican agitators"?
I mean, that's always what it is, right?
"Drugs" is that magical code word for "the dangerous evil of non-conformity of decent hard-working American values, like having no problem with g-men goons watching every move you make? Fuck the FBI and its gang of morally-bankrupt thugs.
so long as you like to be a chicken hawk.
$1000 + court costs pot tickets is what they are after.
Sounds like if you are going to burning man, you need a burner phone for the event. I am guessing they are setting up a Stingray device and capturing communications at the event. Simple paid for cash burner phone, and you defeat a lot of that. Or better yet, just don't turn your phone on and avoid the whole mess.
From the article linked in the summary:
In addition to the FBI files, requests were made for arrest reports and fines. Either surprisingly or unsurprisingly, there's not a lot in them - but if you were wondering just what it is you'd have to do to get arrested at Burning Man, the answer is physically assaulting a police officer.
While I have no problem believing that some paranoid drugged-up neo-hippie might conceivably attack an FBI agent, I also have no problem believing that a dipshit FBI agent would choose to interpret a touch on the arm from a overaffectionate drugged-up neo-hippie as "assault". If there hasn't been a riot, murder spree, or terrorist attack in previous years, the FBI has no legitimate excuse to be involved. Let local law enforcement handle it, unless and until they feel the need to call up the feds. This is just another example of fascists keeping tabs on the long-haired freaky people because they happen to have long hair and happen to be freaky, and Joe Button-Down doesn't like it.
in 2009 is when all of us real subversives stopped going as it became a freaking corporate event.
Hack the planet with my hemp!
Any counterculture gathering that doesn't attract FBI watchers just isn't trying hard enough. I used to think it was insidious. Now, I think the feds just want a cushy week or two watching the scantily clad.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I would expect pot use to be pretty open, but perhaps officially frowned upon by organizers owing to its illegal status in Nevada and Federally.
... there is no free speech !!
FBI's presence - or rather, the presence of FBI's proxy - tells us that no matter where the fuck you are in the United States of America, forget about free speech, because FBI / NSA / Uncle Sam will be there, spying
Las Vegas does not have a Police Dept and Las Vegas is 400 miles away from Gerlach. The FBI gave the Las Vegas FBI office those tools.
Get your foil on straight.
the BSD license, problems that I'v3 is perhaps
I think it is funny how what consenting adults do is any business of the FBI. If this is how they are wasting our money then we should just demanded for them to be shut down.
Uh, The DC Smoke-In that has happened every year in 2 locations in DC every 4th of july, which involves a parade of people walking down the street, smoking pot in front of police, and continuing to do so in view of the white house until the fireworks come on, for 8+ hrs. 30+ yrs. 2 simultaneous locations.
something seems fishy to me. 540 miles away, almost 10 hour drive. Why is LVPD getting spy gear for this event?
They are being absurd. It's hard to see anybody at burning man using phones or internet devices for drug purchases and sales. You have 70,000 people in a signal-free desert, with the occasional wifi point. People are walking around in bright colors and costumes and interacting in real life.
Nevada treats the drug use that is there as a chance to extort recreational drug users from out-of-state. Basically (for most drug offenses) they catch a lot of nonviolent out-of-state offenders and offer the choice between a serious criminal conviction with a very low fine and a tiny conviction (maybe even a civil offense) if they pay a much larger fine.
Does the FBI Special Events Management do weddings as well? They should at least be able to dress up even the most challenging of grooms to a black suit.
It was episode 10, airing in September 2003. Oh, and I hope the FBI can find burning man, unlike Lt. Dangle and his crew.
There was a large FBI presence on the playa during the 1999 burn.
FBI must have been watching too much CSI of late. Black Rock Desert is about 500 miles outside LVPD's jurisdiction (and 140 miles outside Reno, for you Reno 911 fans). Plus, it's Federal land, overseen by the BLM. The FBI would actually have more jurisdiction there than LVPD ever would.
Found the britfag
good luck with that on the playa
Are A Criminal Class
I know folks who used casually for many years. That's not proof, but yeah people do. But you have to space it out a lot. Doing it every week is not good. More like every month.
But anyway who cares? These are both very dangerous central nervous system depressants. Society decided how to classify their use.
When you look at the fact that marijuana is illegal, but alcohol isn't, it's clear that legality is just decided by cultural associations.
I am curious how the heck LVPD is involved. Reno is 450 miles from Vegas and Black rock is an additional 125 miles north.
By comparison Albany, NT is 150 miles from NYC. The distance from Cleveland OK to Ny, NY at ~450 miles is about the same.
Salt lake City is alto about the same 450 miles away and the reach of the FBI and IRS from SLC to Nevada is legendary.
One potential connection is cell phone tracking Friends report that BM has cell coverage for the first time in their memory of the event.
It is possible that cell phone intercept technology is the draw that reaches to Vegas. It that is true the lack of warrants
could be enough to force dismantling of all FBI and State cell phone abusive tech.
For those that monitor such things technologically the BR is so far from interference that an audit of intercept
and methods would be easy to gather with passive tech. There are enough tech folk there and yes some astoundingly
rich folk that technology and litigation would not be the abusive asymmetric context that allows abuses to continue.
Some are also aggressive and dismissing or dropping of charges would not be seen as a win as much as it would
seem to be an opportunity to play.
The good news is I have no privileged information on this and my words are highly speculative and as /. says mine.
I might like to use this as the nut of a fictional novel so all rights reserved world wide.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.