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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.
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 think it is funny that anyone is shocked at the fact a "gathering" that involves drug use and pyrotechnics is being watched. The fact that they have never came in and raided the event shows that the FBI really is not going in for busting up free speech.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
I think it is funny that anyone is shocked at the fact a "gathering" that involves drug use and pyrotechnics is being watched.
So you're saying that all 4th of July celebrations are routinely monitored?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Which 4th of July celebrations are you aware of that blatantly advertise their acceptance of illicit drugs? And no, alcohol doesn't count as illicit no matter how much you guys like to compare it to your drug(s) of choice.
Freedom of speech applies only to the government. You can say any crazy, racist, xenophobic stuff you want to "speak your mind," but a private company like NBC is not obligated to transmit your message.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
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.
Maybe they dont have an obligation to protect the principals of free speech but their actions certainly dont lend themselves to the idea of free speech. You can censor stuff and not be a government and if you do you are acting against free speech. I dont see how corporate control over speech is any better than government control, so XKCD can suck a dick on this one.
The laws they're breaking are themselves morally bankrupt, and therefore moral to break.
Well, you can't fight the system by being downtrodden and revolting. The system is excellent at overcoming people in that position, because that is how it maintains power day after day.
Real change starts in the places that the system is poorly designed to control, often from within. That's why real change is driven by the middle class and rich people. It does sometimes get out of control, like in the French Revolution. At that point, it becomes whoever can reassert order by force.
The only exception is when it is so bad that *everyone* revolts, but most people fear that scenario more than a police state because you don't really know where the battle lines are and so you and your family end up in a bloodbath that you aren't safe from anywhere.
Freedom of speech applies to everyone, else you don't have it. The First Amendment only (in theory) protects your freedom of speech from government reprisal. However, anytime someone faces consequences for their speech, whether from the government or private parties, it interferes with their freedom of speech, primarily through self-censorship.
Remember, government has never stopped someone from speaking their mind. That's entirely self-censorship. Even regimes which would execute you for your speech relied on self-censorship rather than having you followed by someone who would cover your mouth if you said the wrong thing. Private parties use exactly the same method to suppress speech as the most repressive regimes -- encouraging self-censorship because speech has consequences.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
People still of the cat and mouse mindset are hopelessly lost. The FBI 'owns' this event and allows it to proceed as a petri dish and case study for learning how to deal with future criminal activities and subversive movements. 'Busting it' serves no purpose as it will spring up elsewhere or in smaller, less cohesive, and less easily targeted forms. Things like COINTELPRO which occurred decades ago lend credibility to this idea. We live in a giant disneyland now. The surveillance state is upon us. Do not be deluded by the occasional display of incompetence or ineptitude by local or national authorities. They are highly co-ordinated, they have learned from the past, and they are far ahead of us now.
Whao there, isn't NBC one of the companies entrusted with a section of the public airwaves? The same airwaves that the poster you are responding to is prohibited from broadcasting on, such that they may have the privilege of doing so, for commercial benefit, but also to benefit us all, as they are our shared resource?
Seems a government subsidized company would be a valid target for some criticizm for the messages they choose to carry or not on our medium.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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...
You don't know people very well then. As Lord Macaulay observed in his The History of England from the Accession of James the Second,
You see it is not enough for prigs and busybodies that they're not involved in any way in the things you do that give you pleasure; their problem is with you enjoying something they don't enjoy, or perhaps understand.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Which 4th of July celebrations are you aware of that blatantly advertise their acceptance of illicit drugs?
My backyard barbecue?
You know, I've been trying to find the source of that statement, and I haven't been able to. My apologies, I guess I was wrong.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.