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Leaked 'Standing Rock' Documents Reveal Invasive Counterterrorism Measures (theintercept.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
"A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures," reports The Intercept, decrying "the fusion of public and private intelligence operations." Saying the private firm started as a war-on-terror contractor for the U.S. military and State Department, the site details "sweeping and invasive" surveillance of protesters, citing over 100 documents leaked by one of the firm's contractors.
The documents show TigerSwan even havested information about the protesters from social media, and "provide extensive evidence of aerial surveillance and radio eavesdropping, as well as infiltration of camps and activist circles... The leaked materials not only highlight TigerSwan's militaristic approach to protecting its client's interests but also the company's profit-driven imperative to portray the nonviolent water protector movement as unpredictable and menacing enough to justify the continued need for extraordinary security measures... Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as 'an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component' and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters."
The Intercept reports that recently "the company's role has expanded to include the surveillance of activist networks marginally related to the pipeline, with TigerSwan agents monitoring 'anti-Trump' protests from Chicago to Washington, D.C., as well as warning its client of growing dissent around other pipelines across the country." They also report that TigerSwan "has operated without a license in North Dakota for the entirety of the pipeline security operation."
The documents show TigerSwan even havested information about the protesters from social media, and "provide extensive evidence of aerial surveillance and radio eavesdropping, as well as infiltration of camps and activist circles... The leaked materials not only highlight TigerSwan's militaristic approach to protecting its client's interests but also the company's profit-driven imperative to portray the nonviolent water protector movement as unpredictable and menacing enough to justify the continued need for extraordinary security measures... Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as 'an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component' and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters."
The Intercept reports that recently "the company's role has expanded to include the surveillance of activist networks marginally related to the pipeline, with TigerSwan agents monitoring 'anti-Trump' protests from Chicago to Washington, D.C., as well as warning its client of growing dissent around other pipelines across the country." They also report that TigerSwan "has operated without a license in North Dakota for the entirety of the pipeline security operation."
And this is legal how? Yet, don't copy that floppy or you'll get 10 years in a FPMITA prison.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
The definition of "terrorist" is "anyone you don't like". And private contractors will turn people into proven terrorists, for a fee. Gotta love the free market.
Learn to love Alaska
Considering activists as jihadists is the first step. Then you consider jihadists have been considered illegal fighters (a term invented to spare international laws on war), and you can send an activist straight to Guantanamo. Brilliant.
They are comparing murderers who kill in the name of God to peaceful people who want to save their history, and more importantly, their watershed. What a bunch of follow-the-money bullshit.
They left their tents and gear behind (and yes some trash) because they were arrested. That doesn't make them bad hippies.
The pipeline people were paid by the corporations anyway. None of the oil goes to America anyway, it's being refined and sent to China. Whining about paid protesters while ignoring the paid mercenaries hired by corporations seems like a stretch.
I wish the builders of other infrastructure could afford a counter protest force like this one. We could get that telescope built on Maunakea, get some new-generation nuclear plants started if we wished to get serious about carbon, and California could finally finish its bullet train.
That is shocking and would not be expected.
Who would of thought that a group tracking the actions of another group would stoop to harvesting information about them from social media.
Then to follow that up they used the term "militaristic" to describe them collecting data. So they started to attack them?
Overall rather bias article to describe one group that was tracking the actions of another group.
Take care of the poor. Outside of the occasional loon organized terror only works because we've got millions (billions?) that lack food security. Said it before, will probably say it again: you abandon your poor at your peril.
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All hush-hush top secret shadow organizations have a web site.
http://www.tigerswan.com/
And twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/TigerSwan
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Let's say that all of that were true, what's your argument? That they don't deserve clean water because they litter? Help me understand that position.
Boy this is Deja Vu. It's exactly what happened with the Unions, the Pinkerton Detective agency and the tacit support of the US government in the early part of last century. Look up Eugene Debs in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... He helped form the first nation wide trade union in the US (for the trains). And when they struck the Pullman company arranged with the complicity of the US govt to acquire the US mail contract making it a federal crime not to couple pulman cars to trains. Along the way someone set off a bomb (probably the pinkertons to frame the union strikers) and the entire union leadership was imprisoned. there's a nice picture of them all in their sunday best taken together in jail on the wikipedia site. (ironically in Woodstock, a place more known for 60s rock concerts now) . While in prison together Debs started reading various socialist literature and when they were release formed the Socialist party in the USA. He ran for president several times getting millions of votes (6% of the popular vote). He became famous for a stump speech saying no working class person should be going to fight in World War II because it's just a richmans war making the munitions makers richer and killing the poor. He was arrested for treason and sedition, sentenced to 10 years in prison, stripped of his own right to vote, and still ran for president (getting 3.4% of the popular vote while in his jail cell). In the court room when asked to recant he said
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
While in prison he started the Prison Reform movement, and President Harding pardoned him partly hoping to quash that. He was nominated for the Nobel peace prize for his astute portrayl of World War I as the Capitalist war.
Nearly every use of the Sedition act has been against political prisoners and frequently for union busting.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Let's say that all of that were true, what's your argument? That they don't deserve clean water because they litter? Help me understand that position.
It's pretty clear, but I'll spell it out: The protesters are not adults to be taken seriously. They can't even manage the environmental stewardship issues that are well within their control. We're certainly not going to let them impose mob rule on infrastructure projects that have passed all the required regulatory approvals.
One more time... what's your argument? That because they are [insert literally anything here], that in a first world democratic nation they do not deserve a basic survival commodity of clean water?
So what else don't they deserve? Protection of the law? Freedom of speech?
Land of the free, home of the [people I approve of]
You didn't do the math, did you. The tribal council accepted $375,000. Assuming they passed 100% on to the protesters, that comes to the lordly sum of $125 each. Wow, they must be living large now in their new Lambos.
When people protested in East Germany, people who risked at lot by using a television camera did not get caught.
Dont use your own equipment. If your wealthy enough to be able to afford to protest all day, buy an older weather sealed dslr camera and lens. No need for in camera wifi. Use the card to get your files to a computer of editing and upload later.
Ensure the serial number in the camera is not linked to your name with every file uploaded or created.
Take some images and video of the protest. Remove any camera serial numbers in the files, edit, add a voice over and your groups logo and branding, compress, then upload it using some existing network and on a computer that won't be used later.
Do not take a "computer" thats "fast" or "sealed against the weather" from protest to protest. Dont use wifi or networking from your computer like device.
Sneaker net your video file to a final separate, cheap device just for fast networking.
All MAC and any other unique details about all networks will be collected on.
Think about what device connects to that final network to send a file to the world. A random strangers offer of a free network, computer help could be an undercover contractor or police wanting to get more direct access to your hardware and software, OS.
Protect your devices and equipment from digital tracking and "new" best friends or "smart" friendly strangers with free offers of help.
Police and contractors can be anyone, thats why they are doing undercover work in protests. Some are past protesters who had to make a deal with the police to stay free. They have to collect it all and work very hard at making new friends.
While a protester might have been taking years of French or arts at some liberal university, police and contractors learned how to become "protesters" over the years.
The undercover officers offers will be for device access to help with "media" or "editing"
Every face at a protest will be stored for facial recognition. Any and all networks or networked devices will be collected on.
Read up on what the NSA, GCHQ, CIA and other 5 eye nations do when they "collect it all".
The same ability is now on the open market at a low cost for a city, state or contractor. Dont trust any hardware, software or OS thats been near a protest after a protest.
Anyone could have added code, altered the device, accessed the OS or collected its network details.
Ensure the only collection a city or federal gov or its contractors can do is facial recognition. Keep your hardware and software way from their networks.
A streaming cell phone is great for recoding an event and not having data erased on site but it comes with the cost of collection and device or OS alteration.
Dont bring malware pushed down a network home after a protest. If your security aware, use dedicated devices as bait and see if any devices are altered. Study bait hardware later under Tempest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... conditions but don't allow your own deices to get altered to test for such gov/police/contractor pushed malware.
The final thing to consider is the new stranger in your group. Get them talking about their past and get their image and see what different free and other image search products find online.
City or state contractors might not have the skills to remove all past images or their story will not mach a few traces found online.
Federal and contractors working undercover have the ability to rewrite online social media so their undercover "story" will mach perfectly to any and all online data sets that can be searched for.
If your protest group has some international funding, take the image to any of the big national private detective groups in the USA.
Their social media databases are long term, static, always updating and do not get altered like the online consumer networks.
They can rewind most accounts to creation and see ho
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
One more thing about the money angle.
Over the years, I've listened to most of the EconTalk back catalog. I agree with Russ Roberts about 60% of the time, yet I have some pretty strong disagreements in the other 40%.
Part of his standard spiel about diminishing the role of government in all practical venues is his model of private charity. I just found this now, but it turns out he's actually written a paper on the subject:
A Positive Model of Private Charity and Public Transfers
The whole point of relying less on government to adjudicate public life is that every side of the argument can stump up their own pocket books, as they see fit as private citizens. My own gut instinct is that this would devolve into an extremely capricious network of civic concern and attention, by the standard mechanism of charismatic megafauna getting all the grease.
So if these protesters (or some subset thereof) turn out to have deep pockets behind them, that actually means, in certain well-established strands of orthodox libertarian theory, that they are in good standing with the giant neoliberal program of dragging big government into a small bathtub, and it would be entirely their own business how they raise their protest stake. Because under Libertarianism, all dollars are created equal, and from this assumption (and possibly also God) unencumbered moral equilibrium shall automatically flow.
Nevertheless, suck-and-blow types somehow always seem to show up with a steady supply of nefarious labels concerning the hidden ka-ching. The standard smoke machine demands this narrative. (Business As Usual wouldn't much mind if the protesters did conform to their established narrative lot of being eternally impoverished and poorly organized, so it wins either way.)
I actually prefer government as a player in many issues, because it aims (until corrupted) to be somewhat transparent (no-one ever accused government of getting anything exactly right, which I regard as a false standard, because no-one ever accused any human system of getting anything exactly right, modulo "law of the jungle, the losers can suck it"; government is simply better at counting up losers than most private-sector alternatives).
I guess many people out there figure that if America went much further toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum, we'd all be united in the Church of the Profit Motive, and this kind of dispute simply wouldn't transpire among gentlemen, and we would not be constantly up to our ankles in dark money vs. deep money shit storms. Well, I'm not personally signing up to test drive that experimental fork in the road. I'm not saying it couldn't possibly work. The world is a complicated place. But I'd rather not risk my own skin to that experiment.
Constructive public discourse is fragile. This one thing, for sure, we all know.
Seneca, Nebraska — 12 October 2016
Bike shed? Or canary in the coal mine?
In this instance, it's hard to say. The politics of division have this strange, new, frightening face.
Yeah, how dare they speak their mind? If we don't stop them right here, next they'll even demand the right to peacefully assemble, and what we got then may not be stoppable anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.