Peaceful Anti-Fracking Activists Pursued by FBI as 'Eco-Terrorists'

Sunday, March 11, 2012 by Common Dreams
Continued FBI surveillance of environmental activism amidst expanding definitions of 'eco-terrorism'

In recent years, the broad definition of 'eco-terrorism' has come to include environmentalist activities ranging from arson to setting mink free at fur farms to protests in front of the homes of corporate executives. Environmental activists have seen increased imprisonment (including maximum security sentences) for non-violent crimes.

Now, as the FBI suggests that 'eco-terrorism' is in decline, the Washington Post reports hat the FBI has increased heavy surveillance of environmentalists including anti-fracking protesters.
Will Potter, who's work exposes the growing expansion of governmental prosecution of environmental activists, comments, among others.

Juliet Eilperin at TheWashington Post reports:

Ben Kessler, a student at the University of North Texas and an environmental activist, was more than a little surprised that an FBI agent questioned his philosophy professor and acquaintances about his whereabouts and his sign-waving activities aimed at influencing local gas drilling rules. 

“It was scary,” said Kessler, who is a national organizer for the nonviolent environmental group Rising Tide North America. He said the agent approached him this past fall and said that the FBI had received an anonymous complaint and were looking into his opposition to hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking.” The bureau respected free speech, the agent told him, but was “worried about things being taken to an extreme level.” 

Even as environmental and animal rights extremism in the United States is on the wane, officials at the federal, state and local level are continuing to target groups they have labeled a threat to national security, according to interviews with numerous activists, internal FBI documents and a survey of legislative initiatives across the country.

Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad (R) signed a law this month, backed by the farm lobby, that makes it a crime to pose as an employee or use other methods of misrepresentation to get access to operations in an attempt to expose animal cruelty. Utah passed a similar bill, nicknamed an “ag-gag” law, on Wednesday. Last month, Victor VanOrden, an activist in his mid-20s, received the maximum sentence of five years in prison under a separate Iowa law for attempting to free minks from one of the state’s fur farms. [...] 

“There’s been very little change under the Obama administration,” said Will Potter, author of the book “Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Movement Under Siege.” After factoring in several state initiatives on top of federal enforcement, Potter said, “The political climate as a whole has gotten a lot worse.” 

In the past few years FBI agents have suggested District police monitor animal rights protests outside the Vanguard Group’s offices downtown because of its investment in a controversial animal testing facility, and they have mined a Web site, the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, for hints on upcoming activities, according to FBI documents obtained by Ryan Shapiro, an animal rights activist, through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests and other contacts. [...] 

The FBI agent, David Rogers, told Kessler he started looking into him after receiving an anonymous tip. Rogers, along with a Dallas police officer, also approached Kessler’s philosophy professor, Adam Briggle, last month. Briggle, who chairs a citizens advisory group aimed at imposing new restrictions on rules governing gas drilling in the Denton area, said the two men spoke to him for half an hour about subjects including his course syllabus and the line between civil disobedience and terrorism. 

“I don’t know how law enforcement works, but it seemed like a total fishing expedition to me,” Briggle said, adding that when they discussed the controversy surrounding fracking, “they pointed to the Pacific Northwest and how there’s a culture up there of eco-terrorism, and they wanted to keep it from spreading down here. . . . To have the FBI come in here and interrogate me as an academic, it was pretty off-putting.” [...] 

[Ryan Shapiro, an animal rights activist] questioned this surveillance. He and four others are suing the federal government on the grounds that the American Enterprise Terrorism Act has a chilling effect on free speech, since they are now intimidated from “documenting conditions on factory farms so [consumers] can make informed choices about if they want to continue to pay people to abuse animals on their behalf.”

Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’

By David Kravets  September 21, 2010  |



The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.

The Justice Department is demanding a federal appeals court rehear a case in which it reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month, without a court warrant. The authorities then obtained warrants to search and find drugs in the locations where defendant Antoine Jones had travelled.

The administration, in urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a three-judge panel’s August ruling from the same court, said Monday that Americans should expect no privacy while in public.

“The panel’s conclusion that Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public movements of his Jeep rested on the premise that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of his or her movements in public places, ” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Smith wrote the court in a petition for rehearing.

The case is an important test of privacy rights as GPS devices have become a common tool in crime fighting, and can be affixed to moving vehicles by an officer shooting a dart. Three other circuit courts have already said the authorities do not need a warrant for GPS vehicle tracking, Smith pointed out.

The circuit’s ruling means that, in the District of Columbia area, the authorities need a warrant to install a GPS-tracking device on a vehicle. But in much of the United States, including the West, a warrant is not required. Unless the circuit changes it mind, only the Supreme Court can mandate a uniform rule.

The government said the appellate panel’s August decision is “vague and unworkable” and undermines a law enforcement practice used “with great frequency.”

The legal dispute centers on a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning a tracking beacon affixed to a container, without a court warrant, to follow a motorist to a secluded cabin. The appeals court said that decision did not apply to today’s GPS monitoring of a suspect, which lasted a month.

The beacon tracked a person, “from one place to another,” whereas the GPS device monitored Jones’ “movements 24 hours a day for 28 days.”

The government argued Monday that the appellate court’s decision “offers no guidance as to when monitoring becomes so efficient or ‘prolonged’ as to constitute a search triggering the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

The appeals court ruled the case “illustrates how the sequence of a person’s movements may reveal more than the individual movements of which it is composed.”

The court said that a person “who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”

U.S. schools: grooming students for a surveillance state

August 28, 2010 by Dissent

Schools are increasingly invading student privacy both in school and outside of school. Are schools grooming youth to passively accept a surveillance state where they have no expectation of privacy anywhere? A PogoWasRight.org commentary.

The increasing use of student surveillance and intrusion of school districts into students’ extra-curricular conduct should alarm us all. Whether it is a district surveilling students in their bedrooms via webcam, conducting random drug or locker searches, strip-searching students, lowering the standard for searching students to “reasonable suspicion” from “probable cause,” disciplining students for conduct outside of school hours, searching their cellphones and text messages, or allegedly forcing them to undergo pregnancy testing, student privacy is under increasing threat.

The other day I mentioned a Connecticut school district that wanted to require students to carry an ID card with an RFID chip so that they could track their location. The surveillance capability included locating the student if they were off school premises and in town. Today, I came across another news story from earlier this month that also involves tracking students. KTVU in California reported that the Contra Costa County School District began introducing a tracking system for preschool students that would alert staff when a student leaves school premises. In order to accomplish that, students will reportedly be required to wear a jersey that contains the RFID tag that uses Wi-Fi to send signals to sensors located throughout the school.

I realize that some might argue that these are just little pre-schoolers and of course, we want to protect their safety, etc., but keep in mind that one of the major justifications for the program is to save staff time in terms of having to manually record attendance, etc. In exchange for that time and cost-saving, what price do we pay psychologically as a society? It strikes me that schools are grooming our youth to simply accept being tracked and monitored wherever they go and that anything they do, anywhere, can be used against them in school or elsewhere.

Is this really how we want to raise our children? To be sheep who accept being tracked and who have little sense of privacy or entitlement to privacy?

A study released last year by Fordham Law’s Center on Law and Information Privacy found that the education sector was not doing enough to protect the privacy of student information. It did not, however, look at the question of whether schools were actually invading student privacy and systematically eroding student privacy rights and autonomy. It’s time for a national dialogue about student privacy, while there are still some remnants of it left.

NSA Executive Leaked After Official Reporting Process Failed Him

By Kim Zetter | July 14, 2010 | NSA Spying

A former NSA executive who is fighting government charges of leaking classified information was part of a group that pursued several sanctioned paths to report concerns about an agency spy program, but was repeatedly frustrated by the government’s inaction, according to a report Wednesday.

Thomas Drake, now reduced to working at a Washington, D.C.-area Apple store while awaiting his trial, first notified his superiors at the National Security Agency, then looked to Congress to address his concerns, and finally worked with a group that went to the Defense Department’s inspector general, according to The Washington Post. When all of these avenues failed to net results, he took his information to a reporter at The Baltimore Sun.

Drake now faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison if convicted of mishandling classified information and obstructing justice.

Drake’s information involved a data-mining program called ThinThread that, after the Sept. 11 attacks, was going to be replaced by a more expensive, less efficient and less privacy-friendly program called Trailblazer. When he expressed concerns that the new program would ignore constitutional safeguards around wiretapping, he was reportedly rebuffed by his superiors.

“He tried to have his concerns heard and nobody really wanted to listen,” attorney Nina Ginsberg, who is representing a former Capitol Hill staffer but is not representing Drake, told the Post.

Drake began working for the NSA in 1989 as a contractor. His job was to evaluate software programs for the agency. In 2001, on the morning of Sept. 11 to be exact, he began a new job as a senior executive at the NSA overseeing the office of change leadership and communications, the Post says. ThinThread was developed for the NSA in the ’90s to mine massive amounts of digital data collected by the agency and find patterns.

One of the existing program’s key features was a privacy component that anonymized collected data through encryption. The identifying information would only be decrypted if authorities gained sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant. Although the mere collection of domestic data was still illegal without a warrant, Drake apparently approved of the product as long as the anonymization feature was in place.

But after Sept. 11, NSA director Michael Hayden opted instead for the $1.2 billion Trailblazer program, which was believed to have more robust capability to handle larger volumes of data, but which had none of the privacy safeguards present in ThinThread.

Three of Drake’s superiors now say that he never mentioned his concerns about constitutional safeguards to them, but career NSA employees back Drake’s story, according to the paper. They took their concerns to congressional leaders and staffers, including Diane Roark, a Republican staff member of the House Intelligence Committee. Roark contacted Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who was responsible for appointing judges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — the court that oversees requests for national security surveillance warrants. But Rehnquist apparently was a dead end.

Roark also had no luck with her boss, House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss (R-Florida). Instead of performing his congressional oversight duty, Goss simply sent her along to NSA chief Hayden, who told her: “We’re proud of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”

That’s when Roark and former NSA employees who sided with Drake took their concerns to the Defense Department’s inspector general. They reported that the NSA had shelved ThinThread in favor of a program that cost 10 times as much and was less effective.

An administrative investigation was spawned by their complaint, as well as two criminal fraud investigations. The inspector general’s report was completed in December 2004 but was classified and led to no action.

It was Roark who suggested Drake contact a reporter at that point. A month later, in December 2005, The New York Times reported its groundbreaking story disclosing that the NSA had been spying on Americans, based on information from anonymous sources. Drake decided he should come forward with his information as well.

He contacted Siobhan Gorman at The Baltimore Sun, using Hushmail, an encrypted e-mail service. They communicated for a year without Drake identifying himself, before they finally met in person.

Drake allegedly provided Gorman with scans of classified documents, from which she wrote an article questioning the NSA’s replacement of ThinThread with Trailblazer and its abandonment of privacy safeguards. Drake later told New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the story was actually much more significant than what The Baltimore Sun reported.

Drake’s attorney, a public defender, says the government’s allegations against his client are factually wrong and miss important principles suggested by the case.

“Throughout, Tom Drake has tried as best he could to do the right thing in service of his country,” Jim Wyda told the Post. “His motives in this important matter are completely pure.”

Democrats Propose National ID Card to Combat Illegal Immigration

And it didn't even take a year before the Democrats--as the party in power--began considering the same Orwellian policy tactics the Republicans threw out there when they were the party in power. A national ID card is a bad idea that furthers the whole "show me your papers" theme so commonly used in reference to the Nazi Germany (which is ALWAYS a hyperbolic comparison, but there you go).

~~#~~0~~#~~

Dems Proposal Would Create National ID Card

By Jason Ditz

April 30, 2010

Privacy concerns are taking a back seat to a massive power grab again as top Congressional Democrats are proposing to institute a national ID card under the guise of “immigration reform.”


The proposal (pdf) insists that the government can “end illegal employment” by requiring every worker in the country to carry a biometric ID card including fingerprint data with them at all times. The bill insists that the ID card would "prevent future waves of illegal immigration."

Called the “Believe” System, the plan would have every employer required to check the validity of the ID card with a digital scanner before they would be allowed to hire anyone. The proposal drew quick condemnations from a number of civil libertarians groups, unsurprisingly.

But Sen. Dick Durbin (D – IL) expressed confidence that Americans would accept the measure, adding “now we live in a world where we take off our shoes at the airport and pull out our identification.” Americans have been cowed by threats of terror into all manner of travel restrictions, but will the specter of illegal immigration work the same wonders for this latest government program?

It is unclear, but it seems the Democratic leadership is willing to bet the answer is yes. Unthinkable not so many years ago, the growing calls for the federal government to do “something,” no matter how unwise, about immigration has made a national ID card proposal politically safe.

~~##o0o##~~

Democrats Push for National ID
By Anthony Gregory 

Apr 30, 2010

At least since 9/11, the Democrats have, if anything, been even worse than the Republicans in their push for a national ID. I recall the Bush administration, very early on, dismissing this totalitarian idea, although Bush soon enough signed the Real ID Act into law, with the support of hawkish and anti-immigration conservatives. But the establishment left is also a major threat on this front, and Democrats traditionally get a pass on civil liberties issues, whereas under Republicans there is more populist criticism of surveillance, police powers and the like.

Consider the Orwellian program being proposed by the Democratic leadership as part of “immigration reform.” Alexander Bolton writes:

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure. The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.

Whereas the Kennedy/McCain bill was bad enough, containing both positive elements and nasty ones, this new monstrosity would force leviathan’s way even further into every employment relationship. And this actually speaks to the false dichotomy between civil and economic liberties. Both incorrectly bifurcated forms of freedom are rooted in the same set of property rights, first and foremost in one’s own person and, by extension, in the tangible property one acquires justly through homesteading, gifts and honest market transactions. If Big Brother tries to comprehensively regulate immigration, he can smash economic freedom of association. And if the state has the power to oversee our economic lives, our personal freedom will always suffer in the process.

This also is a good time to question the entire idea of the national government trying to “seal the borders,” pick winners and losers among immigrants, decide who gets all the welfare benefits of being a legal immigrant and who is not even allowed into our golden door. Invariably, when the federal government imposes its way on immigration, we get some immigrants who come in with legal sanction and quickly become dependents of the U.S. government—whereas illegals are probably not net beneficiaries of the welfare state, legal immigrants might very well be. What’s worse, plenty of people are denied peaceful and legal entry when all they want is to enter the job market, improve their situation and that of their families, and join in the American dream. Of course, despite the state’s distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, most illegal aliens are de facto invited by the American people—by those who employ them, rent to them and associate with them as part of the community and in the glorious network of voluntary exchange known as the market economy. Since conservatives often say our rights come not from the government but from God and the nature of man, it is not for the government to decide whether someone should have the right to live here or not—it is up to individuals and communities, which obviously are able to sustain a fair number of illegals. Moreover, constitutionalists in particular should question the very notion that the feds have legal authority to crack down on the border, since immigration is not an Article I, Section 8 authority of Congress. Conservatives especially should follow Reagan’s example and embrace immigration amnesty.

The violence in Arizona is a consequence of too much government meddling—the drug war that causes the inflated profits and black market conditions on which gangsters thrive, as well as the immigration controls that lead to abuse of aliens at the hands of coyotes and others. A heavy-handed government response to it and to the immigration issue generally will inevitably yield disastrous consequences for the economy, the rule of law and, most important, individual liberty. Some folks fear that Obama will be soft on the border—even as they demand that he stop taking over the economy and expanding presidential power, this is one area where they want him to be more active. But no one should fear the Democrats will do nothing about immigration. One should instead fear that they will do all too much and that we will wake up living in a police state, with the walls closing in.

U.S. Airports Get Body Scanners

11 More U.S. Airports Get Body Scanners

By David Kravets
March 5, 2010 |

Transportation officials announced Friday 11 more United States airports will begin receiving full-body imaging machines.

“By accelerating the deployment of this technology, we are enhancing our capability to detect and disrupt threats of terrorism across the nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement.

Despite concerns of privacy and their effectiveness, the 11 airports are to get the 150 machines beginning Monday at Boston’s Logan International Airport, and one at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. In all, 30 U.S. airports will employ the scanning devices.

Fliers declining to submit to the machines that create X-ray-like virtual images of the body may get intense pat-downs from Transportation Security Administration authorities. The combined 150 imaging machines are being bought, in part, by $1 billion the government set aside from its $787 billion federal bailout bill.

The American Civil Liberties Union has decried the scanners as “virtual strip searchs.” The Electronic Privacy Information Center, in a Freedom of Information Act request, said the machines are capable of storing and transmitting images of passengers despite the government’s claim to the contrary.

A test-image shown to reporters Friday at Logan International “showed the blurry outline of a female volunteer. None of her clothing was visible, nor were her genitals, but the broad contours of her chest and buttocks were. Her face also was blurred,” The Associated Press said. “The image included the shadow of a cellphone purposely left on her belt, as well as the metal buttons on her pants. But overall, it looked like the outline of a ghost.”

The Amsterdam airport where suspected underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded a Detroit-bound Christmas flight had the scanning machines. But they were not used to check the Nigerian.

The machines also cannot detect so-called “booty bombs” in which an explosive is inserted into the body.

By summer, TSA expects the units, made by California-based Rapiscan, to be deployed at airports in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles and Oakland, California; Columbus, Ohio; Charlotte, North Carolina; Cincinnati; and Kansas City.