As social networking becomes a dominant feature of daily life, the
secret state is increasingly surveilling electronic media for what it
euphemistically calls "actionable intelligence."
Take
the case of Elliot Madison. The 41-year-old anarchist was arrested in
Pittsburgh September 24 at the height of G20 protests.
Madison,
a social worker and volunteer with The People’s Law Collective in New
York City, was busted by a combined task force led by the Pennsylvania
State Police (PSP) and Pittsburgh’s "finest." The activist was charged
with "hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a
communication facility and possession of instruments of crime,"
according to The New York Times.
Did
the cops uncover a secret anarchist weapons‘ cache? Were Madison and
codefendant, Michael Wallschlaeger, a producer with the radio talk show
"This Week in Radical History" for the A-Infos Radio Project,
about to detonate a "weapon of mass destruction" during last month’s
capitalist conclave that witnessed the obscene spectacle of our masters
avidly conspiring to impoverish billions of the planet’s inhabitants?
Hardly!
In fact, Madison and Wallschlaeger’s "crime" was to set up a
communications center in a hotel room that alerted demonstrators to
movements by the police, who after all, had viciously attacked
protesters–and anyone else nearby–with heavy batons, tear gas and a
Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a so-called "non-lethal" weapon.
Kitted-out
with police scanners, computers and cell phones, the intrepid activists
used a Twitter account to assist protesters eager to elude a thrashing
by some 5,000 heavily armed camo-clad cops who had sealed-off downtown
Pittsburgh to keep the area safe–from the First Amendment.
National Lawyers Guild on-scene legal observers reported
an "unwarranted display and use of force by police in residential
neighborhoods, often far from any protest activity." According to the
civil liberties‘ watchdog group:
Police deployed
chemical irritants, including CS gas, and long-range acoustic devices
(LRAD) in residential neighborhoods on narrow streets where families
and small children were exposed. Scores of riot police formed
barricades at many intersections throughout neighborhoods miles away
from the downtown area and the David Lawrence Convention Center.
Outside the Courtyard Marriott in Shadyside, police deployed smoke
bombs in the absence of protest activity, forcing bystanders and hotel
residents to flee the area.Later, while some protests were
ending, riot-clad officers surrounded an area at the University of
Pittsburgh, creating an ominous spectacle that some described as akin
to Kent State. Guild legal observers witnessed police chasing and
arresting many uninvolved students.Among other questionable
tactics, officers from dozens of law enforcement agencies lacked
easily-identifiable badges, impeding citizens‘ ability to register
complaints. (National Lawyers Guild, "National Lawyers Guild Observes
Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20," Press Release,
September 25, 2009)
The Times reported that
after his arrest the FBI raided the home that Madison shared with his
wife, Elena, and conducted an exhaustive 16-hour search of the premises
seizing computers, books and a poster (horror of horrors!) of the old
mole himself, Karl Marx.
Criminalizing the First Amendment
"Anyone
can tweet, but the truth is, sometimes speech can be criminal," John
Burkoff, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law,
told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
By
that standard, anyone who has the temerity to question the legitimacy
of a system that drives millions into poverty, wages preemptive war to
secure (steal) other people’s resources, destroys the environment or
uses "speech" to oppose said crimes against humanity–and cheekily
urges others to do the same–is, by definition, guilty, in "new normal"
America.
Witold Walczak however, the legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union told the Post-Gazette,
"investigating the government and broadcasting information about it
would seem to be a constitutionally protected communication."
The
ACLU director elaborated, "If the police want to communicate privately,
there are certainly ways to do that, and police radios are not one of
those. How can it be a crime? It’s not a secure communication."
The good professor had another take on the matter and told the Post-Gazette, "Were they sending it to people simply to protest, or to commit further crimes?"
"Further crimes"? What crime? Oh yes, legally protesting the depredations of the capitalist system, that crime!
That
such a statement can be uttered by a purported legal expert is rather
rich with unintended irony. Burkhoff’s maneuver to cast the best
possible light on repressive police operations is all the more absurd
given the fact that none other than the Obama administration’s State
Department had stepped-in and pressured Twitter to forego a service
upgrade, and downtime, just scant months earlier.
But context as
they say, is everything. Champions of other people’s freedom
(particularly when they are geopolitical rivals), the State Department
intervened and told the instant messaging service in no uncertain terms
that Iranian protesters relied on Twitter to monitor police movements in Tehran and other cities as protests over disputed elections took center stage in the Islamic Republic.
The New York Times reported
back in June that the U.S. State Department "e-mailed the
social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled
maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service
while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the
outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran."
According to Reuters,
"Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as
the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in
Iran’s internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control
deadly street protests over the election result."
Twitter said
in a blog post it had delayed the firm’s planned upgrade because of its
role as an "important communication tool in Iran."
A day earlier, President Obama had said he believed "people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed"–in Iran.
Message
to the American people: Official enemy: Twitter good! Official friend
(grifting multinational corporations and the criminals who do their
bidding in Washington): Twitter bad! How’s that for an imaginative
interpretation of the "new media paradigm"!
"Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not"
Echoing
the execrable logic of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
America’s premier political police force, the FBI, executed a search
warrant on Madison that authorized agents to look "for violations of
federal rioting laws," according to the Times.
Madison’s attorney, Martin Stolar, told the Times
that "he and a friend were part of a communications network among
people protesting the G-20." Denouncing the raid, Stolar averred that
"there’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to
any criminal liability."
On October 2, Stolar argued in Federal
District Court in Brooklyn "that the warrant was vague and overly
broad. Judge Dora L. Irizarry ordered the authorities to stop examining
the seized materials until Oct. 16, pending further orders," the Times reported.
This
is not the first time however, that the secret state has sought to
curtail text messaging by activists during large-scale demonstrations.
In
2008, as a result of the heavy repression of legal protests–and
subsequent lawsuits by victims–during the far-right Republican
National Convention in New York City in 2004, lawyers representing
N.Y.’s "finest" demanded that M.I.T. graduate student Tad Hirsch and
the Institute of Applied Autonomy, the inventors of TXTmob, turn over
all "text messages sent via TXTmob during the convention, the date and
time of the messages, information about people who sent and received
messages, and lists of people who used the service," The New York Times reported last year.
The FBI however, already possess the technological ability to hack into Wi-fi and computer networks as Wired revealed in April, citing internal Bureau documents released to the magazine under a Freedom of Information Act request.
According to a follow-up story
by the publication, the Bureau’s Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis
Unit, CEAU, has deployed software called a computer and internet
protocol address verifier, or CIPAV, that is "designed to infiltrate a
target’s computer and gather a wide range of information, which it
secretly sends to an FBI server in eastern Virginia."
Antifascist Calling reported
in 2008, that when a whistleblower, security consultant Babak Pasdar,
stepped forward and blew the lid off the Bureau’s massive
telecommunications‘ surveillance network, the agency’s so-called
"Quantico circuit" in Virginia, he revealed that major wireless
providers, including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, had handed the state
"unfettered" access to the carrier’s wireless networks, including
billing records and customer data "transmitted wirelessly."
According to Pasdar’s sworn affidavit,
Verizon provided the FBI with with real-time access to who is speaking
to whom, the time and duration of each call as well as the locations of
those so targeted.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the San Francisco-based civil liberties‘ watchdog group, has posted Madison’s motion and his attorney’s supporting declaration
on their web site. It makes for very interesting reading indeed!
According to the search warrant obtained by FBI Special Agent Edward J.
Heslin from the U.S. District Court, the FBI were allowed to seize:
Computers,
hard-drives, floppy discs and other media used to store
computer-accessible information, cellular phones, personal digital
assistants, electronic storage devices and related peripherals, black
masks and clothing, maps, correspondence and other documents, financial
records, notes, ledgers, receipts, papers, photographs, telephone and
address books, identification documents, indicia of residency and other
documents and records that constitute evidence of the commission of
rioting crimes or that are designed or intended as a means of violating
the federal rioting laws, including any of the above items that are
maintained within other closed or locked containers, including safes
and other containers that may be further secured by key locks (or
combination locks) of various kinds. (Honorable Viktor V. Pohorelsky,
Magistrate Judge to FBI Special Agent Edward J. Heslin, United States
District Court, Eastern District of New York, Search Warrant, Case
Number M-09-962, September 26, 2009)
Madison’s
attorney, Martin Stolar averred that "a number of documents and other
properties" seized by the FBI have "nothing to do with the governments
investigation into what the search warrant characterizes as violations
of ‚federal rioting laws‘."
According to Stolar "the seized
items include political writings, notes, political associates and
ideas, materials protected by the attorney-client and social work
privileges, as well as property belonging to other persons residing in
the premises which have no connection to any pending or contemplated
criminal investigation." Stolar declared that "the illegality of the
search is in the overbreadth of the seizures and the vagueness of the
term ‚federal rioting laws‘."
In other words, driftnet
surveillance of American citizens is the norm for our secret state
minders; an unambiguous sign of America’s slide into an
extra-constitutional police state.
Fusion Centers: Leading the Charge
While
Madison and Wallschlaeger’s arrest came as a result of actions
undertaken by the Pennsylvania State Police, one cannot rule out that
(a) informants had tipped off the cops to the pair’s activities, (b)
CEAU had penetrated protest organizer’s computer net and therefore,
were well aware of what the duo were up to, or (c) through some
combination of the above, the FBI and presumably, their local fusion
center allies, alerted PSP who then conducted the raid and shut the
anarchist’s communications center down.
Federal Computer Week noted
September 30, that the Department of Homeland Security "is establishing
a new office to coordinate its intelligence-sharing efforts in state
and local intelligence fusion centers," and that the secret state’s new
"Joint Fusion Center Program Management Office will be part of DHS‘
Office of Intelligence and Analysis."
Among other things, the publication revealed that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the new office will:
•
Develop ways to assess threats and trends by gathering, analyzing and
sharing local and national information and intelligence through fusion
centers.• Coordinate with state, local and tribal law
enforcement leaders to ensure that DHS is providing the correct
resources to fusion centers.• Promote a sense of common mission
and purpose at fusion centers through training and other support. (Ben
Bain, "DHS established new office for intelligence-sharing centers," Federal Computer Week, September 30, 2009)
Since
Bushist–and now, Obama–securocrats designated fusion centers "a
central node for the federal government’s efforts for sharing
terrorism-related information with state and local officials," the
federal government has pumped some $327 million in taxpayer-funded
largesse into these spooky "public-private partnerships."
In
Pennsylvania for example, the Criminal Intelligence Center (PaCIC), is
described by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) as a "component of the Pennsylvania State Police."
Washington Post investigative journalist Robert O’Harrow Jr., the author of No Place to Hide, revealed
that "Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition
software to examine driver’s license photos" and have "subscriptions to
private information-broker services that keep records about Americans‘
locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses
and the like."
One can only wonder whether these or other
intrusive surveillance tools, including the CEAU’s CIPAV software were
deployed against Madison and Wallschlaeger prior to their Pittsburgh
arrest.
But gathering information on fusion centers is often an exercise in Kafkaesque futility. Investigative journalist G.W. Schulz reported that when the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR)
attempted to obtain information from the Colorado Information Analysis
Center on that state’s fusion center, they ran into a brick wall.
CIAC
spokesperson Lance Clem refused to release what should be public
documents to CIR claiming that releasing the records would be "contrary
to the public interest" and "not only would compromise [the] security
and investigative practices of numerous law enforcement agencies but
would also violate confidentiality agreements that have been made with
private partner organizations and federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies."
As of this writing, it cannot be
determined with any certainty what role the Pennsylvania Criminal
Intelligence Center played in repressing G20 protests. However, if past
fusion center practices in Denver and St. Paul during last year’s
Democratic and Republican National Conventions are any guide, their
management of pre-G20 intelligence along with their federal partners,
was in all probability considerable.
One lesson that can be
gleaned however, from the federal witch hunt targeting activists Elliot
Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger, is that dissent in post-9/11
America, as during the COINTELPRO-era of the 1960s and ’70s, has been
criminalized.
Source: http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2009/10/battening-down-hatches-secret-state.html
