DHS Tracked Occupy Wall Street to ‘Control Protesters’

Obviously there is a threat, something is being protected, and protesting or action in regards to that is projected as dangerous.

The list of sectors is telling. Rather than the rule of law being primarily for our protection, it is shifting into a protection of them from us. Them and us is becoming clearer as we proceed.

The game is afoot.

"...The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters.”

Besides, wouldn't you expect an agency charged with national security to be monitoring possible outbreaks of violence?

I don't WANT Homeland Security (still the most godawful name ever) to be spying on anyone but it doesn't look like it was anything sinister. OWS was new and expanding so someone thought they needed to keep an eye on it.

I see.

It's their JOB to monitor possible national security concerns.

Maybe they shouldn't HAVE that job but that's a different discussion.

At worst it was a local policing problem... inasmuch as exercising your constitutional right to assemble and speak could be considered any kind of policing problem. Do you really think or could you really justify that they represent a national security problem? Were any of them planning or recommending terrorist actions? Had any of them attempted to aquire any kind of weapons.

Please, stop trying to justify absurd overreactions by the security aparatus of this country against a mythical left wing threat. It reminds me of the FBI infiltrating peace activists during Operation 'Let's bomb the hell out of the Iraqis.' (and many times in many decades before that.)

...if they didn't monitor what was going on?

Because someone associated with OWS said so? That's not how I would want any agency, law enforcement or otherwise, to operate.

So OWS got the attention of DHS. Big deal, unless you think DHS did something sinister.

Every peaceful protest group should be completely investigated by the OHS. I suppose it doesn't matter that it violates due process and the rights to free speech, association, and privacy. Active investigations like this used to require warrents of some kind but hey, why bother with that sort of inconvenience when there are peace-niks to investigate and abuse?

I suppose the right wing gun tottin' bible thumpin' ex-vets are in the same catergory? They were, and are the subject of FBI national watch, remember the national warning? Ed

It is NOT the federal government's job to be policing the streets of this country. It is the state's and localities jobs. The police power lies with the states. This is why we do not have a federal police force that patrols the streets. If it does not affect interstate commerce or foreign threats, the federal government has no jurisdiction (this is why agencies such as the FBI cannot involve themselves in intrastate law enforcement issues).

They were monitoring the Web.

They were investigating and gathering intelligence where they had no jurisdiction to do so.

Source:



No link yet.

First, it's unclear what the damages would be. On the other hand, someone could seek injunctive relief. The problem with that is standing (a person would have to demonstrate that DHS spied on him/her, and there is no general "taxpayer" or "citizen" standing). These things are hard to establish. Moreover, in light of the Jewell v. NSA case, I smell a government defense of absolute immunity.

It was idiotic for the DHS to spend taxpayer money to spy on something that was so transparent. There was nothing secretive or hidden about OWS.

check every suitcase in the airport, every ID at the library and even the OWSers who put videos of everything they do on the internet for public viewing.

The waste is incredible.

Another paranoid, wasteful Republican program.

Stupid name and a completely unneeded agency on top of all the other agencies we have.

But what they were doing was pretty innocuous. And I think law enforcement agencies SHOULD be monitoring protest groups. That includes OWS, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Cultists and all the others.

How else are they going to determine which ones are violent and which ones are not?

drastically chills speech.

The First Amendment doesn't exclude Neo-Nazis or OWS or cultists. That's because the Founding Fathers wanted to establish something superior to the repressive governments of Europe of the time.

We talk a lot about freedom, but what does freedom really mean?

The freedom to have your name on a list of suspects for having ideas, a religion or associations that are in fact completely non-violent and innocuous. Please.

The whole hysterical over-reaction by DHS, FBI and local police only forces "The Man" to take off
his mask and show the world who's really "serving and protecting" whom. These Occupy actions
are 100% non-violent and it appears the main "job" of police FBI etc. is to provoke and incite
some brutal showdown, where they get to use their "new toy's" to do "crowd control".

Then, to add insult to injury, the police (at least here in Portland OR) then hype the message through
the local media of how Occupy "forced" them to have to hire 100s of armed thugs (police) to stand
around doing nothing except incite violence, and then perpetrate MORE violence in making absurd
arrests, and jailings, all at taxpayer expense and 90% of the time NO charges are even brought
against those arrested precisely because the whole thing is BS, paying these armed thugs to stand
around collecting over-time pay, and THEN the capper is the POlice Chief goes to local press whining
about how much it's costing taxpayers to hire these armed thugs, never mind the 1st Amendment.

I know that's the goal but surely you don't think everyone associated with OWS is angelic, do you?

I hardly see it as an 'hysterical over-reaction' when DHS was simply monitoring the web for info.

has caused or condoned. And please, let's not bring up the flag. No flags were hurt during the burning.

The rapes and robberies and assaults by fellow occupiers don't count. Sorry, silly me. Ed

first, I was there. There was an act of rape or secual assault.

The police would tell any homeless found at other parks and anyone getting released from jail to go on down to Zucotti for free food and free speech, in one of their lame attempts to oust us and have us accused of crime to turn the public from us. So there were plenty of people there who were just taking advantage of the sleeping supplies and meals and gave not a rats ass about the occupy. There was nothing that could be done about it. The jail released people told us that they were informed to go there.

When the woman was assaulted, the story I kept hearing was that the police refused to take action. While I was there the man, the man who did the assalt, had his picture shown around camp with instructions to report him if seen anywhere near there and to not let him in the camp.

So that does not seem to me like Occupy endorsed or caused the violence.

Secondly, you have heard the rumor about Brietbart & Okeefe's set up occupy rape story by now right? Don't yet know if that is true but I can vouch for at least what I saw at Occupy.

A classic 10% Truism ... and i'm being kind ... the REAL question quickly becomes "exactly WHO is monitoring WHOM? .. and for
WHAT info? info about WHAT who buys, WHERE who shops, and Gawd only knows what they do with all that information ...

Calling Dr. WHO!!

Do you really want government agencies to just go away? Fine. No more monitoring of cults, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, etc.

You want DHS disbanded? So do I. They're a pointless agency pasted on top of too many other intelligence agencies. But law enforcement needs to have some monitoring capabilities.

And what they did was read some publicly available web site info. Hardly a scandal in that, wouldn't you say?

We already have MORE than enough local law enforcement, and the FBI to
deal with criminals and violence-prone groups like neo-Nazis ... but it's
both laughable and outrageous that the gov't is spending literally billion$
to "monitor" Occupy.

This is especially true if you add up costs of all the local police force's
over-time expenses they squander on harassing Occupy, an avowedly
PEACEFUL protest movement committed to non-violence.

Oh I know, a few windows have been broken by BBloc or agent provocateurs,
but they do NOT represent the OWS movement in any way, other than
perhaps in their own twisted minds.

But then, they did that to MLK Jr. the AntiWar movements, not to mention
flat out murdering Black Panthers in middle of night, so i guess we never learn.

gone.

Rush was the head instead of Janet?

But he's a useless bag of garbage. Maybe in an alternate reality, he is something else but we're stuck with this reality.

It the GOP wins sooner or later someone like Rush will be head of DHS. After all Bush created it.

So OWS was "new and expanding." So were the TeaKlanners and they didn't seem to garner much attention from the DHS. OWS very explicitly does NOT advocate violence, (Oakland notwithstanding and it's a virtual certainty the violence is coming from law enforcement), and it's clearly a grassroots movement without any sinister ties nor foreign involvement. Don't you find it interesting that they can follow around OWS protesters but they can't seem to investigate the Koch Brothers' influence on the election process nor prosecute the wall street banksters?

The poster upthread nailed it -- The DHS doesn't exist for OUR security it exists for THEIRS.

I don't know. But if they did not, I would say it's because OWS garnered greater support in greater numbers.

But again, I don't know. And yeah, you're right, DHS, like most government departments, exists to enhance the government and not specifically look out for what's right for citizens.

Seems to me the TeaBaggers were more of a threat because they actually brought weapons to protest rallies.

But if not, it was probably because OWS garnered more support and greater numbers than the tea baggers.

It's a sham created by the Bush administration that is wasting over $46 billion of our tax payer dollars this year to spy on us.

Let's face it, when it comes to winning a violent conflict, nobody's in a better position to prevail than the American wehrmacht. If DHS can provoke Occupy to violence, it will provide the perfect pretext for breaking out the riot control gear and busting some hippie heads. And there will be no shortage of folks cheering on the bloodshed and the carnage, because it will be totally deserved, and necessary to keep the peace. And nothing is more important than keeping the peace. We'll even launch elective wars against other countries and occupy them for a decade to show how peaceful we are.

to being tazed, clubbed and taking tear gas canisters to the head.
If they would just be orderly and apply for the proper permits and then assemble and depart like good citizens to return to the cubicles and continue supporting Wall St with proper investments it'd all be fine.

Instead they have to be all "We have rights guaranteed under the Constitution blah, blah, blah." That only leaves them with the option of assuming some of them might not be happy about it when they are tortured and beaten to a pulp and may try to protect themselves. Animals are funny that way.

The problems associated with Occupy can be handled by local police. Still, I don't view following groups on the web as that intrusive, since the information on the web is out there for anybody to look at.

agencies like the CIA, FBI, military and so forth? If so then perhaps thats why they got involved?

for those who toe the party line. In East Germany it was the party line of the Communist Party. Here it is the party line of the right wing.

What the Communists and our right wing have in common is the fear that real people will do something spontaneous that the Communists or our right wing cannot control.

The reason that DHS monitored the OWS is because it has precisely the same controlling mentality as the East German STASI.

Wow. I didn't realize I was living in the Fourth Reich.

which openly publish videos of everything they do, then you are not free.

So you're saying that anyone associated with law enforcement should not look at them? That's what DHS did -they looked at the publicly available information to determine if OWS could turn violent.

I'm sure they do the same for Neo-Nazi groups, White Supremacist groups, Cults, etc. etc. etc. At least I hope someone is. Like it or not, government agencies DO offer us a measure of protection from fringe groups.

Now if DHS concluded that OWS was a danger then I would be worried about why they thought that. But right now, I'm not.

Of interest in the Occupy movement. I have seen your posts on nearly every thread in GD and LBN concerning Occupy. To my great suprise I haven't seen you post at all in the new "Occupy Underground" group.

You can like OWS or not, you can like ME or not, but try to keep your responses on topic, okay?

DHS was not spying, they were monitoring public web sites. They were not trying to 'control' the protests, they said that city authorities and protest ORGANIZERS had trouble controlling the protests.

I am not spying I am just monitoring your commments on a public website concerning Occupy Wall Street!

going beyond that in my opinion. It is really a waste.

Absent evidence to the contrary.

Rick: "Which site are you on, Bob?"
Bob: "OWSForever.com."
Rick: "Anyone mention anything about overthrowing the government or bombs or anything?"
Bob: "Nope."
Rick: "Okay, let's move on to the next one."

I would not use the word "control" in conjunction with just watching a video on the internet unless someone starts trying to identify people in the video.

The problems begin when people start making lists of names which can easily become black-lists. Problems also arise when authorities try to identify "leaders," and then somehow mysteriously the "leaders" have accidents or are murdered.

And then you get the flood of conspiracy theories, most of which are false, but which ultimately undermine confidence in the government and in law enforcement.

It's a vicious circle of suspicion and assumptions. Homeland Security investigates people because it falsely assumes that people who join protest movements are dangerous almost by definition, and then when people discover that they have been investigated, they do not trust Homeland Security.

Vicious, vicious circle.

And I fear we are at that point.

In a democracy, we permit the free exchange of ideas, the free marketplace for ideas. That means you don't chill speech by trying to control people with unusual ideas or people who assemble to petition their government.

Our Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, was a well considered document based on vast knowledge of history including the history of Rome and European countries. The First Amendment has been compromised to what is to me a very dangerous extent. And it is not the first time we have gone too far in this respect.

same some internal leaked memos or is "The reason" really just "In my opinion" ?

Sorry if that was unclear.

I have to add that it would be pretty obvious that I could not possibly have an inside track on what the DHS is thinking. I do know a bit about what the STASI did (although not as much as I would like to know. The STASI facts kind of slipped off the radar, didn't they?) I also know about what other domestic surveillance organizations in various countries have done.

Why else would Homeland Security be snooping on OWS other than to infiltrate and try to make OWS look bad or to control everything that goes on in the US.

OWS was very transparent. The General Assemblies were held on the steps of City Hall here in Los Angeles, and everything possible was livestreamed. What in the world was there for Homeland Security to keep track of?

It's sheer paranoia.

It is reasonable to want to protect our country from terrorism. But it is not reasonable to examine every human exchange, every group, every facet of our lives just in case someone might be a terrorist.

The number of terrorists in the world is very small. Many of those arrested and accused of terrorism thus far in the US were encouraged in some way by informants for the government or the government itself.

We could be spending our money on better things like education.

We need some Homeland Security, etc., but at this point we have gone too far on it.

The real question is has it gone any further than looking and unless it has then its not an issue really.

Even the secret bits. I've had it with that Newspeak travesty.

Again I have to ask the question, Is ANYONE really surprised by this!?! Seriously!?!

There was never any real doubt.

Blind defensive rhetoric when all the available history and evidence suggest exactly the opposite gets very, very old.

Americans need to wake the hell up and face reality, because the one percent are not playing games here, and they already own our government. Occupy now, because they are putting structures into place to prevent occupation in the future.

and people got very upset. Now there's this: http://rt.com/usa/news/348-act-tresspass-buildings-437/

"The US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which is being dubbed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. In the bill, Congress officially makes it illegal to trespass on the grounds of the White House, which, on the surface, seems not just harmless and necessary, but somewhat shocking that such a rule isn’t already on the books. The wording in the bill, however, extends to allow the government to go after much more than tourists that transverse the wrought iron White House fence. "

-snip-

"In the text of the act, the law is allowed to be used against anyone who knowingly enters or remains in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so, but those grounds are considered any area where someone — rather it’s President Obama, Senator Santorum or Governor Romney — will be temporarily visiting, whether or not the public is even made aware. Entering such a facility is thus outlawed, as is disrupting the orderly conduct of “official functions,” engaging in disorderly conduct “within such proximity to” the event or acting violent to anyone, anywhere near the premises. Under that verbiage, that means a peaceful protest outside a candidate’s concession speech would be a federal offense, but those occurrences covered as special event of national significance don’t just stop there, either. And neither does the list of covered persons that receive protection."

I guess the DHS laid the groundwork for it. We are such nasty, violent protestors!!

You should make it an OP.

The DHS's primary function is to snoop on all of us. If we don't like it, we have to vote people in who promise to (and then fulfill their promise to) dismantle it. Expressing outrage is futile. We brought this injustice on ourselves by allowing it to creep in, bit by bit. We could have stamped it out but it would have had to start a hundred years (or more) ago.

instead of abusing the public as they have chosen to do.

The article is properly written in the past tense as it is discussing what was found in the wikileaks docs, but that makes it feel like it's all over now, DHS saw everything was cool and has moved on to some other good work. Nope. They are still at it, monitoring social networks, analysing citizens movements and actions, "controlling the protestors" etc.
The amount of infiltration and manipulation that is being revealed in NY and Denver, and elsewhere, is shocking. I'm not surprised or offended that DHS would have a curiosity about this movement, especially since its advocates announce it as a Revolution. But the continuing efforts to dampen and bend the groups purposes and messages is a perversion of the will of the people, a perversion of the effectiveness of the citizens rights to free speech and assembly. And it does continue, today.

Did they kill Bin Ladin in Dallas?

I thought that the DHS was supposed to do things like coordinate the intel with "all" of the intel agencies including the military?
If so then you would think they were involved somehow in taking him out.

I witnessed several fear-inducing security people walk through several buildings in Bethesda, Maryland yesterday claiming that "protesters are in the area" and therefore all businesses had to be shut down immediately. The rent-a-cops went from business to business ordering them to close their storefronts immediately and to not let anyone in.

THERE WERE NO PROTESTERS ANYWHERE and even if there were there would have been no reason to close any buildings or businesses. These were large buildings with 100s of doctor's offices, banks and other businesses. Is was pure fear being used by public-abusing, self-appointed authorities to make themselves appear as if they were adding some value to society when they were, in fact, being ignored by most people as most everyone knew what total jack-assed buffoons the rent-a-cops were.

I am about halfway through "V for Vendetta" and every new day it seems closer to coming true in the USA

about this. There were a lot of videos from Occupy wherever that showed guys wearing Kevlar vests emblazoned with Homeland Security speaking to local law enforcement.
And the government monitors everything we do at all times. You just have to assume that you are being watched unless you are at home. And I don't think there is anything we can do without the cooperation of congress.