The Occupy Files: DHS Investigated Anonymous and Kept Tabs on Political Hackers

[cory777]

Source: Truthout

Protesters wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and maybe a black hat or cape have been a common sight at Occupy protests across the country. On the street, they were just another group of protesters, but on the Internet, the Anonymous hacker movement they represent was seen as a serious security threat during the first few months of Occupy, according to internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents and emails released to Truthout last week.

The Occupy Files reveal that DHS monitored Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and affiliated protests in the fall of 2011, but refrained from wholesale surveillance of the Occupy movement because of civil liberties concerns. The federal agency's cyber wing did, however, investigate Anonymous, a highly visible faction of the Occupy movement, after several successful hacks made headlines.

When Anonymous first announced its support for the OWS protests forming in September 2011, DHS sent out three memos with intelligence gathered from media reports and web postings on the "partnership" between Anonymous and OWS organizers and warned that "malicious cyber activity" may accompany the peaceful protests. A few months prior, the DHS cyber security communications arm had issued an unclassified bulletin informing law enforcement agencies about how Anonymous operates, what its future targets could be and how to deal with a hacktivist attack.

For federal law enforcement, it's clear that public protests are much different than online hacktivism - that's something the First Amendment does not protect. In an internal communication obtained by Truthout, one DHS spokesman drew a line in the sand for activists using social media, writing, "I'm thinking we just make it clear that using social media [to] organize protests is well within constitutional rights; when it becomes our business [is] if social media used to plan cyber attacks."

Read more: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8126-the-occupy-files-dhs-investigated-anonymous-and-kept-tabs-on-political-hackers

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Breaking Activist News - http://activistnews.blogspot.com/

[geek tragedy]

1. That seems to be the right approach.

Peaceful, lawful protests should not result in people being treated like criminals.

On the other hand, breaking the law like Anonymous does . . .

[JDPriestly]

2. Yes. Anonymous is a wild card at this time.

Who knows who they are or what they are willing to do with the information they steal?

I think that Anonymous is a very different matter than what Assange was doing with publishing information provided by government leakers.

I support the Occupy movement as long as it is nonviolent. It provides a means, a venue for people to communicate openly and often. Since the advent of television, people have sequestered themselves, avoided political discussion, far too much.

But Occupy is almost the opposite of Anonymous.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Your comments set off some lines of thought.

Of course I agree with you about nonviolence. Bloody revolutions generally don't work well. Our own was a special case in that we were in effect throwing off foreign rule.

But about Anonymous and Occupy--they are both very interesting phenomena, arising out of the new global sphere of connectedness.

The raison d'etre of Anonymous is essentially to break down privacy. Governments and other powerful entities have been doing this for generations, but Anonymous is turning their own tools on them. I sometimes think we are rapidly moving toward a world in which privacy can no longer exist, and must be replaced with mutual tolerance. Otherwise we're going to descend into a strange sort of hell in which everyone is a potential target for "opposition research." Think Scott Ritter, Sandra Fluke, Anthony Weiner.

Occupy is also an open-information system that relies on open access to information and communication. Like Anonymous (presumably--who really knows?), it is a horizontally networked, leaderless organization.

Social power structures have depended on the restriction of access to information. The rulers keep the public ignorant and misinformed as a control technique. I think the new interconnected world is quite hostile to information restrictions. Both Anonymous and Occupy are early manifestations of the interconnected world's potential power. I think we are working out new social forms right now in this new, interconnection-dense environment, and the result is not remotely predictable. I think we are at a new phase in human history, at least as signifiant as the rise of agriculture. How it will play out, I haven't a clue, but it sure makes for fascinating entertainment for me in my declining years.

[JDPriestly]

4. The world has always been interconnected.

"I think the new interconnected world is quite hostile to information restrictions."

What is new is our realization of just how deeply and broadly the world and we in it, are interconnected.

I think that the realization of this interconnectedness is of spiritual, what I would call sacred, origin since it is of the world, probably the universe, and existed before us and will as far as we can ascertain, continue long after we and perhaps our species no longer exist.

I know this from my gardening and from my life experiences, but I cannot prove it to others. The interconnectedness that is of a spiritual origin must be experienced each person for him- or herself.

And yes, secrecy is not compatible with the knowledge of interconnectedness.

Once we truly become aware of our interconnectedness, we will realize that secrecy is impossible because we will know each other too intimately on a spiritual level to lie or keep secrets.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Now you're bringing up something else of consuming interest to me.

I sometimes think that only we rurals have that awareness of nature's interconnectedness. I think it is no coincidence that the word "pagan" has the original meaning of "rustic." It is those of us who live closest to nature who share that feeling of interconnectedness. I have been a rural resident for most of my life because I always feel cut off from the vital components of the world when I'm surrounded by concrete.


But--all that said--this was not the type of connectedness I was talking about.

[JDPriestly]

6. But we humans are also interconnected -- and in the same way

as we are interconnected with nature.

We shut ourselves off to this.

Yes, "city folk" are unaware of the interconnectedness of nature unless they make a bit of an effort to explore.

Children do grow up without ever seeing a real cow or pig.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. My sense of things--and I mean that literally--

is that there is a universal consciousness that permeates all of nature, including humans. At some level we are all simply facets of one underlying Mind. And in that sort of universe, it would be very easy to imagine that we, because of our similarities, should resonate with each other.

[JDPriestly]

9. My sense also. You said it beautifully.

[HiPointDem]

7. All these revelations make me wonder how extensive the US surveillance network really is.

Sometimes I wonder if its the mirror image of the E German one, where every 5th person was some kind of informer and all communication was secretly monitored. People always talk about the "CIA" but the US has so many more security/intelligence arms than that, and that's just named intelligence arms.