Are environmental groups targeted for surveillance?

[pscot]

Defense planners fear AGW may lead to civil unrest:

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three.

Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic "emergency" or "civil disturbance":


"Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances."

........

In 2006, the US National Security Strategy warned that: "Environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. Problems of this scope may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism

[PDJane]

1. Does the sun rise in the East? Of course they do.

That programme isn't to catch terrorists. It's to squash dissent. The PTB are afraid of the mess that global warming is going to cause.

[niyad]

2. silly question-of course they do. and this is nothing new. as the earlier post said, this is not

about terrorism, but about dissent, and has been for many, many years.

[bananas]

3. They always have been. nt

[bananas]

4. Not just surveillance - deep-cover infiltration

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/01/spy-mark-kennedy-number-relations

Police spy Mark Kennedy may have misled parliament over relationships

Inquiry hears claims of 10 or more women having sexual relations with undercover officer who infiltrated eco-activists

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Thursday 28 February 2013

Mark Kennedy, the police spy who infiltrated the environmental movement, appears to have misled parliament over the number of sexual relationships he had with women while he was working undercover.

Kennedy told a parliamentary inquiry that he had only two relationships during the seven years he spied on environmental groups.

However, at least four women had come forward to say that he slept with them when he was a police spy.

Friends who knew Kennedy when he was living as an eco-activist in Nottingham have identified more than 10 women with whom he slept.

<snip>

Kennedy's longest relationship was with a woman who used the pseudonym Lisa when giving evidence to the committee. She was with him for six years and said she was left questioning how many other officers were prying into her personal affairs. She said: "Who else was participating in the relationship that I believed was just me and one other person?Who else was seeing every text message that I ever sent him? Who was listening in to our most intimate phone calls? Who made the decisions about my life, where I was allowed to go, who I was allowed to see – which I thought was my free will but actually was being manipulated by this person who was being controlled by other people?"

<snip>

Fucking asshole.

[bananas]

5. They'll keep doing it, too

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/18/undercover-policing-faces-tighter-regulation

Undercover policing faces tighter regulation after Mark Kennedy scandal

New approval procedures for using spies will be required under legislation announced by minister for policing

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Tuesday 18 June 2013 15.31 EDT

Ministers have announced proposals to tighten up the regulation of undercover police following a succession of scandals over the infiltration of protest groups.

Damian Green, the minister for policing, told MPs on Tuesday that under the plans to be brought before parliament the police spies would be deployed only following approval from an outside body.

In a second reform, the use of the spies would only be authorised by chief constables. Previously, officers as junior as a superintendent had the power to deploy spies. The officers infiltrated political groups over many years.

The announcement of the new legislation follows a long-running Guardian investigation that revealed abuses by the spies in an undercover operation monitoring political campaigns since 1968.

The investigation showed that the undercover police routinely formed long-lasting, intimate, relationships with the activists they were sent to spy on. At least two police officers had children with activists while they worked undercover.

Police have also conceded that it was common practice for the agents to adopt the identities of dead children to develop their fake personas.

<snip>

[NoOneMan]

6. I'd expect nothing less

Things are going to get real when climate change really amps up. Stay out of the cities.

[marions ghost]

7. An excellent article:

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/02/is_the_government_spying_on_environmental_groups_partner/

"In February 2010 Tom Jiunta and a small group of residents in northeastern Pennsylvania formed the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC), an environmental organization opposed to hydraulic fracturing in the region. The group sought to appeal to the widest possible audience, and was careful about striking a moderate tone. All members were asked to sign a code of conduct in which they pledged to carry themselves with “professionalism, dignity, and kindness” as they worked to protect the environment and their communities. GDAC’s founders acknowledged that gas drilling had become a divisive issue misrepresented by individuals on both sides and agreed to “seek out the truth.”

The group of about 10 professionals – engineers, nurses, and teachers – began meeting in the basement of a member’s home. As their numbers grew, they moved to a local church. In an effort to raise public awareness about the risks of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) they attended township meetings, zoning and ordinance hearings, and gas-drilling forums. They invited speakers from other states affected by gas drilling to talk with Pennsylvania residents. They held house-party style screenings of documentary films.

Since the group had never engaged in any kind of illegal activity or particularly radical forms of protest, it came as a shock when GDAC members learned that their organization had been featured in intelligence bulletins compiled by a private security firm, The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR). Equally shocking was the revelation that the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security had distributed those bulletins to local police chiefs, state, federal, and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and PR firms. News of the surveillance broke in September 2010 when the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, James Powers, mistakenly sent an email to an anti-drilling activist he believed was sympathetic to the industry, warning her not to post the bulletins online. The activist was Virginia Cody, a retired Air Force officer. In his email to Cody, Powers wrote: “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.” (rest of long article at link)