Wall Street Firms Spy on OWS Protestors in Taxpayer-Funded 'Lower Manhattan Security Initiative'

[Octafish]

Just when I thought the agency types were there to hand out resumes...

Meet the “Lower Manhattan Security Initiative”

Wall Street Firms Spy on Protestors In Tax-Funded Center

by PAM MARTENS
CounterPunch
October 18, 2011

Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/

Hey, Agent Mike! Now really: Who's side are you on?

[formercia]

1. None of it does any good if OWS isn't breaking the Law.

Anyone can check their site to see what's going on.

If its funded with tax dollars, their tapes should be available to document the Police behavior.

Be careful what you wish for.

[Octafish]

3. So. COINTELPRO now works WITH Meyer Lansky?

Or is it FOR Meyer Lansky?

His people, I mean.

[Octafish]

5. When was the last time Congress felt like investigating anything? '76?

Church Committee?

It's been a while. And Iran-Contra allowed Poppy and the Big Fish to go free.

PS: Thanks for clearing that up for me, formercia. Maybe Sarko's chum Raymond Kelly will have some explaining to do.

[formercia]

6. The boys don't like investigations unless they're Lawyers.

Note how all this was put in place and ready for the demonstrations. That was some premonition on their part, that is, unless the financial meltdown was planned in advance with things like the Patriot Act, Militarization of the Police, TSA to control the lines of communication.

His 'chum'. Lodge Brother is more like it. It's sort of a redux of Latin America back in the 70's.

[barbtries]

2. just when i think i can't be surprised by

their dastardliness, something like this comes along. my jaw just hit the floor.

whatever happened to of, for, and by the people.

[Octafish]

4. Pam Martens spelled it out for us...

One puzzle has at least been solved. Wall Street’s criminals have not been indicted or sent to jail because they have effectively become the police.

No it isn't the People. Money and War Inc call the shots.

[Earth_First]

7. Paging Anonymous.... n/t

[Octafish]

8. American Spectator editor admits being Agent Provocateur at D.C. protest pepper-spray incident

EXCERPT...

As Raw Story points out, "unclear if Howley actually incited the clash with security guards." True enough. But the intent was there in Howley's printed admission.

So a word to the wise; the (insert reference to rodents here) has begun. And I wouldn't be surprised if those patriotic police didn't find a way to join forces with every patriotic junior G-man American to screw up Occupy Wall Street as well.

Be warned. Half the rightwing crazies are James O'Keefe wannabes; and this is always the way it works.

SOURCE w/Links: http://www.americablog.com/2011/10/american-spectator-editor-admits-being.html

Shades of COINTELPRO. Thanks, Earth_First. And Thank Moon for DU and DUers like you and Robert Swanson for helping expose Them.

[mdmc]

9. ..

[bobthedrummer]

10. Yep. It isn't democracy, corporations are not people, this is US fascism by "privatization" Kick.

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[TheKentuckian]

11. It should be common knowledge that the vast new security powers assumed by the state

are mostly to keep US in line.

Once the anything goes for terrorists ideology is baked into the cake then the definition will drift dramatically. It already has but we are still in the selling phase.