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FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors
FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors
The FBI has wide leeway to conduct surveillance on possible threats to “national security.” Where the rubber meets the road, of course, is who the Bureau decides constitutes such a threat.
Both the president and the Pentagon have proclaimed that global warming is a threat to U.S. national security. But there’s no sign that the FBI is wiretapping fossil fuel company CEOs.
On the contrary, in fact: as an FBI document published last week by the Guardian and Earth Island Journal demonstrates, the FBI has monitored members of Tar Sands Blockade, an organization trying to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline because its members believe it would mean “game over” due to climate change. Part of the FBI’s justification was that the “Keystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.”
According to the Guardian, FBI files show it conducted an investigation into Tar Sands Blockade members in which the Bureau “collated inside-knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure, scrutinised police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.”
The Guardian adds that “the documents connect the investigation into anti-Keystone activists to other ‘domestic terrorism issues’ in the agency and show there was some liaison with the local FBI ‘assistant weapons of mass destruction coordinator.’”
And that “the FBI files appear to suggest the Houston branch of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.”
Tar Sands Blockade members are attempting to stop the development of the Keystone pipeline, using non-violent tactics like locking themselves to pipeline equipment and climbing trees that must be cleared for construction.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
THE CORRUPT PHILANDERER WHO BUILT THE CIA’S BLACK SITES
THE CORRUPT PHILANDERER WHO BUILT THE CIA’S BLACK SITES
Bureaucrats love secrets. If they are given unchecked power to create secrets, they will find the temptation to use this power irresistible. They will use it to cover justified cases, for example, to preserve diplomatic and military secrets that are important for national security, or to protect the privacy of individual citizens (the information contained on tax returns, for instance). But at the same time bureaucrats use secrecy to obscure from public sight anything that might embarrass them or reduce their political power and influence, for instance, innocent mistakes, evidence of incompetence, evidence that the policies they have made or implemented do not work or have unforeseen negative consequences, corruption, or even evidence of criminal conspiracies and dealings.
Democratic deliberation rests on the premise that ideas, once exposed to the public—unfolded, challenged, tested, and disputed—will stand or fall on their own merit. The bureaucratic drive for secrecy rests, in many cases, on a need to keep information out of the hands of individuals who could use it to harm the bureaucracy. The bureaucrat will invariably say that an enemy could use the information to harm the country, but more often than not the real concern originates with the bureaucrat personally or the office where he or she works.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Trouble With the Internet – The Epoch Times
The Trouble With the Internet – The Epoch Times.
The Internet is at a crossroads and someone needs to figure out how to deal with it.
That’s roughly the reality facing the Global Commission on Internet Governance that met in Ottawa this week.
The Internet’s early days of promise have given way to rampant cyber crime, national security risks, and a growing sense of unease over identity theft even as net-connected devices transform our lives.
“Fears about human security have moved from the physical world to the virtual world,” said Fen Hampson, co-director of the commission.
Hampson told reporters in Ottawa on Monday that “a gaping trust deficit” plagues the Internet as citizens around the world grow more fearful that their online identities and messages will be compromised by “those who operate in the dark recesses of the Internet.”
It’s just one of the problems facing the future of the Internet that the commission is working to address.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
