{"id":8282,"date":"2015-05-20T05:45:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T10:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8282"},"modified":"2015-05-20T05:45:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T10:45:50","slug":"fbi-invokes-national-security-to-justify-surveillance-of-tar-sands-protestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8282","title":{"rendered":"FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors"},"content":{"rendered":"

FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors<\/a><\/h3>\n

The FBI has wide\u00a0leeway<\/a>\u00a0to conduct surveillance on possible threats to \u201cnational security.\u201d Where the rubber meets the road, of course, is\u00a0who<\/em>\u00a0the Bureau decides constitutes such a threat.<\/p>\n

Both the\u00a0president<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Pentagon<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0proclaimed that global warming is a threat to U.S. national security. But there\u2019s no sign that the FBI is wiretapping fossil fuel company CEOs.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, in fact: as an\u00a0FBI document<\/a>\u00a0published last week by the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Earth Island Journal<\/em>\u00a0demonstrates, the FBI\u00a0has\u00a0<\/em>monitored members of\u00a0Tar Sands Blockade, an organization trying to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline\u00a0because its members\u00a0believe<\/a>\u00a0it would mean\u00a0\u201cgame over\u201d\u00a0due to climate change. Part of the FBI\u2019s justification was that the \u201cKeystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>,\u00a0FBI files\u00a0show it conducted an\u00a0investigation into Tar Sands Blockade members in which the Bureau\u00a0\u201ccollated\u00a0inside-knowledge about\u00a0forthcoming protests, documented\u00a0the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure,\u00a0scrutinised\u00a0police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Guardian\u00a0<\/em>adds that\u00a0<\/em>\u201cthe documents connect the investigation into anti-Keystone activists to other \u2018domestic terrorism issues\u2019 in the agency and show there was some liaison with the local FBI \u2018assistant weapons of mass destruction coordinator.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And that \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tar Sands Blockade\u00a0members are attempting to stop\u00a0the development of the Keystone pipeline, using\u00a0non-violent\u00a0tactics like\u00a0locking themselves<\/a>\u00a0to pipeline equipment and\u00a0climbing trees<\/a>\u00a0that must be cleared for construction.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FBI Invokes National Security to Justify Surveillance of Tar Sands Protestors The FBI has wide\u00a0leeway\u00a0to conduct surveillance on possible threats to \u201cnational security.\u201d Where the rubber meets the road, of course, is\u00a0who\u00a0the Bureau decides constitutes such a threat. Both the\u00a0president\u00a0and the\u00a0Pentagon\u00a0have\u00a0proclaimed that global warming is a threat to U.S. national security. But there\u2019s no sign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14,301,1015,5528,1455,1729,657,765,5527],"class_list":["post-8282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-activism","tag-fbi","tag-fossil-fuel","tag-keystone-pipeline","tag-national-security","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-protests","tag-surveillance","tag-tar-sands-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8283,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8282\/revisions\/8283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}