What?! Enviro Activist Re-Imprisoned for Writing a Blog Post

Via Alternet

Photo Credit: SupportDaniel.org
This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.


Federal officials sent environmental activist Daniel McGowan back to prison Thursday, just months after his release to a halfway house in December. McGowan’s wife, Jenny Synan says officials re-jailed her husband for writing a Huffington Post blog piece critical of a controversial prison program designed to restrict inmates’ communication to the outside world.

“Synan told HuffPost that she asked a BOP official why her husband had been re-imprisoned after his release to a halfway house in December,” report HuffPost’s Matt Sledge and Ryan Grimm, “She said the official told her that the HuffPost article violated a term of his release that restricted him from interacting with the media.”

In 2001, McGowan was sentenced to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to arson in connection with the animal rights group, Earth Liberation Front. Whilst serving his time, prison officials designated him to a division restricting his outside contact called a “Communication Management Unit.” McGowan sought to find out why he was quartered off, eventually obtaining memos explaining his CMU designation. It turns out prison officials frowned upon his continued in-prison activism and demonstrated “support for anarchist and radical environmental terrorist groups." In a blog post for The Huffington Post, he criticizes the program for segregating prisoners based on their beliefs:

It became quickly obvious to me that many CMU prisoners were there because of their religion or in retaliation for their speech. By my count, around two-thirds of the men are Muslim, many of whom have been caught up in the so-called "war on terror," others who just spoke out for their rights or allegedly took leadership positions in the Muslim community at other facilities. Some, like me, were prisoners who have political views and perspectives that are not shared by the Department of Justice.

Three days after McGowan wrote the preceding paragraph, he was rearrested. "He just posted his thing a few days ago about all this stuff -- about his political beliefs and speech -- and they do something to him because of his post about this. It's crazy," Syan said.

Assuming McGowan was rejailed for his blog post the question of whether the BOP acted legally might rest on whether writing for the Huffington Post constitutes as speaking to the media. In a statement to HuffPost, Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Chris Burke said, “inmates cannot do interviews without permission. So if there's some sort of a phone interview or a sit-in interview, those have to be pre-approved."

But HuffPost executive editor Stuart Whatley says a media interview and blog contribution represents a false equivalency.

"The HuffPost blog is a platform for contributors to share opinion, commentary and their thoughts on any topic of their choosing," Whatley said. "As our guidelines explicitly state, 'you can write about anything you want. Huffington Post does not select or approve your topics.'"

Suddenly NYPD Doesn’t Love Surveillance Anymore

Law Enforcement Agencies Monitor Our Most Basic Acts. But Try Assigning Them A Watchdog And They Resist With Fury

The Big Brother theory of surveillance goes something like this: pervasive snooping and monitoring shouldn’t frighten innocent people, it should only make lawbreakers nervous because they are the only ones with something to hide. Those who subscribe to this theory additionally argue that the widespread awareness of such surveillance creates a permanent preemptive deterrent to such lawbreaking ever happening in the first place.

I don’t personally agree that this logic is a convincing justification for the American Police State, and when I hear such arguments, I inevitably find myself confused by the contradiction of police-state proponents proposing to curtail freedom in order to protect it. But whether or not you subscribe to the police-state tautology, you have to admit there is more than a bit of hypocrisy at work when those who forward the Big Brother logic simultaneously insist such logic shouldn’t apply to them or the governmental agencies they oversee.

This contradiction is now taking center stage in New York City, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly wage a scorched-earth campaign to prevent the public from being able to monitor its own police force. And in that crusade comes the frightening assumption about how the terms “safety” and “security” are now defined.

To appreciate the rank hypocrisy of Bloomberg and Kelly opposing the creation of an independent police monitor, remember that they are two of the faces of the modern American Police State — and two of the biggest proponents of 24/7 monitoring of citizens.

That is not an overstatement. Bloomberg and Kelly are the proud autocrats who brag of “hav(ing) my own army in the NYPD” and who used that army to spy on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors. They are the unapologetic masterminds of a surveillance program aimed at Muslim students. They are the unrepentant overseers of the city’s so-called stop-and-frisk policy, which seems to presume guilt, clearly violates civil liberties and disproportionately targets minorities. They are the champions of a Minority Report-esque system to integrate all the city’s cameras for ubiquitous real-time surveillance. They are the happy proponents of intensifying a drug war, again disproportionately against people of color. And they are now floating the idea of using drones to surveil the Big Apple.

As a justification for all of this, Bloomberg and Kelly typically cite New York’s declining crime rates as ends-justifies-the-means proof that their methods work. In this, they are extrapolating William Bratton’s old “broken windows” theory of crime, insinuating that because New Yorkers know they are under such intense and brutal police scrutiny, they are more prone to avoid breaking the law.

Yet, in now opposing the creation of an independent monitor to surveil, analyze and assess lawbreaking by police and municipal agencies after a wave of complaints about alleged crimes, Bloomberg and Kelly are crying foul. Somehow, they argue that their own Big Brother theory about surveillance supposedly stopping current crime and deterring future crime should not apply to municipal officials themselves.

This is where an Orwellian definition of “safety” comes in, for that’s at the heart of the Bloomberg/Kelly argument about oversight. Bloomberg insists that following other cities that have successfully created independent monitors “would be disastrous for public safety” in New York City. Likewise, the New York Daily News reports that “Kelly blasted the plan as a threat to public safety,” alleging that “another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe.”

Full Article at Salon

NYPD Officer On The Rights Of The Public To Film

http://youtu.be/BjnxAOd9M4E

Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev - "I'm Going To Prison For Arithmetic"

http://youtu.be/GV0JzMDnD4U

TSA Forces Amputee Vet To Remove Legs While Searching Wheelchair

Via Washington Times

Transportation Security Administration inspectors forced a wounded Marine who lost both of his legs in an IED blast and who was in a wheelchair to remove his prosthetic legs at one point, and at another point to stand painfully on his legs while his wheelchair was examined, according to a complaint a congressman has registered with the TSA.

Rep. Duncan Hunter said in his letter Monday that the Marine, who is still on active duty and showed TSA agents his military identification, was still forced to undergo that scrutiny.

“A TSA office asked the Marine to stand and walk to an alternate area, despite the fact that he physically could not stand or walk on his own. With numerous TSA officers sitting and unwilling to assist, an officer then made him remove his legs, then put them back on, only to advance to a secondary screening location where he was asked again to stand, with extraordinary difficult, while his wheelchair was examined for explosives,” Mr. Hunter said.

He also said TSA officers initially directed the Marine to the wrong line, then made him move lines but made no effort to help him. The incident occurred at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport last week, as a group of Marines was returning to San Diego.

Mr. Hunter included two photos of the inspection in his letter that appear to show a TSA agent patting down the Marine’s arm and examining the prosthetic leg.

The congressman asked TSA to detail its procedures to inspecting wounded U.S. troops at airports, and to consider whether agents should show “situational awareness.”

FBI's 'National Security Letters' Demands Ruled Unconstitutional

[caption id="attachment_2109" align="aligncenter" width="650"] The Digital Surveillance Culture[/caption]
Via NPR by EYDER PERALTA

A federal judge in California ruled today that the FBI cannot secretly demand data from banks and phone companies in national security cases. The judge said orders that keep those requests secret violate the First Amendment.

NPR's Carrie Johnson filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The demands known as 'national security letters' became a quick and popular tool for the FBI to gather information without a judge's pre-approval in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"The letters give counter terrorism agents the power to get information without notifying the targets of their investigations.
"But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston says those gag orders run afoul of the freedom of speech and the separation of powers.
"The judge stayed her ruling to give the Justice Department time to appeal.
"A Justice spokesman said the department is reviewing the decision."

The Wall Street Journal has a bit more background:

"National security letters date back to the 1980s and were strengthened under the USA Patriot Act, the counterterrorism law put into place after Sept. 11. The letters allow the FBI to get data on phone, financial and electronic records without a judge or grand jury, as long as the head of an FBI field office certifies that the records would be relevant to a counterterrorism investigation. They typically come with strict secrecy orders, barring the recipient from acknowledging the case to anyone but attorneys."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the unnamed telecommunications company that challenged the national security letters statute, said they were "pleased that the court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute."

EFF's Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman added: "The government's gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience."

Wired explains that when the EFF first brought the suit representing the telecom company, "the Justice Department took its own extraordinary measure and sued the company, arguing in court documents that the company was violating the law by challenging its authority."

Wired frames the decision as a "stunning defeat for the Obama administration's surveillance practices." They report:

"Illston found that although the government made a strong argument for prohibiting the recipients of NSLs from disclosing to the target of an investigation or the public the specific information being sought by an NSL, the government did not provide compelling argument that the mere fact of receiving an NSL served national security interests.

"A blanket prohibition on disclosure, she found, "creates too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted."
"She noted that 97 percent of the more than 200,000 NSLs that have been issued by the government were issued with nondisclosure orders."

Chinese Environmentalist Beaten With Batons For Five Hours After Bringing Attention To River Pollution

The Offer

[caption align="aligncenter" width="500"]Yes, that's a river[/caption]

A Zhejiang entrepreneur is offering a 200,000 yuan reward to a senior official if he swims in a polluted river for 20 minutes, as part of an attempt to draw attention to the environmental plight in China's eastern province.

Jin Zengmin, chief executive of a Hangzhou eyeglasses retailer, announced the reward on China’s Twitter-like social website on Saturday.

“If the environmental protection bureau chief dares to swim in [Ruian's] river for 20 minutes, I will pay [him] 200,000 yuan [HK$246,000],” Jin wrote on Sina Weibo.

In three photos Jin posted, a river in small-town Ruian is seen entirely blocked by floating rubbish. Jin blamed a rubber overshoe factory for dumping industrial waste into the river.

This river was where villagers used to wash vegetables and clothes in his childhood, Jin told Chinanews.com.

Full Article at South China Morning Post

The Response

Chen Yuqian, a 60-year-old resident of Pailian village in Zhejiang province, was one of at least three concerned citizens who last week called on Chinese environmental officials to brave the rivers they were supposed to be keeping clean.

A businessman from the same province vowed to pay 200,000 yuan (around £20,000) to his local environmental protection chief if he dared bathe in a rubbish-clogged river near Rui'an City.

Mr Chen, a farmer who has spent the last decade fighting pollution, posted his challenge on the internet, hoping it would trigger government action.
Instead, his daughter says he was severely beaten by a gang of baton-wielding men at around 6am last Sunday.

"My father was alone at home," said 32-year-old Chen Xiufang. "Some 40 people turned up in plain clothes, some holding batons. The only thing they said was: "[You] used the internet, you always use the internet!"

Full Article at The Telegraph UK

Zero Dark Thirty, the CIA and film critics have a very bad evening

LeakSource - White House Moves To Counter “Online Radicalization”, Free Speech Isn't So Free

The War of on Terror continues with a new grave threat – people writing things on the internet. The government is now trying to find ways to counter “online radicalization to violence” a phrase so broad it could mean practically anything.

Under the guise of curbing the “radicalization” of U.S. citizens and identifying and purging potentially violent persons from the Internet, the White House has initiated the creation of a new interagency working group to address what it calls a growing problem.

The White House issued a fact sheet delineating the broad objectives of the plan.

FACT SHEET: Working to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence in the United States

http://www.scribd.com/doc/126102728/White-House-Working-to-Counter-Online-Radicalization-to-Violence-in-the-United-States-FACT-SHEET

The interagency group will be headed by Quintan Wiktorowicz, the current White House senior director for community partnerships on the national security staff. The new group will be called The Interagency Working Group to Counter Online Radicalization and will be charged with the implementation of an Internet safety program to address online violent extremism.

Wiktorowiczs stated,

“Violent extremist groups ─ like Al Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents, violent supremacist groups, and violent “sovereign citizens” ─ are leveraging online tools and resources to propagate messages of violence and division. These groups use the Internet to disseminate propaganda, identify and groom potential recruits, and supplement their real-world recruitment efforts. Some members and supporters of these groups visit mainstream fora to see whether individuals might be recruited or encouraged to commit acts of violence, look for opportunities to draw targets into private exchanges, and exploit popular media like music videos and online video games. Although the Internet offers countless opportunities for Americans to connect, it has also provided violent extremists with access to new audiences and instruments for radicalization.”

Shorter: the internet is gaining in power and we have not figured out a way to dominate it yet, this scares us.

But don’t worry according to the White House Fact Sheet the government will be “collaborating with industry” to help deal with the menace of free speech on the internet.

Collaborating with Industry: The Federal Government will collaborate with industry to explore how we might counter online violent extremism while protecting lawful Internet use and the civil liberties and privacy of individual users. Many companies have developed voluntary measures to promote Internet safety (such as fraud warnings, identity protection, and Internet safety tips), and we look forward to hearing their views about how we might apply similar measures to counter online radicalization to violence.

Big Government and Big Business working together, all to help us. This marriage of state and corporate power to regulate the internet sounds great doesn’t it? If only there was a name for such a system. In any case, allowing the government to work with industry to develop “countermeasures” to “radical” speech is a great way to protect all our freedom. What could go wrong?

Full Article at LeakSource

CISPA Infographic

Cannot believe this is being reconsidered

Anonymous Posts Over 4000 US Bank Executive Credentials

Following attacks on U.S. government websites last weekend, Anonymous seems to have made a new "Operation Last Resort" .gov website strike Sunday night.


Anonymous appears to have published login and private information from over 4,000 American bank executive accounts in the name of its new Operation Last Resort campaign, demanding U.S. computer crime law reform.


A spreadsheet has been published on a .gov website allegedly containing login information and credentials, IP addresses, and contact information of American bank executives.


If true, it could be that Anonymous has released banker information that could be connected to Federal Reserve computers, including contact information and cell phone numbers for U.S. bank Presidents, Vice Presidents, COO's Branch Managers, VP's and more.


The website used in this attack belongs to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC). The page extension URL is titled, "oops-we-did-it-again."

Full Article at ZDNet

They posted the dox on acjic.alabama.gov originally but when I checked it, the entire site was down.

@oplastresort Document is now down, mirror please?

— Satori Tindalos (@SatoriTindalos) February 4, 2013

A few short tweets later, another post on another government website, this one up with the questions demanded regarding the treatment of Aaron Swartz

And Yes 2day is DDay 4th Feb tic Toc on the Holder clock! We Want Answers oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl… #oplastresort #floodthecourt Feb 6th

— OpLastResort (@OpLastResort) February 4, 2013

And then another post of the dox, this one still up, on yet another government server.

@oplastresort huh, how long will THAT last? ;)

— Kyle Maxwell (@kylemaxwell) February 4, 2013

The hack seems to be a follow up to the attack on the DoJ website last week, here's the full press release from Anonymous thats been circuilating on YouTube
http://youtu.be/qShtKUheVC0

Police Raid Supposed Meth Lab And Burn 12yo Girl With Flash Grenade - Intel Was Wrong

Excessive Force In Action

Billings, Montana police say the 6 am raid they conducted in October 2012 was part of an investigation into a suspected meth lab. But there was no meth lab. And the 12-year-old daughter of Jackie Fasching suffered severe burns after the SWAT team used a broomstick to drop a flash grenade through a window into a bedroom where the girl and her sister were sleeping.


Police Chief Rich St. John told the paper, “It was totally unforeseen, totally unplanned and extremely regrettable. We certainly did not want a juvenile, or anyone else for that matter, to get injured.”


Fasching wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. “A simple knock on the door and I would’ve let them in,” she said. “They said their intel told them there was a meth lab at our house. If they would’ve checked, they would’ve known there’s not.” Fasching’s husband, who suffers from congenital heart disease and liver failure, was in fact attempting to open the door to let the cops in just as they knocked it down.

Full Article at Huff Post

---

Flash Grenade A Meth Lab? - Cops Know Meth Labs Explode Right?

St. John said investigators did plenty of homework on the residence before deciding to launch the raid but didn't know children were inside.




"The information that we had did not have any juveniles in the house and did not have any juveniles in the room," he said. "We generally do not introduce these disorienting devices when they're present."


The decision to use a SWAT team was based on a detailed checklist the department uses when serving warrants.


Investigators consider dozens of items such as residents' past criminal convictions, other criminal history, mental illness and previous interactions with law enforcement.


Each item is assigned a point value and if the total exceeds a certain threshold, SWAT is requested. Then a commander approves or rejects the request.


In Tuesday's raid, the points exceeded the threshold and investigators called in SWAT.


"Every bit of information and intelligence that we have comes together and we determine what kind of risk is there," St. John said. "The warrant was based on some hard evidence and everything we knew at the time."

Full Article at Missoulian

Kim Dotcom Interview - Encrypt Half The Internet, Government Spying Out Of Control

http://youtu.be/mphBRtr030s

Unlocking Your Phone Now Carries 10 Year Sentence And $1M Fine - DMCA At Its Finest

ADVISORY

BY DECREE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

IT SHALL HENCEFORCE BE ORDERED THAT AMERICANS SHALL NOT UNLOCK THEIR OWN SMARTPHONES.

PENALTY: In some situations, first time offenders may be fined up to $500,000, imprisoned for five years, or both. For repeat offenders, the maximum penalty increases to a fine of $1,000,000, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both.*


That's right, starting this weekend it is illegal to unlock new phones to make them available on other carriers.

NEW ABSURD CRIME

When did we decide that we wanted a law that could make unlocking your smartphone a criminal offense?

The answer is that we never really decided. Instead, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998 to outlaw technologies that bypass copyright protections. This sounds like a great idea, but in practice it has terrible, and widely acknowledged, negative consequences that affect consumers and new innovation. The DMCA leaves it up to the Librarian of Congress (LOC) to issue exemptions from the law, exceptions that were recognized to be necessary given the broad language of the statute that swept a number of ordinary acts and technologies as potential DMCA circumvention violations.

Every three years groups like the American Foundation for the Blind have to lobby [warning:PDF download] Congress to protect an exception for the blind allowing for books to be read aloud. Can you imagine a more ridiculous regulation than one that requires a lobby group for the blind to come to Capitol Hill every three years to explain that the blind still can't read books on their own and therefore need this exception?

Full Article on The Atlantic

You can check out the government document here.
Library of Congress - Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies

The Backlash On YouTube Has Already Begun

http://youtu.be/iQbhBC4SJvo
http://youtu.be/nxlBxjURaOg
http://youtu.be/win-mjqgUjg
http://youtu.be/cnw20YcKSDA
http://youtu.be/kIKBY1pfH30

Anonymous Threatens Massive WikiLeaks-Style Exposure, Announced On Hacked Gov Site

Hacktivist organization, Anonymous, is threatening perhaps their biggest play ever: a massive WikiLeaks-style exposure of sensitive U.S. government secrets.

As proof of their power, they announced details of the plan on hacked government website, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC.gov). Citing the recent death of free information activist Aaron Swartz, they explain, "With Aaron’s death we can wait no longer. The time has come to show the United States Department of Justice and its affiliates the true meaning of infiltration."


Swartz was facing up to 50+ years in prison and a $4 million fine after releasing pay-walled academic articles from the popular JSTOR database. Some legal scholars have argued that releasing copyrighted material, or breaking the “terms of service” of a website, should not carry such harsh penalties. Anonymous is demanding that legislation be passed to no longer consider such violations a felony–a law that Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (CrunchGov Grade: A) has already introduced.

If legal reforms are not enacted, Anonymous has threatened to activate files containing embarrassing or incriminating secrets.

Full Article on Tech Crunch

http://youtu.be/WaPni5O2YyI

CAMOVER - Real Life Game To Destroy Surveillance Cameras

Activists in Berlin are teaming up to trash surveillance cameras. Points are given, with bonus scores for the most innovative modes of destruction

The rules of Camover are simple: mobilise a crew and think of a name that starts with "command", "brigade" or "cell", followed by the moniker of a historical figure (Van der Lubbe, a Dutch bricklayer convicted of setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933, is one name being used). Then destroy as many CCTV cameras as you can. Concealing your identity, while not essential, is recommended. Finally, video your trail of destruction and post it on the game's website – although even keeping track of the homepage can be a challenge in itself, as it is continually being shut down...


For those who oppose CCTV, petitions and letters only go so far in the German capital. A group of 40 protesters walked the streets of Berlin for 1984 Action Day (protests against CCTV cameras and other surveillance, named after the novel by George Orwell) in June and pressure group Control Berlin has screened short films documenting CCTV's rise. But Camover's direct-action approach revolves around a small but committed group who call themselves "workless people – we are shoplifters, graffiti sprayers, homeless and squatters". They claim to have snuffed out as many as 50 cameras since the game began a few weeks ago.

Full Article on The Guardian

You can try to check out the site mentioned in the article, but it looks like the German government may be blocking it

http://youtu.be/9GCsd2TJKjQ

Army Col. Denise Lind Judge In Charge Of Bradley Manning Pre-trial Speaks Up For Manning On Twitter - Possible Hoax

Not quite sure if this is legit or a possible hacked account but it's making a stir online nonetheless

Business Insider - The IMF Has Admitted Their Economists Were Wrong

This debate is over whether or not adding government spending during a downturn helps an economy turn up again into growth and surpluses, or whether it instead mainly just adds to the government debt that (according to conservative economists) was the result of too much spending, and that (also according to conservative economists) largely caused the existing “recession.”


Keynes said that the “multiplier” effect of increased government spending is sufficiently large to more-than-counteract the negative economic effect of adding to the government’s debt during an economic downturn. Conservative economists assume instead that the multiplier is too small to counteract that negative effect.

Full Article

Now although this seems like a fresh breath of honesty from the IMF about the state of the economy, it appears thinkprogress.org has been talking about the wealth disparity caused by these tax cuts for the rich since September of last year.

Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The real GDP growth rate averaged 4.2% and real per capita GDP increased annually by 2.4% in the 1950s. In the 2000s, the average real GDP growth rate was 1.7% and real per capita GDP increased annually by less than 1%. There is not conclusive evidence, however, to substantiate a clear relationship between the 65-year steady reduction in the top tax rates and economic growth. Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.

Full Article

Coral Springs FL - Hospitalized Then Raided For Posting Police Brutality Video On YouTube?

Published on Aug 14, 2012
The Very next day I was home invaded. Illegally they have no warrant as you see by the video. I had just left hospital day before this and the police warned me to remove the videos I posted from them brutally assaulting me and I lost my spleen and other assorted guts to police brutality. I posted the videos and was then warned to take them down or else. Again the very next day they broke in my home illegally and Assaulted me as you see by this video. I'll take a lie detector test to confirm what you already know is true. Coral Springs Police are as corrupt as any other police force you have an encounter with. Many police encounters are deadly. I almost dies at the hands of coral springs police and also their fire rescue paramedics. All are sick and sadistic and care nothing about you, your family, your home or your lives. They care not if you die in their care... It's become very sick in these times your aware now of the truth. This video is one that survived the police deleting. They beat me in cuffs and deleted as many videos as they cared to delete. They left behind a few and I've posted them. The truth hurts.
Be well people pass on love today!

http://youtu.be/46uwCAMdjAg
http://youtu.be/DyF6QtC36eE

DMCA Is A Joke

So I was just served my first DMCA warning on a YouTube video I posted earlier. The funny thing that makes this whole event a complete joke is that the video I posted was of an artist on the record label I work for, J & R Adventures, and the footage is from part of our company holiday party. Lol you want to serve a DMCA when I know the CEO, game on [:

US ARMY BRIGADE COMING TO KENYA