The Snoopers Charter.

 

      Our "democratic" state is ever looking at ways of keeping tabs on everything you do, surveillance is control, control is power. We quietly walk into their cage if we are not ever vigilant. This latest bill which the government is trying to slip through, while the mainstream media, that babbling brook of bullshit, focuses on the EU, is another piece of legislation which allows them to poke their beady eyes further into our lives. 

This from Open Rights Group:

    The Home Office published the Investigatory Powers Bill today. And it's bad news. Despite three committees of MPs and peers making a total of 123 recommendations for changes to the Bill less than three weeks ago, the Government has ploughed on. On first reading, it appears that the revised Bill has made minor revisions, not the full redraft that is needed.
Email your MP now and tell them your concerns around the Bill:
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/investigatory-powers-bill-email-your-mp
      By bringing the Bill to Parliament now, at a time when the EU referendum is overwhelmingly the biggest topic in Westminster, there's a strong likelihood that MPs will not have enough time to scrutinise the Bill. The Bill still includes hugely invasive powers on bulk collection of our Internet use and hacking. It also fails to deliver a rigorous system for judges to authorise surveillance warrants.
         This is the right time to email your MP! Until now, the Bill was in draft form and was being scrutinised by specialist committees. MPs were waiting to see what those committees said and how the Government would respond. Now that the Bill is published, you can make sure it's at the top of your MP's in-tray. Email your MP now!
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/investigatory-powers-bill-email-your-mp
        We've been talking to the media all day and talking on TV news explaining the concerns with the Bill to more people. Keep an eye out for us! We will be analysing the detail of the revised Bill over the coming days and weeks so we'll be in touch again soon with the latest news. With the Labour frontbench increasingly sceptical [1] and Tory backbenchers raising serious concerns [2], this is by no means decided. With your help, we can persuade our MPs to stand up for our rights.
Thanks for taking action.
Best wishes, Ed

[1] The Government has not justified this significant extension of powers - Andy Burnham
http://press.labour.org.uk/post/140282730114/the-government-has-not-justified-this-significant

[2] Snoopers’ charter faces Tory revolt (£)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4701680.ece

Ed Johnson-Williams
Campaigner
Open Rights Group

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Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

   

Don't Get Angry, You May Be Investigated.

      Angry with your government? Careful, you could be seen as a threat by the security services. This article refers to America, but what crazy idea flies over there, has a habit of landing over here.

From Polizeros:

      The Pentagon, in its usual dimwitted yet dangerous way, is mining social media to determine if citizens are angry at the state and thus, presumably, a threat. Let’s unpack this foolishness, shall we? NSA has been trying to do the same thing for years, slurping down every conceivable piece of data on us in hopes it can be used on a real-time basis to identity threats. So far they have failed miserably and have admitted that all their operations has not produced any actionable information that stopped terrorists. However, the genuinely dangerous thing here for citizens is the Pentagon assumes if you are angry at the government that you are a potential threat and must be investigated further. No matter if your anger may be justifiable, no, just being angry at the government means you are guilty of pre-crime, which means what Big Brother in the Pentagon wants it to mean. The real problem is such intrusive techniques, spying on the citizenry constantly, is useless for catching terrorists. But it keeps people in the Pentagon employed and defense contractors happy with big contracts, even as it essentially is security theater.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

A Dark Alleyway To An Orwellian Future.

      I know I go on about the repressive state, but I do feel that we, by subterfuge and repression, are being lead down a dark alleyway to a menacing Orwellian future. Here in the UK we are seeing the implementation some of the most draconian anti-union laws in any modern country. This is to weaken any resistance to their plundering of the public purse. We quietly go about our affairs, while the millionaire cabal pompously prancing through the marble halls in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, dismantle our social services, and selling of our public assets to their millionaire corporate friends.

      Surveillance grows ever more intrusive, with internet tracking, number plate recognition, and profiling. All this moves silently into place while any resistance is stifled, silenced, or brutally repressed. What is more, we are not alone, states across Europe are continually lurching to the right, control moves ever away from the people to the remote centre, controlled by the financial Mafia and their thuggish corporate bedfellows.

      Spain continues to expand its gagging laws, as Operation Pandora widens its net, trawling in more and more of those who are prepared to speak out against the state's authoritarian strangle hold.

This from arrezafe:

       28/10/15: A police operation Began at 7:00 a.m. This Morning raiding several homes and properties in the Neighbourhoods of Sants, Gràcia, Clot and Sant Andreu de Palomar in the city of Barcelona and Manresa. The police action was ordered by the Audiencia Nacional (National Court) and is a continuation of Operation Pandora, Which led to the arrest of ten comrades and the preventative imprisonment of seven of them last December. Among the properties searched were Revoltosa social centre on Rogent street in the Clot neighbourhood and the Ateneu Llibertari Sants on Maria Victoria street ten police vans were in attendance. When the news was leaked, dozens of people Demonstrated in solidarity and took to the streets of Sants marching behind a banner in support of the detainees. Minutes later as the demonstration Reached Masnou street two vans of riot police arrived and Proceeded to violently suppress the demonstration.

     Searches also took place at a house on Perill street in the neighbourhood of Gracia, a house in the neighbourhood of Santos and other private homes in Sant Andreu de Palomar. Police made arrests in the total of 9. At every place police raided they encircled the whole street and impeded the free movement of the neighbourhood. In details leaked to the press by the police they revealed the operation led to the arrest of 9 people for the Alleged crime of "Belonging to a terrorist criminal organization with AIMS."

       In response to the raid a call has gone out for Demonstrations at 8:00 PM at the Plaça del Diamant de la Vila de Gràcia.

Slightly edited for translation/spelling.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

 

Scumbags In A Human Skin.

      It is, and has been for centuries, a common tool of the state, the embedded spy. The strange low life breed of human, who lives a lie for years, a form of scum that lies through their teeth, to worm their way into the confidence of people, so that they can betray them to the state. No act is too low, no lie to big, no trick too dirty, in their attempt to ensnare and condemn those who believe they have a friend. They are the obedient lapdogs of the state apparatus, the vilest of creatures with no mind of their own, just a script handed to them by their masters.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

Hamburg: New case of cop infiltrating ‘Rote Flora’

This is far from being a first … We learn in a statement of August 26, 2015, that a police agent infiltrated the autonomous area and ‘Rote Flora’ between 2009 and 2012. The undercover cop Maria Böhmichen rubbed shoulders with anti-capitalist activists / anarchists during this period and embedded herself in their private spaces. Under the name of “Maria Block”, she has participated in several international mobilizations over recent years, such as during the protests against the UN climate conference in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2009, during the ‘No Border’ camps on the island of Lesbos (Greece) in 2009 and in Brussels (Belgium) in 2010.

 Besides having created bonds of “friendship” and having had at least one sexual relationship within the community, she was able to gain access to private areas of activists and infiltrate the organization and execution of direct actions (not penalised). She also participated actively in meetings, demonstrations and events concerning anti-fascism and anti-racism, as well as in anti-nuclear and environmentalist struggles.

 This new case of an undercover cop comes less than a year after comrades exposed the infiltration of cop Iris Plate into the autonomous milieu in Hamburg in December 2014. This one had been embedded for six years, between 2000 and 2006, under the name of Iris Schneider. So this is the second case of spookery under the leadership of Senator of the Interior Neumann of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Ever More Piercing Eyes Of Big Brother.

    Anybody who thinks living under the heel of any state and its apparatus will not lead to an ever increasing invasion into their private life, is living an illusion. This march for ever more information of its citizens is essential for the state to keep control over those citizens. Big Brother is a son of the state, and it will continually feed that son. We here in the UK have seen an epidemic of CCTV, that has spread like some destructive virus, not by accident.

        As the technology behind CCTV rapidly develops, it becomes ever more intrusive, ever more clever at gathering details, from face recognition to demeanour analysis. This is all gathered, sifted, analysed and stored. Your every movement, that walk to the bookies, that crazy night out, who you meet and where. All details that can and will be, used to control.

      Police Scotland now confirms that it uses controversial face recognition software. So just remember when you next attend a peaceful and legitimate protest, march or whatever, your face is being scanned, compared and stored for future use. Under the prying eye of the state and its intrusive apparatus, "you are never alone". No need to take a selfie, just get access to the police database and you'll find thousands of images of your face from which to choose.

This from the Herald:

    Ms McInnes said the figures were "staggering" and showed Police Scotland was using "intrusive software" extensively. She added: "The photos of over 300,000 Scots are among 18 million included in the national database.

     "The combination of this database with the new facial recognition software has triggered concerns about the protection of our civil liberties. "It could be used to identify protestors at political events or football fans, stifling freedom of speech.

      "I also have real concerns that the privacy of innocent people could be compromised and they could be exposed to the risk of false identification."

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Illusion Of Democracy.

       Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is in full tilt throwing out the usual crap concerning our latest Crooks and Liars competition, known as the general election. TV is giving us "the leaders' debates" where we hear the well rehearsed sound bites, or bursts of pointless growling and snarling between "the Leaders", ah, where would we be without "our leaders". The babbling brook of bullshit create the illusion that during the Crooks and Liars competition you are free to roam the streets spouting your particular message to the general public, they call it "democracy". But what if your message is contrary to the accepted views of the powers that be? Will you still be free, in this "democracy" to go about spreading your opinion? Well apparently not, you will find yourself and your supporters being put under the watchful eye of the system's minders, and threatened and harassed at every opportunity. 

This from The Void:

       Lisa McKenzie, who is standing for Class War  against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford, was arrested last night in the latest petty police attack on the group’s election campaign.

      Lisa was accused of putting a small sticker on a wall two weeks previously and thrown into the back of a van, hand-cuffed and held for hours.  She has been charged with criminal damage. The arrest took place at last night’s Poor Doors demonstration, the weekly picket of the luxury tower block in Aldgate where tenants in social housing are forced to use a different door to the rich.  According to one onlooker police insisted her arrest was nothing to do with the election campaign against Iain Duncan Smith.  They must think we are fucking idiots.

     When Lisa and Class War recently went on the campaign trail in Chingford they were followed by police, repeatedly harassed and threatened with arrest.  Class War candidate for Croydon South, Jon Bigger, was recently followed around the constituency by up to a dozen coppers just for handing out leaflets.

       At previous Poor Doors protests police arrested high profile Class War supporter Jane Nicholl, threatening her with ludicrous arson charges after somebody allegedly burnt a small effigy of Boris Johnson.  At a later demonstration police seized a Class War banner they said had a rude word on it and arrested the person holding it.  One of Class War’s founders, Ian Bone, has also been arrested at the protests for equally trivial reasons.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Internet Of Things.

      I recently posted on Glasgow's new experimental surveillance system, where CCTV cameras in Glasgow City Centre are now linked to a central operations room, where ‘emotional recognition’ software identifies the name and mood of pedestrians, including demonstrators, and can then link the person on the camera with social media postings, phone calls, emails, police records, and more. All this without any consultation with the people being snooped upon that the council is "supposed" to serve. Another giant step towards the totally observed population. It has become the norm in this country and elsewhere, to go about your daily business and be photographed thousands of time in a few days. Where you go, what you get up to, all on record for those and such as those, whither you like it or not.

       This new "Big Brother" era is much worse than the what Orwell envisaged, his was simply state control. In this new era of "Big Brother" they want more, it will be a two pronged attack. The state concentrating on control of the population, while the corporate cabal will concentrate on personal information to to shape and mould your consumerism. All your personal data will be up for grabs and sold around "The Market" to those with a vested interest in turning you into a consuming unit to suit their balance sheets.

      More and more of our appliances will be linked, more and more of our personal data will flow in to the office of the security services, and the offices of the corporate greed machine. You will have no say in how it is gathered and how it is used. Welcome to the "Big Brother" that Orwell couldn't have envisaged.

 Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

This from Politics in the Zeros:

     The Internet of Things is a NSA paradise / Orwellian nightmare, coming real soon to your house, and Silicon Valley wants it to happen as much as NSA does.

      Huge invasions of privacy and loss of freedom are happening now.  Our government pretends to make us safer. Silicon Valley pretends to be helpful. Their real object is to collect as much data about us as they can, and to do that they need to watch and record everything about our online lives. They are two facets of the same data-slurping entity that cares little about personal privacy and freedoms. It’s all about grabbing the data, then exploiting and selling it. You are the product.

Samsung TVs record what we say, then sends it to an anonymous company which converts it to text, so it can process voice commands. They promise to erase the data when done with it. Right. I certainly believe them – just as much as I believe Google reading my email and Siri listening to me will never be abused, intercepted, and exploited by marketeers, criminals, or the government.

     It’s only a matter of time until Samsung gets a court order to turn over voice data files. I bet iPhone’s Siri already has.

     All of this is poisonous for democracy, freedom, and privacy. We have a right to not be snooped on constantly. However, we will need to fight for it. First though, we need to know just how much surveillance is happening now, who is doing it, and where the data goes. I suspect the answer will appall most of us (while government and tech apologists scurry to explain why it actually is good for us.)

Read the full article HERE:

The Poisonous Tentacles Of The State.

      We are all aware of the fact that we live under a state surveillance society. Every day we see the apparatus of the overt side of the surveillance, CCTV in all avenues of our lives, we know that we are profiled by where we draw cash, where we spend it, etc.. However we should be very aware that there is another side, the covert surveillance, the snooping in our private affairs unknown to us. Like it or not, the poisonous tentacles of the state reach into all aspects of our private life. Your texts, phone calls, your contacts on social networks and Internet viewing. Without being paranoid, to what extent are our actions, unknown to us, being shaped by agent provocateurs, paid servants of the state?

  

This from Anarchist News:

        One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.

       Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations”.

     By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Who Is Big Brother Protecting??

      Here in the UK we have more cameras per head of the population than any other country in Europe, if not the world. A recent visitor to Glasgow from Italy, that I spoke to, was shattered at the volume of cameras watching her every move. She said she felt intimidated and found it difficult to relax when out and about in town. She wanted to know was this array of cameras because Glasgow was a more criminal city than anywhere else. Of course the answer to that is most definitely, NO. Glasgow as well as being plastered with CCTV cameras on every street corner, lamp post, and lots at bus stops, (six at the bus stop at my home) we also have them on buses, in pubs, cafés, restaurants, underground stations, bus and train stations. On top of this, until the recent tragic crash at the Clutha pub, we had a police surveillance helicopter, fitted with an array of sophisticated surveillance equipment, flying low over the city. All of this, we are told, is for our own protection. Are we really that untrustworthy, violent, vicious a bunch of people, that we have to be watched at every move, our every trip to the shops, pub, church, train station, monitored? Would the city descend into mayhem and self destruction, if our lords and masters did not watch our every movement? 

     Forget “our protection” and think “control”. With this volume of detailed surveillance, we are living in a large prison, our minders are watching our every move, and ready to control you should you not be where the deem you should be, if they assess that you are not doing what they think you should be doing. Your patterns of behaviour are being analysed, you are being profiled. Who is big brother protecting? You are in prison.

     Though other cities in other countries, don't suffer the same intrusion of privacy that we do, there is still an anger and indignation at the volume of surveillance they do suffer, where is our anger and indignation?

       The following is a translation from Catalan and appeared in Anarchist News: 

"We refuse to live in a prison" (translated from Catalan)

Today, the society in which we are obliged to live appears ever more like a prison. Our movements are registered and our conversations listened to and controlled systematically via our cellphones. Our emails are analysed and maps of our social networks are created using, for example, Facebook and Twitter.

The national press gets indignant about the tracking of [European] politicians by the NSA but what's certain is that for a long time they have been not only complicit, but directly promoting the sharing of data on a large part of the population between European agencies and the NSA. And on the other hand, we have not seen the same indignation for the dozens of cases of spying on activists carried out by CESICAT [an extralegal or private security apparatus formed by the government of Catalunya, as part of its bid for independence].

An element of devastating quotidianity in this web of social control are the surveillance cameras. They seek to train us to accept "for our own safety" being filmed from the moment we leave our houses in the morning until the moment when we come home at night. Some cities are already installing systems of integrated surveillance with all the cameras in a region linked up to facial and other recognition software.

None of this surprises us, since the very nature of the State is to want to exercise absolute power over life. Freedom is not possible under a power that aims to control and surveille our lives in their entirety. Any attempt to transform this world in accordance with our needs or to recover control over our own lives will be surveilled and punished by the State as an act of criminality. For this reason the struggle for freedom must take the path of illegality.

We refuse to live in a prison. We refuse to be listened to and followed. We refuse to have our movements recorded. We refuse to allow anyone to be obliged to grow up in a world in which they will be recorded, filmed, Twittered, and localised 24 hours a day.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Undercover Police, Circled A Radio.

      The latest from Circled A Radio, a chat with author of "Undercover" Rob Evans, an exposure of the UK's undercover police.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The State's Slimy Side.

        In the last two years, details of undercover police pretending to be activists have slowly emerged. A new book by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk , provides the latest information about police sleeping with activist women while pretending to be someone else. Since it is obvious that the women would never have consented if they had known there were police officers, does this constitute rape? Also officers using the names of dead children. The case that has outraged the public and led to promises of political action has been the revelation that police spied on the Stephen Lawrence campaign.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/23/stephen-lawrence-undercover-police-smears Donnacha from Circled "A" Radio, talks to veteran activist Ellenor Hutson, who knew some of the police spies in their activist cover, about what's happened and what should happen next.

Listen HERE

ann arky's home.

DO YOU LIVE IN AN ELECTRONIC POLICE STATE?

  

  Is your state a leader in surveillance, is it an Electronic Police State? Don't you think you should find out before it's too late. The following short extract was taken from http://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2010.pdf  where you can read the full report. I strongly suggest you do!!!

DEFINITIONS

      For those who are new to the Electronic Police State Report, we will re-state our definitions:

An electronic police state is characterized by this:

      State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.

     The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these:

1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.

2. It is gathered universally (“preventively”) and only later organized for use in prosecutions.

     In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email sent, every Internet site surfed, every post made, every check written, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal evidence, and all are held in searchable databases. The individual can be prosecuted whenever the government wishes.

      Long-term, the Electronic Police State destroys free speech, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and other liberties. Worse, it does so in a way that is difficult to identify.

METHODOLOGY

      We moved to a more elaborate ranking system this year. The categories remained the same, but we have now weighted each one according to its importance. (The weighting factors are shown in parenthesis for each category itemized below.) Within each category we used a comparative method of assigning value.

      We have not taken into account how many people, or what percentage of people, are affected by each characteristic. So, even though very few people in North Korea have Internet access, those who do are subjected to very serious surveillance. The low number of users has no effect on the national ranking.

      In addition, it is significant to note that we are not measuring government censorship of Internet traffic or police abuses, as legitimate as these issues may be. Nor are we including government corruption.

      Note also that none of our categories apply to evidence-gathering by traditional, honest police work. (Searches only with warrants issued by an independent judge, after sufficient examination of evidence.)

ann arky's home.

WHICH STATE STINKS MORE THAN OTHERS?

    Here's a wee quiz for you, read carefully and think hard before answering. You can find the answer HERE.

    

      If you were asked which regime is described by the following actions and characteristics, what would you answer?

1. A regime that produces a death list of citizens abroad to be executed by its secret intelligence service, without arrest, without trial by a jury.

2. A regime that conducts surveillance at home and then uses that information to have an allied state abroad, one that flouts human rights, torture one of its citizens.

3. A regime that continues to operate secret detention centres where inmates are routinely denied the most basic rights to challenge the reasons why they have been imprisoned, without charge, and without representation.

4. A regime that is bent on maintaining war against other nations, including against peoples who never attacked it, thereby representing an obstacle to world peace.

5. A regime that routinely denies the legitimate claims and demands of its population, in order to favour a small cabal of elite bankers and industrialists, and thus also a regime that effectively renders elections little more than an expensive shadow play owned and operated by the billionaires who can engineer a win for their candidates.

6. A regime that persecutes those who believe that it is wrong to conceal the human rights abuses of their regime, that believe the world needs to know how that regime uses its troops to slaughter innocent civilians abroad, with neither reason nor remorse.

7. A regime that exercises pressure to round up the private details of Internet users, if they in any way conspired to reveal these facts.

8. A regime that harasses its citizens at airports, seizing their personal property, extracting information about a person’s activities and associations, and then targeting the person’s friends and colleagues, on the suspicion that the person may have peacefully opposed the state’s public lies.

ann arky's home.

THE GREAT ILLUSION.

        It is one of the state's biggest con-tricks, this statement that what they do for “national security” is the state's attempt to make you safer. This massive lie gives licence to total surveillance, high security prisons, torture, rendition, held without trial, and a host of other moves to intimidate and suppress dissent.

      However, making you safer is not what it is all about, it's more to do with large corporations making buckets full of profit from tax payers' money. It also keeps you in line, breeding fear and in so doing, stifling dissent. Those with the power of the state are the ones that need to be under surveillance.

     

       Collectively they are involved in more violence and terror through the means of war than any group of terrorist could ever dream of unleashing. Ask the Iraqis or the Afghans how our anti-terrorist activities have kept them safe.

ann arky's home.

BIG BROTHER, IS HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE!!!

   

       A very interesting article from that great activists news website Schnews. Like the article says, we should not be surprised at what the establishment will do to crush dissent. It will incriminate, vilify, intimidate, discourage and place under constant surveillance all those who dare to raise their voices in disagreement with the establishment's grand plans. Though we should not be surprised it is good to see it all coming out for general public viewing, perhaps giving others a better view of what lies lurking beneath that ever so thin shiny veneer of respectability worn by our political masters.

     Power and wealth is in the grasp of the elite parasites and they will do what ever they deem necessary to make sure it stays there. The last thing they want is for the people who actually create all that wealth, the working class, to share it out fairly among all those in society. They have a complex apparatus all set up to ensure that the wealth and power is kept in the hands of the pampered parasite class of millionaire thugs.

        

 GOVERNMENT AGENCY CAUGHT INFILTRATING ACTIVIST MEDIA OUTLET

         “No - stuff that - SHUT the place: Let’s not all stand around like lemmings - lets shut the place!Bring ladders and wire cutters. If there are enough of us we can shut it!” - a pretty average comment on Indymedia you might think - if a little gung-ho. In fact it was posted there by the police - and SchNEWS has the proof.

         For the benefit of anyone who’s been hiding in a hole wearing a tinfoil hat for the last fortnight (i.e most of our readership), it turns out that the U.K direct action/anarchist/environmental movement was infiltrated for number of years by undercover police. At least four cops have already been outed and its safe to assume there may be more. But while the mainstream media has focussed on the sleazy antics and dodgy love lives of these professional liars, SchNEWS can reveal that police attempts to disrupt our movement goes much further than a few unshaven plants in grubby t-shirts, and includes attacks on activist media and communications. For years now, police have been using activist website Indymedia in attempts to sow mistrust, demoralise movements and to incite violence and illegality.

IP FREELY

          Police postings came to light following an internal investigation on persistent disinformation being published to Indymedia UK. Technically Indymedia is supposed to safeguard it’s posters by not logging IP addresses. In actual fact there are IP filters. Although IP addresses are only stored temporarily, those of persistent abusers are kept in order to prevent the site from being overwhelmed. Moderators of Indymedia UK identified the Gateway-303 server as being the source of numerous such posts. A filter was set up to capture the behaviour of the individual(s) who were hiding behind the server.

          One IP address so identified was 62.25.109.196 , which correlates with the server gateway303.energis.gsi.gov.uk. There are similar servers, gateway-301 & gateway-302 with IP addresses 62.25.109.194 and 62.25.109.195 respectively. Other servers identified are gateway-101, gateway-202, gateway-201, etc

         GSI stands for Government Secure Intranet. It is a network established by the UK Government to allow secure transfer of files across its computers. The Police National Network is separate from it, but can connect to it. Currently GSI is operated by Energis, a UK based internet company now owned by Cable & Wireless.

       It is clear from the consistency of the usage of gateway-303 server that the IPs are probably assigned to particular premises or else specific units within the UK Government. One of the purposes of the GSI network is to provide a secure proxy network behind which users can maintain their anonymity. Hence the lack of solid information as to exactly who is behind the postings. However, SchNEWS is gonna take a stab in the dark (if only) as to who they are; in fact some actually signed NETCU. Of course it could be the old double bluff, but given the level of intelligence behind some of the postings even this level of sophistication seems unlikely.

INDY-SCRIBABLE

           Indymedia is a key tool in activist organisation and communication. Given the overtly political nature of the site and the types of news stories published it is hardly a surprise that it attracts weirdos with strange axes to grind. Its open publishing format has left it wide open to trolling, spam and, of course, state / police abuse. This abuse has mostly taken the form of posting comments under a variety of pseudonyms.

           These postings have targeted individual activists, put out information about activists that is not in the public domain, attacked campaigns, and urged the disruption of peaceful protests. Many comment on (then) ongoing court cases. Some are just personal abuse directed at well-known activists, while others contain information only known to the police. Two postings - made on 21st Jan and 9th Jun 2010 - provide personal details, including mobile numbers, of potential targets for the animal rights movement, one a fur-shop in Leeds, the other the owner of an animal circus. What the motivations were for posting these details can only be surmised. But off the record we reckon it’s blatant attempt at entrapment.

       As part of the activist scene, SchNEWS isn’t quite as shocked as elements of the mainstream media have been about the cops’ sleazy abuse of personal friendships to disrupt the organisation of alternative social movements. It’s long been the case that to be an activist you’ve got to get used the idea of surveillance (both covert and overt), violence from the state and the deliberate silencing of voices. The antics of Kennedy, Watson, Jacobs and Boyling are just part of a tactical bag of tricks including kettling, the use of F.I.T teams and spotter cards, anti-stalking injunctions, spreading rumours in the mainstream press and a constant stream of new laws criminalising dissent (See SchNEWS 1-754). To that list we can now add infiltration of the core platform for anti-authoritarian radical media activism in the UK.

        From a brief analysis of the activities of the undercovers it seems that their mission was as much to disrupt as much as it was to gather information. Attacks on our movements by disruption are a handy weapon in the state’s arsenal with no need for actual evidence or convictions.

 

PLAINLY INCITE

        The targets of the fake Indymedia postings span the activist spectrum, from anti-fascists to anti-militarists, but have been most concerned with environmental campaigns and, in particular the Animal Rights movement. On April 27th, 2010, a comment appeared on the Indymedia UK newswire entitled Don’t use SPEAK as a model. The comment, on an article entitled New animal lab at Leicester; New nationwide campaign to start urged readers to respond to the campaign by “Model[ling] the campaign on a successful AR campaign such as Hillgrove cats or Darnley Oaks etc” (sic). Those familiar with those campaigns will be aware that they campaigns are alleged to have included violent actions against individuals. Other postings referenced a what appears to be an entirely fictitious new AR campaign in Leicester – Stop Leicester Animal Cruelty. SLAC (ha bloody ha)

          It should be remembered corporations seeking injunctions under the Protection from Harassment Act (link) have relied heavily on comments made on Indymedia as evidence. This act has been used against campaigns such as Smash EDO to criminalise all forms of dissent targeting specific companies, even entirely peaceful and completely legal protest.

          As a whole the comments build a bewildering picture of a campaign of disparagement, incitement and support, together with wry asides and outright attempts at demoralisation. A few really stand out as obvious incitement to illegality while some are so bizarre that we can’t work out if they are part of a sinister master plan to bring down the whole activist scene - or just the ramblings of bored coppers with faces full of doughnuts and nothing better to do.

         More on this HERE.

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