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Forum Post: they are listening to us - from paul street

Posted 9 years ago on Jan. 5, 2015, 10:56 a.m. EST by flip (7101)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Here’s another example. It came when I clicked on one of the forty-nine hyperlinks in a recent excellent TeleSur English essay – a hyperlink embedded in the following phrase: “Chicago police are apparently spying on the phone conversations of protesters.” Being a native Chicagoan and a cell phone user who has been involved in more than a few protests in that city, I naturally followed the link, which took me to a report in the progressive Chicago-based magazine In These Times. Courtesy of local activists and the online activist group Anonymous, the report contains a smoking gun. It has a transcript of a police radio conversation between a Chicago police officer who was patrolling a Ferguson-related Black Friday Boycott demonstration and the city police department’s “fusion center” last November. The “fusion center” is an intelligence and surveillance facility (technically named the Crime Prevention and Information Center) that collaborates and coordinates between the Chicago Police Department and the FBI, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and other agencies. The conversation, captured live by an activist monitoring a city police radio band, went as follows:

Officer: “Yeah, one of the girls, she’s kind of an organizer here, she’s been on her phone a lot. You guys picking up any information, uh, where they’re going, possibly?”

Crime Prevention and Information Center: “Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on it. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

Note how routine the conversation sounds and reads. In the Chicago Police Department, it is no big thing, internally speaking, for the police to listen in on the phone conversations of activists engaged in supposedly constitutionally protected (First Amendment) free speech rights of public assembly and protest. The eavesdropping is an egregious violation of US citizens’ purported constitutional protection (Fourth Amendment) against warrantless and “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

I recommend the In These Times report (investigative journalism at its best) and a recent short report in the Christian Science Monitor’s online feature “Passcode” (covering cyber-security and electronic privacy issues) for more details on: the specific technology – the StingRay (also known as an “ISMI catcher”) – that allows police to (among other things) listen to track private cell phones (without the knowledge of cell phone companies); how the technology works; the military manufacturer (the Harris Corporation) that sells the technology to US metropolitan police departments; activists’ longstanding suspicion that such technologies have been deployed by local police; the struggle of activists and the ACLU to obtain public information about the eavesdropping; the manufacturer’s efforts to protect itself against legal liability for abuse of civil liberties; and the number of police departments who have purchased the snooping technologies with DHS grants handed out in the name of fighting Islamist terrorism after 9/11/2001.

16 Comments

16 Comments


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[-] 2 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 9 years ago

programmed POLICy enforcers

Kafka's "Amerika" and Mark Twain's "Letters From the Earth" knew nothing of electronic media but they sure understood corrupt policy makers and the excesses of the POLICy enforcers the ruling elites put on the ground to do the dirty work. The writers also knew about a brain dead and/or programmed population.

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 9 years ago

"The eavesdropping is an egregious violation of US citizens’ purported constitutional protection (Fourth Amendment) against warrantless and “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

That pretty much sums it up. But, Americans are too stupid to fight for those rights, they'll take their guns, and TPTB know it. Give 'em their guns and they'll STFU about everything else, their privacy, their economic shackles, etc.

Here's an old document about the Occupy movement: "FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring"

http://www.justiceonline.org/fbi_files_ows

"...These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

Corporations are behind all of this. Profit, exploitation and tyranny is what they know, and what they benefit from and they don't care what the outcome is or how many people are harmed or unjustly treated.

[-] 3 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 9 years ago

we need open tables on how the money flows

i am tired of corporations and government hiding behind privacy and secrecy

[-] 5 points by beautifulworld (23767) 9 years ago

Right. If they know our every move, we should know their every move.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Anyone who hears the repeated droning of a circling slow-and-low-flying propeller-driven aircraft or drones may be surveilled and location-targeted. There are StingRays circling in American sky without search warrants violating the U.S. Constitution. Beware of the Jubjub bird helping the Jabberwock.

Surveillance aircraft need to stay up in the sky for long periods of time so they need highly efficient propulsion systems and drone bases (guess where these are ...) close to targets. Slow flying is efficient so they are mostly propeller-driven. The flying pattern is also a strong hint of what an aircraft is doing. Flying low improves locating a ground target accurately, sometimes a necessary prelude to a raid.

This flying-pattern hint may be weakening due to the ability to deploy mutiple aircraft to collect the data and electronically correlating the information to generate intelligence. The number of these aircraft owned by an individual peace jurisdiction is not great enough to be embarked on this kind of mission due to cost. However, sufficiently valuable targets can overcome the cost constraint.

I'm thinking about rogue-nation actors building weapons of megalomaniac delusions, immobile permanent air-conditioner Carriers not made with Methysillicobe but good for "judicial sovereignty" south-sea fishing by macarooned Mx. Cheese, and golden apple orchards of strifes with men wearing no fruit-salad insignia but baklava desserts on their faces which choked them gutter-ally sometimes.

StingRays, being imitators of cellphone towers, likely have much shorter listening range than the ground-based towers which usually have grid electricity available, not so for the imitators. StingRays fly close and low for ground targets but fly they must, so they tend to circle near the ground target.

Monitor energy flows to understand the physical world. Even computer viruses and the spirits of departed souls leave energy footprints. The spiritual world is physical.

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

The U.S. spends 55% of it's budget (the largest single economy in world history) on military. We would be very naive to think they are not doing the things you outline above. We are dimwits to think that we are free. They are spending our money on the military industrial complex instead of on things we need.

The only way out of this is to vote Green Party. They have the right platform to free us from the oppression, greed and immorality that has gotten us to this violent, anxious and alienated society we find ourselves in.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Our government is stupid enough to pursue the strategy of monitoring everything with the pretense of "digging it." Reading news can cause monitoring. Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list!

If it sees and does not understand, what good is it to take it to visit the art museum? If it hears and does not listen, what good is it to read it poetry?

In the beginning, there was a dearth of data capturing and storage equipments as internet traffic grows exponentially. Now that problem has been solved, why didn't the government(s) stop the Dallas, Baton Rouge, Nice attacks?

Ahhh no, ahhh know! The children's genius solution to constipation is to eat and drink more. "Sooner or later it must come back out." I was really impressed by their understanding of STEM. It's time to pull a "Venezuelan (seize the Kimberly-Clark facility)."

[-] 2 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Donald Trump calling for an end to the U.S. bringing regime change around the world really struck a note with me the other night. If that nutter can even see the harm we've done, how much of a nutter is Clinton? How much of a nutter is Obama? Perhaps they are worse than folks like Trump.

I know we are supposed to think the opposite is true and that Clinton is the lesser of two evils, but I'm just not buying it. I am quite certain you'll never hear her say she's for an end of the U.S. bringing regime change around the world.

[-] 2 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Drumpf is a businessman locally grown in New York. Business is all about having a good grasp of the cost/benefit ratio of various choices, very materialistic, but probably far more rational than one wedded to an ideology, especially an obsolete and outdated one, such as the unipolar idea of a global American Empire.

I have no doubt that the U.S. is dominant in many areas and should provide leadership when asked but the idea that we can dictate to the rest of the world is just plain nuts. The U.S. has grown quite capable newer allies such as Japan and Germany and kept some rather old and reliable allies (including former enemies). I think many of them jointly can handle at least regional leadership or policing by now. It's a bit like letting the now grown-up youngsters "mow the lawn."

[-] 2 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Let's all vote as we wish, for what we believe in, and not for what we are against, and let the chips fall where they may.

[-] 2 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Overcoming fear is the only way to break out of the duopoly trap set up for us every election because the walls of the trap are built out of fear. No fear means no walls, means no trap, means we can free ourselves.

[-] -1 points by flip (7101) 9 years ago

I agree with all you say. As you already know

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Where are you these days, flip? We'd love to hear your opinions on the matters of the day.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

hey beauty - nice you still remember me! i rarely check in to this site anymore. it became boring - except for you and a couple of others - of course. also discouraging how the management became jerks - i can't think of a better word this early! i think trump is good for the country and the election in many ways. first of all maybe the dems will wake up to the fact that they cannot get the vote of working class whites? also lots of people are talking about politics so that is good. lastly trump says things that i have never heard in my lifetime. "do we need nato and all these bases around the world? why are russia and china enemies? do you want poor people dying in the streets - i will get government to pay for their health care. the elite and the media have had it their way too long. and i will raise tariffs and bring back jobs!" now i know he says lots of terrible things also but i will for sure watch the debates to see what is said. i think many people who never watch will be watching this time. lastly i will not vote for hillary - i cannot see how we can expect things to get better by electing more of the same. if i am wrong and she backs up her words i will vote for her in 2020. and you - what is your take and what is happening here??

[-] 2 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Hey flip. So glad to hear from you. All has been well. I hope you and your wife are doing well.

We are pared down to just a dozen or so of us here but it's still a good place for debate and for Occupy matters. If you can comment from time to time it would be great! Same for anyone out there who has been lurking. Please come back!

I was amazed when I read what you said about Trump because I feel the same way. I feel like the Palestinians, for one, might have a better chance under Trump than surely, under Clinton! The fact that he questions the size of the U.S. military and NATO is just historical really. Also, the healthcare thing is amazing, right? He does say he wouldn't allow people to die on the street the way libertarian eedjut Ron Paul has said he would.

But, in the end, Trump is very erratic and we have no idea what he will ever do, so I will not be voting for him. Nor will I vote for Lady Hawk. I did like how she wove Occupy memes into her acceptance speech at the convention. My goodness! Suddenly, she's going to end Citizens United, tax Wall Street, support a living wage and universal health care and do something about student debt. (Kudos to Occupy, just 5 years out and we have the Dem nominee spewing our memes!). She even said she's against bad trade deals. But, and it's a big but, can we trust her? Is it just rhetoric? She also remains the warmonger we know she is and her face seemed to light up the minute she began talking about "safety" and our military.

So, in the meantime, my plan remains. My allegiance is to the 99% and I will support and vote for Jill Stein.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

I think, aside from frf, everyone here is going with ein Stein's dream: E=m a-squared, E=m b-squared, "Gib ein Körper Strahlung aus...," E=m c-squared. Nobody laughs at Fat Boy's lightening anymore. E=m z z, E=m.