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Why Should Feds Track College Students?
by EEkid＠aol.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc- khwill0731.artjul31,0,984479.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped Why Should Feds Track College Students? July 31, 2006 Does the federal government need to know whether you aced Aristotelian ethics but had to repeat introductory biology? Does it need to know your family's financial profile, how much aid you received and whether you took off a semester to help out at home? The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education thinks so. In its first draft report, released in late June, the commission called for creation of a tracking system to collect sensitive information about our nation's college students. Its second draft, made public last week, softens the name of the plan, but the essence of the proposal remains unchanged. Whether you call it a "national unit records database" (the first name) or a "consumer-friendly information database" (the second), it is in fact a mandatory federal registry of all American students throughout their collegiate careers - every course, every step, every misstep. Once established, it could easily be linked to existing K-12 and workforce databases to create unprecedented cradle-to-grave tracking of American citizens. All under the watchful eye of the federal government. The commission calls our nation's colleges and universities unaccountable, inefficient and inaccessible. In response it seeks to institute collection of personal information designed to quantify our students' performance in college and in the workforce. But many of us are concerned about invading our students' privacy by feeding confidential educational and personal data, linked to Social Security numbers, into a mandatory national database. Such a database would wrest control over educational records from students and hand it to the government. I'd like the commission to tell me how our students would benefit from our reporting confidential family financial information. Those of us in higher education aren't the only ones with concerns about this. Earlier this month, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities released results of a survey that showed the majority of Americans oppose creation of a national system to track students' academic, enrollment and financial aid information. More than 60 percent of those polled opposed the creation of such a system, and 45 percent of those surveyed were "strongly opposed" to the proposal. Privacy groups from both ends of the political spectrum - including the Eagle Forum and the American Civil Liberties Union - criticized an early form of the proposal that Education Department officials were exploring in 2004. We already have efficient systems in place to collect educational statistics. I question why the commission, which shares our concerns about the increased cost of education, would want to create a database that not only violates privacy but also would be very expensive. Our existing systems meet the government's need to inform public policy without intruding on student privacy because they report the data in aggregate form. Colleges and universities report on virtually every aspect of our students' experience - retention and graduation rates, financial aid rates and degrees conferred by major institutions - to the federal and state governments as well as to organizations such as the NCAA and to many publications. The commission seems bent on its Orwellian scheme of collecting extensively detailed, very personal student data. Supporters say it would make higher education more accountable and more affordable for students. Admirable goals, but a strange and forbidding solution. This proposal is a violation of the right to privacy that Americans hold dear. It is against the law. Moreover, there is a mountain of data already out there that can help us understand higher education and its efficacy. And, finally, implementation of such a database, which at its inception would hold "unit" record data on 17 million students, would be an unfunded mandate on institutions and add greatly to the expense of education. At a time when the world acknowledges the strength of the American system of higher education - that it is decentralized, diverse, competitive and independent - why would a commission on the future of higher education want to impose federal regulations and federal bureaucratic monitoring of individual students in the name of "improving" higher education? Katherine Haley Will is president of Gettysburg College and chairwoman-elect of the Annapolis Group, an organization of leading independent liberal arts colleges. This first appeared in The Washington Post. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Why Should Feds Track College Students?
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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[FoRK] Outlawing dissent: COINTELPRO resurgence
by jbone＠place.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

There was a recent NOW bit re: trends in domestic spying... prompted me to hunt around a bit, found this --- essentially the same gist. I love it: the Quakers (American Friends Service Committee) --- a "criminal extremist" group. Well, hell yeah, that damned philosophy of "perfect silence" is criminally annoying. ;-) -- http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_5102.shtml From AxisofLogic.com Civil Rights/Human Rights Outlawing dissent: Spying on peace meetings, cracking down on protesters, keeping secret files on innocent people -- how Bush's war on terror has become a war on freedom By Michelle Goldberg Feb 12, 2004, 10:07 News A sting-ball grenade thrown by Oakland police, foreground, explodes over running protesters during an antiwar protest in Oakland, Calif., April 7, 2003. February 11, 2004-The undercover cop introduced herself to the activists from the Colorado Coalition Against the War in Iraq as Chris Hoffman, but her real name was Chris Hurley. Last March, she arrived at a nonviolence training session in Denver, along with another undercover officer, Brad Wanchisen, whom she introduced as her boyfriend. The session, held at the Escuela Tlatelolco, a Denver private school, was organized to prepare activists for a sit-in at the Buckley Air National Guard Base the next day, March 15. Hurley said she wanted to participate. She said she was willing to get arrested for the cause of peace. In fact, she did get arrested. She was just never charged. The activists she protested with wouldn't find out why for months. Chris Hurley was just one of many cops all over the country who went undercover to spy on antiwar protesters last year. Nonviolent antiwar groups in Fresno, Calif., Grand Rapids, Mich., and Albuquerque, N.M., have all been infiltrated or surveilled by undercover police officers. Shortly after the Buckley protest, the Boulder group was infiltrated a second time, by another pair of police posing as an activist couple. Meanwhile, protesters arrested at antiwar demonstrations in New York last spring were extensively questioned about their political associations, and their answers were entered into databases. And last week, a federal prosecutor in Des Moines, Iowa, obtained a subpoena demanding that Drake University turn over records from an antiwar conference called "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!" that the school's chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a civil libertarian legal group, hosted on Nov. 15 of last year, the day before a protest at the Iowa National Guard headquarters. Among the information the government sought was the names of the leaders of the Drake University Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, its records dating back to January of 2002, and the names of everyone who attended the "Stop the Occupation!" conference. Four antiwar activists also received subpoenas in the investigation. On Tuesday, after a national outcry, the U.S. Attorney's Office canceled the subpoenas. Still, says Bruce Nestor, a former president of the National Lawyers Guild who is serving as the Drake chapter's attorney, "We're concerned that some type of investigation is ongoing." In the early 1970s, after the exposure of COINTELPRO, a program of widespread FBI surveillance and sabotage of political dissidents, reforms were put in place to prevent the government from spying on political groups when there was no suspicion of criminal activity. But once again, protesters throughout America are being watched, often by police who are supposed to be investigating terrorism. Civil disobedience, seen during peaceful times as the honorable legacy of heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., is being treated as terrorism's cousin, and the government claims to be justified in infiltrating any meeting where it's even discussed. It's too early to tell if America is entering a repeat of the COINTELPRO era. But Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Law in Manhattan, says, "There are certainly enough warning signs out there that we may be." As a new round of protests approaches -- including worldwide antiwar demonstrations on March 20 and massive anti-Bush actions during the Republican National Convention in August and September -- experts say the surveillance is likely to increase. "The government is taking an increasingly hostile stance toward protesters," says Michael Avery, president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor of constitutional law at Suffolk University. In the run-up to the Republican Convention, he says, "I'm sure the government will be attempting to infiltrate political groups. They may send agent provocateurs into political groups. They're no doubt compiling reports on people. We have to stand up against that." No one knows the extent of the political spying and profiling currently being carried out against critics of the Bush administration and American foreign policy -- which may be the most disturbing thing about the entire phenomenon. "Presumably if they're doing their jobs well, we'll never know," says Fogel. Activists have also been unsuccessful at finding out why they're being watched, and under whose authority. What we do know, though, is that several of the police departments that have been accused of spying on protesters -- including the Aurora, Colo., Police Department, where Hurley works -- are part of Joint Terrorism Task Forces. These are programs in which local police are assigned to work full-time with FBI agents and other federal agents "to investigate and prevent acts of terrorism," as the FBI's Web site says. According to the FBI, such JTTFs have been around since 1980, but the total number has almost doubled since Sept. 11, 2001, to 66. A Polk County deputy sheriff assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force served the subpoenas in Iowa. According to Nestor, the deputy sheriff even handed out business cards that identified him as part of the JTTF. On Monday, though, after what Nestor describes as a "tremendous public reaction" following news reports of the JTTF's involvement, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Des Moines issued a written statement denying that the investigation was being conducted by the task force. The U.S. Attorney's Office confirms that the investigation is a collaboration between the FBI, the Polk County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office -- all of whom, Nestor notes, serve on the JTTF. It focuses on a case of misdemeanor trespassing on government property that took place on Nov. 16, near the antiwar protest. According to Nestor, the case involves someone who "walked up to a closed gate" outside the National Guard's armory, "had a conversation with the guards and got charged with trespassing." The police and FBI are now investigating whether people at the antiwar conference entered into some kind of conspiracy to break the law -- in other words, whether they planned acts of civil disobedience. "They appear to be taking the stance that if any individual, as part of or in relation to a protest, commits an act that might be a violation of federal law, that they can subpoena and investigate any records of any meeting that person may have gone to in the days or even months proceeding," says Nestor. Avery suggests that such investigations will have a chilling effect on the planning for future protests. "The risk is that if there's some kind of demonstration or protest activity that involves trespassing, [the JTTF] is saying they can ask people what political meetings have you been to lately, who was there, what did you talk about," says Avery. "People are allowed to meet and talk and debate political issues without being spied on by the government." At least, they used to be. Whether or not a Joint Terrorism Task Force was behind the Iowa investigation, JTTFs have already been implicated in political spying. In a three-ring binder from the Denver Police Department Intelligence Unit obtained by the Colorado ACLU, a section labeled "Colorado and Local Links: JTTF Active Case List" contained printouts made in April 2002 from the Web sites of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, American Friends Service Committee, Denver Justice and Peace Committee and the Rocky Mountain Independent Media Center. One of the printouts, a copy of which is available on the ACLU's Web site, is the American Friends Service Committee's calendar of upcoming antiwar events. Last November, the New York Times revealed a leaked FBI memo asking local police to report protest activity to their local Joint Terrorism Task Force. The bulletin, sent to law enforcement agencies on Oct. 15, 2003, warned about antiwar protests planned for Oct. 25, saying, "While the FBI possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are being planned as part of these protests, the possibility exists that elements of the activist community may attempt to engage in violent, destructive, or dangerous acts." The bulletin went on to list common protest methods including marches and sit-ins, as well as "aggressive tactics" used by "extremist elements," including vandalism, trespassing, physical harassment, formation of human chains and the use of weapons. "Even the more peaceful techniques can create a climate of disorder, block access to a site, draw large numbers of police officers to a specific location in order to weaken security at other locations, obstruct traffic, and possibly intimidate people from attending the events being protested," it warned. It ended by saying, "Law enforcement agencies should be alert to these possible indications of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force." The Colorado activists who attended nonviolence training with Chris Hurley remember her as shy and timid. She didn't arouse suspicion at either the training session, where people practiced staying calm even when confronted by aggressive police, or the next day, when she showed up at the demonstration. On March 15, around 300 people protested near the Buckley base, but only 18 (not including Hurley) engaged in civil disobedience by sitting in the road and blocking the base's entrance. The action was no secret -- the Colorado Coalition Against the War had informed police of what it intended to do in advance. "We always have a police liaison when we have a civil disobedience," says participant Terry Leichner, a 54-year-old psychiatric social worker and veteran activist. "We always work with police so there's no violence." The Aurora Police Department doesn't deny that the activists told them exactly what they planned to do. Indeed, they use that fact as a rationale for infiltrating the group. "Prior to the actual protest, this group came to the police department and told us they were going to conduct criminal acts in our city," says Kathleen Walsh, the Aurora Police Department's public information officer. "We have a responsibility to the citizens of Aurora to investigate." Walsh insists that the activists' willingness to tell the police their plans didn't mitigate the need to spy on the group. "Can you guarantee me that people don't lie to police?" she said. Walsh asked that further questions -- including those about Hurley's connection to counterterrorism investigations -- be submitted in writing. She has yet to answer them. Having been warned in advance, the police arrived quickly to remove the Buckley demonstrators. They wore riot gear, but didn't need it -- the protesters, including Hurley, were arrested without incident, and the whole thing was over in an hour. All 19 arrestees were taken to a holding cell, where the activists say Hurley seemed nervous. Nancy Peters, a 56-year-old protest organizer, recalls trying to comfort her, but Hurley didn't say much. While the rest of the group exchanged stories, Leichner says, Hurley was "noncommittal." When they were released, she didn't attend a meeting the activists had to plan legal strategy, but according to Peters, she asked to be kept informed. None of the activists found out that Hurley was an Aurora police officer until the discovery phase of their trials last spring. By then, though, their lawyers had reason to be suspicious. A month after the Buckley protest, the Colorado Coalition was infiltrated again, by an undercover officer from the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, which is also part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force. This time, the group realized something was up. On April 14, the activists planned to meet with Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, a supporter of the war, and ask him to present a "peace resolution" to Congress. Several of the activists planned to refuse to leave his office unless he acceded to their demands, which no one expected him to do. Peters, who was arrested at Buckley, was one of the organizers of the Allard action and was going to be on hand to bail out activists taken to jail. Again, the Colorado Coalition held a nonviolence training session the day before for those planning to be arrested. Peters remembers unloading her car outside the church where the training was held when she saw a couple walking by, looking like they were "killing time" before finally going inside. The man, a muscular guy who looked to be in his 30s, introduced himself as Chris Taylor and said the woman with him was his girlfriend. In fact, his name was Darren Christensen and he was an undercover officer, as was Liesl McArthur, the woman he was with. As the Rocky Mountain News reported in December, much of his usual undercover work involved "being solicited on line for deviant sex." Unlike Hurley, Christensen immediately made the activists nervous. "A couple of people from the group came up and said, 'Who are they? Do you know them from any other events?'" says Peters. "He was pumping for information, asking questions about whether there was a group that was more radical and had a different focus, more like the black bloc or the anarchists." At the time, though, it didn't occur to anyone that the police would be interested in spying on them. So they let Christensen participate, even after he made what Peters thought was an outlandish suggestion. "It was in the evening when we were trying to figure out our general plan," she says. "We didn't know whether the police would be blocking the entrance to Allard's office." They were discussing whether the six people planning the sit-in should go in as a group, or one by one, in order to evade attention. "[Christensen] said, 'Look, why don't we just walk right through their line?' We were like, whoa, nobody wants to get their heads blown off," says Peters. "We are peaceful, nonviolent group. We're not trying to storm a building." The next day, the group met beforehand to coordinate. Everyone who planned to get arrested gave Peters bond money, except for Christensen, who said his girlfriend would bail him out. The six entered Allard's office at 1 p.m., and by 5 p.m. they'd all been arrested. "I raced over to the jail," says Peters. "There were several people there, including his 'girlfriend.' I was trying to find out who'd been booked and what their bail was, but none had been put into the system yet." Peters was standing in the jailhouse lobby and talking on a pay phone when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Christensen walking out the door. "He had a phony story about how his girlfriend got him out," she says. "I asked, 'Can I see your summons?' He didn't have one." Peters passed her concerns on to her group's pro bono defense attorneys, who soon found that although six people had been arrested, only five had been charged. Then, while reviewing the Buckley case, they noticed that while 19 people had been arrested there, only 18 were charged. Eventually, by subpoenaing police records, the attorneys figured out that police had sent the undercover agents to infiltrate the group. Once exposed, Hurley turned up in court to watch the protesters' trials. "When she came to court, she just seemed so arrogant," says Ellen Stark, a 57-year-old preschool teacher who is part of the group arrested at Buckely. "She was not at all apologetic about her activities and the fact that she had lied to us. She just looked at us with disdain." None of the activists have been able to get any answers from officials about why they were being watched. "I couldn't interest anybody on the Aurora City council to even meet with me," says Stark. "Nobody would talk to me." America has seen this kind of thing before. Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover ran COINTELPRO, a program of surveillance and sabotage against political dissidents. COINTELPRO watched violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and, later, the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers, but it also spied on and harassed thousands of innocent people, including Martin Luther King Jr. COINTELPRO's abuses came to light in 1971, when a group of activists calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, Penn., and stole several hundred pages of files. In his recent history of COINTELPRO, "There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan and FBI Counterintelligence," David Cunningham writes, "These files provided the first public disclosure of a range of Bureau activities against targets such as the Black Panther Party, the Venceremos Brigade, the Philadelphia Labor Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and college students with 'revolutionary' leanings." Eventually, damaging revelations about COINTELPRO led the FBI to adopt reforms designed to prevent a repeat of Hoover's excesses. Attorney General Edward Levi laid out a set of standards for FBI domestic surveillance. "These so-called Levi Guidelines clearly laid out the criteria required for initiated investigations, establishing a standard of suspected criminal conduct, meaning activity (rather than merely ideas or writings, which had been adequate cause for targeting groups and individuals as subversive during the COINTELPRO era)," Cunningham writes. "The guidelines also stipulated as acceptable only particular investigative techniques, making it considerably more difficult to initiate intrusive forms of surveillance." The Levi guidelines didn't end all political spying -- in the 1980s, the FBI targeted the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador, or CISPES. As the ACLU reports, "Strong evidence suggests that CISPES was targeted for investigation because of its ideological opposition to then-President Reagan's already controversial foreign policy in Latin America. The FBI persisted in an intensive six-month investigation of CISPES in which it often reported the group's activities to the Department of Justice in a prejudicial and biased manner." Yet most civil libertarians believe that even if the rules were occasionally broken, they still worked to protect First Amendment rights. Contrary to the claims made by defenders of Bush administration policies, the Levi guidelines would not have impeded an investigation of al-Qaida. As Cunningham points out, cases "with suspected ties to 'foreign powers' were not subject to this criminal standard." Nevertheless, after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued new rules gutting the Levi guidelines. Thanks to Ashcroft, FBI agents are now allowed to monitor public meetings even if they don't have any reason to suspect that there's any criminal activity being committed or planned. "Now, that means if there is a rally of people who are criticizing the United States and its policies and saying that the United States will someday perhaps be destroyed because of that, the FBI agent can go and listen to what's being said," Ashcroft told CNN's Larry King in May of 2002. In other words, merely arguing that U.S. policies may result in the country's destruction justifies FBI snooping. This gives the FBI investigative license far beyond even that it enjoyed during the COINTELPRO period, let alone under the Levi Guidelines. There's no way to know how often the FBI is actually monitoring protesters. The cases that have come to light so far have involved local police officers, not federal agents, and in most instances it's unclear whether they've been working in concert with the FBI. For example, last year in Fresno, the antiwar group Peace Fresno discovered they'd been infiltrated when an undercover cop who'd been attending their meetings was killed in a motorcycle accident. When his obituary was published, members of Peace Fresno realized that the man they knew as Aaron Stokes was really Aaron Kilner, a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's Department's anti-terrorism unit. There is a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Fresno, but members of Peace Fresno and their lawyers have not yet been able to find out whether Kilner was spying on them for the FBI, and whether he gave the FBI any information about their activities. Not that there's much information to give. "This is a group that passes petitions and goes to city council meetings," says Nicholas DeGraff, a Peace Fresno organizer. "When we have a demonstration, we call the police ahead of time." The group, he says, is made up of "retirees, grandparents, schoolteachers and community workers. Your model citizens just participating in democracy." The group has around 200 people on its membership roster, says DeGraff, with an active core of about 25 people. In early 2003, Kilner paid a $12 membership fee and joined them. He told the group that he didn't work and lived off an inheritance. In the weeks before the war in Iraq, he came to meetings and participated in the weekly demonstrations Peace Fresno held at a local intersection. He said little, DeGraff recalls, and never volunteered to do anything beyond passing out flyers. Most of the time, says DeGraff, he sat in a corner and took notes. Even after the war, he kept coming, showing up at meetings every few weeks. When the group went to Sacramento to protest at a WTO ministerial meeting in June, he went with them. He died in August. Peace Fresno has since been assured by the Fresno Sheriff's Department that it is not under investigation and has never been under investigation. That may be true in some bureaucratic sense, but the fact remains that an anti-terrorism agent spent half a year surveilling them. "It's equating dissent with terrorism," says DeGraff. "It's saying if you dissent, you're a terrorist." In fact, that's exactly what some law enforcement officers have said. On April 2 of last year, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, which is under the auspices of the state Justice Department but whose regional task forces include FBI agents, issued a bulletin warning to police about potential violence at an antiwar protest scheduled for the Port of Oakland. An Oakland Tribune investigation found that the Anti-Terrorism Information Center had little substantive information regarding possible violence. "Intelligence records released under open-government laws reveal the thinking of CATIC and Oakland intelligence officials in the days leading up to the protest," said a June 1 story by Ian Hoffman, Sean Holstege and Josh Richman. The agencies, they wrote, "blended solid facts, innuendo and inaccurate information about anti-war protesters expected at the port." The protest did in fact turn violent, but according to documentary evidence the violence was precipitated by the police, who fired on demonstrators with wooden bullets and beanbags. The Tribune reported that, according to videotapes and transcripts of radio transmissions of the event, there's no evidence of "protesters throwing objects at police or engaging in civil disobedience until 20 minutes after police opened fire." So why was the warning issued in the first place? In an interview with the Tribune, Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, issued a remarkably broad definition of terrorism. "You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest," he said. "You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." This egregious statement, in which a law enforcement representative takes it upon himself to judge the legitimacy of democratic protest, seems to confirm the worst fears of civil libertarians that Bush's "war against terror" is actually a war against dissent. Of course, whether Van Winkle actually believes that antiwar protesters are as dangerous to the citizens of California as al-Qaida is impossible to say. But it's not just rhetorical excess or fascistic impulses that lead officials to speak of demonstrators as terrorists. They may actually have a bureaucratic and financial incentive to do so. "This is a good way for police officers to get terrorism points," says Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the ACLU . "They have to justify the dollars they're receiving from the federal government for homeland security. We've seen a massive inflation of terrorism statistics on the federal level. Every Arab who has a phony drivers license is now called a terrorist by the Justice Department, so they can say, 'We've arrested thousands of terrorists.' "This is the perfect example of not learning the lessons of 9/11," he continues. "The FBI was not sufficiently focused on the possibility that a group like al-Qaida would commit a serious terrorist attack. One real failure since 9/11 is that, when they call everything a 'terrorist,' they're still not sufficiently focused on actual terrorists. There's an overbroad definition of domestic terrorism in the PATRIOT Act, and it's had a spillover effect into state and local governments who want to justify their antiterrorism funding and mission." In a Nation article from May 2002, Robert Dreyfuss wrote of that spillover effect. The Justice Department, he reported, had offered billions of dollars in anti-terror subsidies to local governments, but first they had to show that there were "potential threat elements" in their area. "Under the Justice Department program each state was asked to conduct a county-by-county assessment of potential terrorist threats in order to qualify for the federal largesse," Dreyfuss wrote. "In each city and county local police were required to identify up to fifteen groups or individuals called potential threat elements (PTEs). The Justice Department helpfully points out that the motivations of the PTEs could be 'political, religious, racial, environmental [or] special interest.' At a stroke, the Justice Department prompted 17,000 state and local police departments to begin monitoring radicals." Thus even if the FBI isn't working directly with local police to spy on protesters, the messages coming from the Justice Department influence the agencies below, says Edgar. "The Ashcroft Justice Department has set a terrible example," he says. "They're sending the wrong message around the country to the state and local police. Local and state police will follow the FBI's example on a lot of things. On top of that, add big grants for homeland security and you've got a recipe for a lot more political spying." This is the first of two parts. Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/11/cointelpro/ ) Copyright 2003 by YourSITE.com _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[silk] A new Social Communication Network: Bellster
by Udhay Shankar N 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

What a cool idea! I wonder if there's a business model or two lurking in here... Udhay >this is an amazing extension of the idea initially implemented by >tpc.int. While I can't afford to give up any of my phone lines, getting a >third line just for this purpose is not a bad idea. Especially when it >would be irritating as hell to the phone company. > >One could use Internet technology to reimplement 1960s Soviet/Third World >country phone use enabling people from all over the world queue up to use >a telephone. > >---eric > > >-------- Original Message -------- >Subject: [FWD] A new Social Communication Network: Bellster >Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 08:42:28 -0500 >From: Jeff Pulver <jeff(a)pulver.com> >Reply-To: Free World Dialup - The Future of Dialing ><FWD(a)LISTSERV.PULVER.COM> >To: FWD(a)LISTSERV.PULVER.COM > >Hi All, > >Back in the Fall of 1995, with the help of some friends, Free World Dialup >(FWD) version 1.0 happened. The original concept was to setup a computer, >modem and let a friend (or a stranger) place a call over the internet via >your computer. This was done on an experimental, non-commercial, voluntary >basis and we had quite a number of people who contributed their own time, >effort and energy to make it work. FWD was the world's first internet >telephony network and was a pioneer in the field of PC to Phone >communication services. > >Back in November 2000 I once again looked at re-creating the spirit of the >original FWD project but this time we tried to do it using the broadband >internet. After several months of work we were able to get the underlying >software to work pretty good, but our project became challenged once the >hardware devices we optimized the software for, the Cisco ATA-182 were >discontinued. We were live in beta in April 2001 when CNET ran the story: >Can a peer-to-peer phone network fly? (see: ><http://news.com.com/2100-1033-253297.html?legacy=cnet>). > >Fast forward to January, 2005 and with the beta launch of Bellster.net we >are finally able to offer a peer-to-peer network where members of the >network can share their PSTN access with each other. This "network" will >only become a network once there is a critical mass number of people who >are contributing to the success of Bellster. > >Bellster is based on a couple of underlying philosophies: > >(1) "If you Build it They will Come" -- Field of Dreams >(2) "The Love you Take is equal to the Love you Make" -- Beatles, "The >End" > >The Bellster challenge for 2005 is to find out whether or not there are >still people in the world who would let total strangers place >non-commercial phone calls for free in exchange for the ability to do the >same thing themselves. At the moment we have a handful of active nodes >around the world, and as the word of Bellster spreads, my hope is that our >network will be able to deliver calls to the PSTN all around the world. > >Bellster is based on Asterisk and operates as an IAX exchange. > >If you are interested in experimenting with Asterisk and would like to >contribute to the Bellster Social Communication Network, please feel free >to visit www.bellster.net for more information and sign up today. > >Best regards, > > Jeff > >_____________________________________________________________ >List Archives: (http://listserv.pulver.com/archives/fwd.html) >Unsubscribe: (http://tinyurl.com/mg1m) > >-- -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[FoRK] Outlawing dissent: COINTELPRO resurgence
by jbone＠place.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

There was a recent NOW bit re: trends in domestic spying... prompted me to hunt around a bit, found this --- essentially the same gist. I love it: the Quakers (American Friends Service Committee) --- a "criminal extremist" group. Well, hell yeah, that damned philosophy of "perfect silence" is criminally annoying. ;-) -- http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_5102.shtml From AxisofLogic.com Civil Rights/Human Rights Outlawing dissent: Spying on peace meetings, cracking down on protesters, keeping secret files on innocent people -- how Bush's war on terror has become a war on freedom By Michelle Goldberg Feb 12, 2004, 10:07 News A sting-ball grenade thrown by Oakland police, foreground, explodes over running protesters during an antiwar protest in Oakland, Calif., April 7, 2003. February 11, 2004-The undercover cop introduced herself to the activists from the Colorado Coalition Against the War in Iraq as Chris Hoffman, but her real name was Chris Hurley. Last March, she arrived at a nonviolence training session in Denver, along with another undercover officer, Brad Wanchisen, whom she introduced as her boyfriend. The session, held at the Escuela Tlatelolco, a Denver private school, was organized to prepare activists for a sit-in at the Buckley Air National Guard Base the next day, March 15. Hurley said she wanted to participate. She said she was willing to get arrested for the cause of peace. In fact, she did get arrested. She was just never charged. The activists she protested with wouldn't find out why for months. Chris Hurley was just one of many cops all over the country who went undercover to spy on antiwar protesters last year. Nonviolent antiwar groups in Fresno, Calif., Grand Rapids, Mich., and Albuquerque, N.M., have all been infiltrated or surveilled by undercover police officers. Shortly after the Buckley protest, the Boulder group was infiltrated a second time, by another pair of police posing as an activist couple. Meanwhile, protesters arrested at antiwar demonstrations in New York last spring were extensively questioned about their political associations, and their answers were entered into databases. And last week, a federal prosecutor in Des Moines, Iowa, obtained a subpoena demanding that Drake University turn over records from an antiwar conference called "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!" that the school's chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a civil libertarian legal group, hosted on Nov. 15 of last year, the day before a protest at the Iowa National Guard headquarters. Among the information the government sought was the names of the leaders of the Drake University Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, its records dating back to January of 2002, and the names of everyone who attended the "Stop the Occupation!" conference. Four antiwar activists also received subpoenas in the investigation. On Tuesday, after a national outcry, the U.S. Attorney's Office canceled the subpoenas. Still, says Bruce Nestor, a former president of the National Lawyers Guild who is serving as the Drake chapter's attorney, "We're concerned that some type of investigation is ongoing." In the early 1970s, after the exposure of COINTELPRO, a program of widespread FBI surveillance and sabotage of political dissidents, reforms were put in place to prevent the government from spying on political groups when there was no suspicion of criminal activity. But once again, protesters throughout America are being watched, often by police who are supposed to be investigating terrorism. Civil disobedience, seen during peaceful times as the honorable legacy of heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., is being treated as terrorism's cousin, and the government claims to be justified in infiltrating any meeting where it's even discussed. It's too early to tell if America is entering a repeat of the COINTELPRO era. But Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Law in Manhattan, says, "There are certainly enough warning signs out there that we may be." As a new round of protests approaches -- including worldwide antiwar demonstrations on March 20 and massive anti-Bush actions during the Republican National Convention in August and September -- experts say the surveillance is likely to increase. "The government is taking an increasingly hostile stance toward protesters," says Michael Avery, president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor of constitutional law at Suffolk University. In the run-up to the Republican Convention, he says, "I'm sure the government will be attempting to infiltrate political groups. They may send agent provocateurs into political groups. They're no doubt compiling reports on people. We have to stand up against that." No one knows the extent of the political spying and profiling currently being carried out against critics of the Bush administration and American foreign policy -- which may be the most disturbing thing about the entire phenomenon. "Presumably if they're doing their jobs well, we'll never know," says Fogel. Activists have also been unsuccessful at finding out why they're being watched, and under whose authority. What we do know, though, is that several of the police departments that have been accused of spying on protesters -- including the Aurora, Colo., Police Department, where Hurley works -- are part of Joint Terrorism Task Forces. These are programs in which local police are assigned to work full-time with FBI agents and other federal agents "to investigate and prevent acts of terrorism," as the FBI's Web site says. According to the FBI, such JTTFs have been around since 1980, but the total number has almost doubled since Sept. 11, 2001, to 66. A Polk County deputy sheriff assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force served the subpoenas in Iowa. According to Nestor, the deputy sheriff even handed out business cards that identified him as part of the JTTF. On Monday, though, after what Nestor describes as a "tremendous public reaction" following news reports of the JTTF's involvement, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Des Moines issued a written statement denying that the investigation was being conducted by the task force. The U.S. Attorney's Office confirms that the investigation is a collaboration between the FBI, the Polk County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office -- all of whom, Nestor notes, serve on the JTTF. It focuses on a case of misdemeanor trespassing on government property that took place on Nov. 16, near the antiwar protest. According to Nestor, the case involves someone who "walked up to a closed gate" outside the National Guard's armory, "had a conversation with the guards and got charged with trespassing." The police and FBI are now investigating whether people at the antiwar conference entered into some kind of conspiracy to break the law -- in other words, whether they planned acts of civil disobedience. "They appear to be taking the stance that if any individual, as part of or in relation to a protest, commits an act that might be a violation of federal law, that they can subpoena and investigate any records of any meeting that person may have gone to in the days or even months proceeding," says Nestor. Avery suggests that such investigations will have a chilling effect on the planning for future protests. "The risk is that if there's some kind of demonstration or protest activity that involves trespassing, [the JTTF] is saying they can ask people what political meetings have you been to lately, who was there, what did you talk about," says Avery. "People are allowed to meet and talk and debate political issues without being spied on by the government." At least, they used to be. Whether or not a Joint Terrorism Task Force was behind the Iowa investigation, JTTFs have already been implicated in political spying. In a three-ring binder from the Denver Police Department Intelligence Unit obtained by the Colorado ACLU, a section labeled "Colorado and Local Links: JTTF Active Case List" contained printouts made in April 2002 from the Web sites of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, American Friends Service Committee, Denver Justice and Peace Committee and the Rocky Mountain Independent Media Center. One of the printouts, a copy of which is available on the ACLU's Web site, is the American Friends Service Committee's calendar of upcoming antiwar events. Last November, the New York Times revealed a leaked FBI memo asking local police to report protest activity to their local Joint Terrorism Task Force. The bulletin, sent to law enforcement agencies on Oct. 15, 2003, warned about antiwar protests planned for Oct. 25, saying, "While the FBI possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are being planned as part of these protests, the possibility exists that elements of the activist community may attempt to engage in violent, destructive, or dangerous acts." The bulletin went on to list common protest methods including marches and sit-ins, as well as "aggressive tactics" used by "extremist elements," including vandalism, trespassing, physical harassment, formation of human chains and the use of weapons. "Even the more peaceful techniques can create a climate of disorder, block access to a site, draw large numbers of police officers to a specific location in order to weaken security at other locations, obstruct traffic, and possibly intimidate people from attending the events being protested," it warned. It ended by saying, "Law enforcement agencies should be alert to these possible indications of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force." The Colorado activists who attended nonviolence training with Chris Hurley remember her as shy and timid. She didn't arouse suspicion at either the training session, where people practiced staying calm even when confronted by aggressive police, or the next day, when she showed up at the demonstration. On March 15, around 300 people protested near the Buckley base, but only 18 (not including Hurley) engaged in civil disobedience by sitting in the road and blocking the base's entrance. The action was no secret -- the Colorado Coalition Against the War had informed police of what it intended to do in advance. "We always have a police liaison when we have a civil disobedience," says participant Terry Leichner, a 54-year-old psychiatric social worker and veteran activist. "We always work with police so there's no violence." The Aurora Police Department doesn't deny that the activists told them exactly what they planned to do. Indeed, they use that fact as a rationale for infiltrating the group. "Prior to the actual protest, this group came to the police department and told us they were going to conduct criminal acts in our city," says Kathleen Walsh, the Aurora Police Department's public information officer. "We have a responsibility to the citizens of Aurora to investigate." Walsh insists that the activists' willingness to tell the police their plans didn't mitigate the need to spy on the group. "Can you guarantee me that people don't lie to police?" she said. Walsh asked that further questions -- including those about Hurley's connection to counterterrorism investigations -- be submitted in writing. She has yet to answer them. Having been warned in advance, the police arrived quickly to remove the Buckley demonstrators. They wore riot gear, but didn't need it -- the protesters, including Hurley, were arrested without incident, and the whole thing was over in an hour. All 19 arrestees were taken to a holding cell, where the activists say Hurley seemed nervous. Nancy Peters, a 56-year-old protest organizer, recalls trying to comfort her, but Hurley didn't say much. While the rest of the group exchanged stories, Leichner says, Hurley was "noncommittal." When they were released, she didn't attend a meeting the activists had to plan legal strategy, but according to Peters, she asked to be kept informed. None of the activists found out that Hurley was an Aurora police officer until the discovery phase of their trials last spring. By then, though, their lawyers had reason to be suspicious. A month after the Buckley protest, the Colorado Coalition was infiltrated again, by an undercover officer from the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, which is also part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force. This time, the group realized something was up. On April 14, the activists planned to meet with Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, a supporter of the war, and ask him to present a "peace resolution" to Congress. Several of the activists planned to refuse to leave his office unless he acceded to their demands, which no one expected him to do. Peters, who was arrested at Buckley, was one of the organizers of the Allard action and was going to be on hand to bail out activists taken to jail. Again, the Colorado Coalition held a nonviolence training session the day before for those planning to be arrested. Peters remembers unloading her car outside the church where the training was held when she saw a couple walking by, looking like they were "killing time" before finally going inside. The man, a muscular guy who looked to be in his 30s, introduced himself as Chris Taylor and said the woman with him was his girlfriend. In fact, his name was Darren Christensen and he was an undercover officer, as was Liesl McArthur, the woman he was with. As the Rocky Mountain News reported in December, much of his usual undercover work involved "being solicited on line for deviant sex." Unlike Hurley, Christensen immediately made the activists nervous. "A couple of people from the group came up and said, 'Who are they? Do you know them from any other events?'" says Peters. "He was pumping for information, asking questions about whether there was a group that was more radical and had a different focus, more like the black bloc or the anarchists." At the time, though, it didn't occur to anyone that the police would be interested in spying on them. So they let Christensen participate, even after he made what Peters thought was an outlandish suggestion. "It was in the evening when we were trying to figure out our general plan," she says. "We didn't know whether the police would be blocking the entrance to Allard's office." They were discussing whether the six people planning the sit-in should go in as a group, or one by one, in order to evade attention. "[Christensen] said, 'Look, why don't we just walk right through their line?' We were like, whoa, nobody wants to get their heads blown off," says Peters. "We are peaceful, nonviolent group. We're not trying to storm a building." The next day, the group met beforehand to coordinate. Everyone who planned to get arrested gave Peters bond money, except for Christensen, who said his girlfriend would bail him out. The six entered Allard's office at 1 p.m., and by 5 p.m. they'd all been arrested. "I raced over to the jail," says Peters. "There were several people there, including his 'girlfriend.' I was trying to find out who'd been booked and what their bail was, but none had been put into the system yet." Peters was standing in the jailhouse lobby and talking on a pay phone when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Christensen walking out the door. "He had a phony story about how his girlfriend got him out," she says. "I asked, 'Can I see your summons?' He didn't have one." Peters passed her concerns on to her group's pro bono defense attorneys, who soon found that although six people had been arrested, only five had been charged. Then, while reviewing the Buckley case, they noticed that while 19 people had been arrested there, only 18 were charged. Eventually, by subpoenaing police records, the attorneys figured out that police had sent the undercover agents to infiltrate the group. Once exposed, Hurley turned up in court to watch the protesters' trials. "When she came to court, she just seemed so arrogant," says Ellen Stark, a 57-year-old preschool teacher who is part of the group arrested at Buckely. "She was not at all apologetic about her activities and the fact that she had lied to us. She just looked at us with disdain." None of the activists have been able to get any answers from officials about why they were being watched. "I couldn't interest anybody on the Aurora City council to even meet with me," says Stark. "Nobody would talk to me." America has seen this kind of thing before. Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover ran COINTELPRO, a program of surveillance and sabotage against political dissidents. COINTELPRO watched violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and, later, the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers, but it also spied on and harassed thousands of innocent people, including Martin Luther King Jr. COINTELPRO's abuses came to light in 1971, when a group of activists calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, Penn., and stole several hundred pages of files. In his recent history of COINTELPRO, "There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan and FBI Counterintelligence," David Cunningham writes, "These files provided the first public disclosure of a range of Bureau activities against targets such as the Black Panther Party, the Venceremos Brigade, the Philadelphia Labor Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and college students with 'revolutionary' leanings." Eventually, damaging revelations about COINTELPRO led the FBI to adopt reforms designed to prevent a repeat of Hoover's excesses. Attorney General Edward Levi laid out a set of standards for FBI domestic surveillance. "These so-called Levi Guidelines clearly laid out the criteria required for initiated investigations, establishing a standard of suspected criminal conduct, meaning activity (rather than merely ideas or writings, which had been adequate cause for targeting groups and individuals as subversive during the COINTELPRO era)," Cunningham writes. "The guidelines also stipulated as acceptable only particular investigative techniques, making it considerably more difficult to initiate intrusive forms of surveillance." The Levi guidelines didn't end all political spying -- in the 1980s, the FBI targeted the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador, or CISPES. As the ACLU reports, "Strong evidence suggests that CISPES was targeted for investigation because of its ideological opposition to then-President Reagan's already controversial foreign policy in Latin America. The FBI persisted in an intensive six-month investigation of CISPES in which it often reported the group's activities to the Department of Justice in a prejudicial and biased manner." Yet most civil libertarians believe that even if the rules were occasionally broken, they still worked to protect First Amendment rights. Contrary to the claims made by defenders of Bush administration policies, the Levi guidelines would not have impeded an investigation of al-Qaida. As Cunningham points out, cases "with suspected ties to 'foreign powers' were not subject to this criminal standard." Nevertheless, after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued new rules gutting the Levi guidelines. Thanks to Ashcroft, FBI agents are now allowed to monitor public meetings even if they don't have any reason to suspect that there's any criminal activity being committed or planned. "Now, that means if there is a rally of people who are criticizing the United States and its policies and saying that the United States will someday perhaps be destroyed because of that, the FBI agent can go and listen to what's being said," Ashcroft told CNN's Larry King in May of 2002. In other words, merely arguing that U.S. policies may result in the country's destruction justifies FBI snooping. This gives the FBI investigative license far beyond even that it enjoyed during the COINTELPRO period, let alone under the Levi Guidelines. There's no way to know how often the FBI is actually monitoring protesters. The cases that have come to light so far have involved local police officers, not federal agents, and in most instances it's unclear whether they've been working in concert with the FBI. For example, last year in Fresno, the antiwar group Peace Fresno discovered they'd been infiltrated when an undercover cop who'd been attending their meetings was killed in a motorcycle accident. When his obituary was published, members of Peace Fresno realized that the man they knew as Aaron Stokes was really Aaron Kilner, a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's Department's anti-terrorism unit. There is a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Fresno, but members of Peace Fresno and their lawyers have not yet been able to find out whether Kilner was spying on them for the FBI, and whether he gave the FBI any information about their activities. Not that there's much information to give. "This is a group that passes petitions and goes to city council meetings," says Nicholas DeGraff, a Peace Fresno organizer. "When we have a demonstration, we call the police ahead of time." The group, he says, is made up of "retirees, grandparents, schoolteachers and community workers. Your model citizens just participating in democracy." The group has around 200 people on its membership roster, says DeGraff, with an active core of about 25 people. In early 2003, Kilner paid a $12 membership fee and joined them. He told the group that he didn't work and lived off an inheritance. In the weeks before the war in Iraq, he came to meetings and participated in the weekly demonstrations Peace Fresno held at a local intersection. He said little, DeGraff recalls, and never volunteered to do anything beyond passing out flyers. Most of the time, says DeGraff, he sat in a corner and took notes. Even after the war, he kept coming, showing up at meetings every few weeks. When the group went to Sacramento to protest at a WTO ministerial meeting in June, he went with them. He died in August. Peace Fresno has since been assured by the Fresno Sheriff's Department that it is not under investigation and has never been under investigation. That may be true in some bureaucratic sense, but the fact remains that an anti-terrorism agent spent half a year surveilling them. "It's equating dissent with terrorism," says DeGraff. "It's saying if you dissent, you're a terrorist." In fact, that's exactly what some law enforcement officers have said. On April 2 of last year, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, which is under the auspices of the state Justice Department but whose regional task forces include FBI agents, issued a bulletin warning to police about potential violence at an antiwar protest scheduled for the Port of Oakland. An Oakland Tribune investigation found that the Anti-Terrorism Information Center had little substantive information regarding possible violence. "Intelligence records released under open-government laws reveal the thinking of CATIC and Oakland intelligence officials in the days leading up to the protest," said a June 1 story by Ian Hoffman, Sean Holstege and Josh Richman. The agencies, they wrote, "blended solid facts, innuendo and inaccurate information about anti-war protesters expected at the port." The protest did in fact turn violent, but according to documentary evidence the violence was precipitated by the police, who fired on demonstrators with wooden bullets and beanbags. The Tribune reported that, according to videotapes and transcripts of radio transmissions of the event, there's no evidence of "protesters throwing objects at police or engaging in civil disobedience until 20 minutes after police opened fire." So why was the warning issued in the first place? In an interview with the Tribune, Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, issued a remarkably broad definition of terrorism. "You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest," he said. "You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." This egregious statement, in which a law enforcement representative takes it upon himself to judge the legitimacy of democratic protest, seems to confirm the worst fears of civil libertarians that Bush's "war against terror" is actually a war against dissent. Of course, whether Van Winkle actually believes that antiwar protesters are as dangerous to the citizens of California as al-Qaida is impossible to say. But it's not just rhetorical excess or fascistic impulses that lead officials to speak of demonstrators as terrorists. They may actually have a bureaucratic and financial incentive to do so. "This is a good way for police officers to get terrorism points," says Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the ACLU . "They have to justify the dollars they're receiving from the federal government for homeland security. We've seen a massive inflation of terrorism statistics on the federal level. Every Arab who has a phony drivers license is now called a terrorist by the Justice Department, so they can say, 'We've arrested thousands of terrorists.' "This is the perfect example of not learning the lessons of 9/11," he continues. "The FBI was not sufficiently focused on the possibility that a group like al-Qaida would commit a serious terrorist attack. One real failure since 9/11 is that, when they call everything a 'terrorist,' they're still not sufficiently focused on actual terrorists. There's an overbroad definition of domestic terrorism in the PATRIOT Act, and it's had a spillover effect into state and local governments who want to justify their antiterrorism funding and mission." In a Nation article from May 2002, Robert Dreyfuss wrote of that spillover effect. The Justice Department, he reported, had offered billions of dollars in anti-terror subsidies to local governments, but first they had to show that there were "potential threat elements" in their area. "Under the Justice Department program each state was asked to conduct a county-by-county assessment of potential terrorist threats in order to qualify for the federal largesse," Dreyfuss wrote. "In each city and county local police were required to identify up to fifteen groups or individuals called potential threat elements (PTEs). The Justice Department helpfully points out that the motivations of the PTEs could be 'political, religious, racial, environmental [or] special interest.' At a stroke, the Justice Department prompted 17,000 state and local police departments to begin monitoring radicals." Thus even if the FBI isn't working directly with local police to spy on protesters, the messages coming from the Justice Department influence the agencies below, says Edgar. "The Ashcroft Justice Department has set a terrible example," he says. "They're sending the wrong message around the country to the state and local police. Local and state police will follow the FBI's example on a lot of things. On top of that, add big grants for homeland security and you've got a recipe for a lot more political spying." This is the first of two parts. Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/11/cointelpro/ ) Copyright 2003 by YourSITE.com _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[silk] A new Social Communication Network: Bellster
by Udhay Shankar N 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

What a cool idea! I wonder if there's a business model or two lurking in here... Udhay >this is an amazing extension of the idea initially implemented by >tpc.int. While I can't afford to give up any of my phone lines, getting a >third line just for this purpose is not a bad idea. Especially when it >would be irritating as hell to the phone company. > >One could use Internet technology to reimplement 1960s Soviet/Third World >country phone use enabling people from all over the world queue up to use >a telephone. > >---eric > > >-------- Original Message -------- >Subject: [FWD] A new Social Communication Network: Bellster >Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 08:42:28 -0500 >From: Jeff Pulver <jeff(a)pulver.com> >Reply-To: Free World Dialup - The Future of Dialing ><FWD(a)LISTSERV.PULVER.COM> >To: FWD(a)LISTSERV.PULVER.COM > >Hi All, > >Back in the Fall of 1995, with the help of some friends, Free World Dialup >(FWD) version 1.0 happened. The original concept was to setup a computer, >modem and let a friend (or a stranger) place a call over the internet via >your computer. This was done on an experimental, non-commercial, voluntary >basis and we had quite a number of people who contributed their own time, >effort and energy to make it work. FWD was the world's first internet >telephony network and was a pioneer in the field of PC to Phone >communication services. > >Back in November 2000 I once again looked at re-creating the spirit of the >original FWD project but this time we tried to do it using the broadband >internet. After several months of work we were able to get the underlying >software to work pretty good, but our project became challenged once the >hardware devices we optimized the software for, the Cisco ATA-182 were >discontinued. We were live in beta in April 2001 when CNET ran the story: >Can a peer-to-peer phone network fly? (see: ><http://news.com.com/2100-1033-253297.html?legacy=cnet>). > >Fast forward to January, 2005 and with the beta launch of Bellster.net we >are finally able to offer a peer-to-peer network where members of the >network can share their PSTN access with each other. This "network" will >only become a network once there is a critical mass number of people who >are contributing to the success of Bellster. > >Bellster is based on a couple of underlying philosophies: > >(1) "If you Build it They will Come" -- Field of Dreams >(2) "The Love you Take is equal to the Love you Make" -- Beatles, "The >End" > >The Bellster challenge for 2005 is to find out whether or not there are >still people in the world who would let total strangers place >non-commercial phone calls for free in exchange for the ability to do the >same thing themselves. At the moment we have a handful of active nodes >around the world, and as the word of Bellster spreads, my hope is that our >network will be able to deliver calls to the PSTN all around the world. > >Bellster is based on Asterisk and operates as an IAX exchange. > >If you are interested in experimenting with Asterisk and would like to >contribute to the Bellster Social Communication Network, please feel free >to visit www.bellster.net for more information and sign up today. > >Best regards, > > Jeff > >_____________________________________________________________ >List Archives: (http://listserv.pulver.com/archives/fwd.html) >Unsubscribe: (http://tinyurl.com/mg1m) > >-- -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[liberationtech] Planet Blue Coat: Mapping Global Censorship and Surveillance Tools
by Ronald Deibert 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dear Lib Tech colleagues I am pleased to announce the Citizen Lab's latest report: Planet Blue Coat: Mapping Global Censorship and Surveillance Tools January 15, 2013 The following individuals contributed to this report: Morgan Marquis-Boire (lead technical research) and Jakub Dalek (lead technical research), Sarah McKune (lead legal research), Matthew Carrieri, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Ron Deibert, Saad Khan, Marianne Lau, Helmi Noman, John Scott-Railton, and Greg Wiseman. Full report and details here: https://citizenlab.org/planetbluecoat New York Times report here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/business/rights-group-reports-on-abuses-o… Summary of Key Findings b" Blue Coat Devices capable of filtering, censorship, and surveillance are being used around the world. During several weeks of scanning and validation that ended in January 2013, we uncovered 61 Blue Coat ProxySG devices and 316 Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances, devices with specific functionality permitting filtering, censorship, and surveillance. b" 61 of these Blue Coat appliances are on public or government networks in countries with a history of concerns over human rights, surveillance, and censorship (11 ProxySG and 50 PacketShaper appliances). We found: b" Blue Coat ProxySG: Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. b" PacketShaper: Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. b" Our findings support the need for national and international scrutiny of the country Blue Coat implementations we have identified, and a closer look at the global proliferation of b dual-useb information and communications technologies. ISPs responsible for these deployments should consider publicly clarifying their function, and we hope Blue Coat will take this report as an opportunity to explain their due diligence process to ensure that their devices are not used in ways that violate human rights. Ronald Deibert Director, the Citizen Lab and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies Munk School of Global Affairs University of Toronto (416) 946-8916 PGP: http://deibert.citizenlab.org/pubkey.txt http://deibert.citizenlab.org/ twitter.com/citizenlab r.deibert(a)utoronto.ca -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[tt] Power Blogging Tips: The Grip Of Internet Censorship Is Tightening Worldwide
by Premise Checker 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

The Grip Of Internet Censorship Is Tightening Worldwide http://powerbloggingtips.blogspot.com/2009/01/grip-of-internet-censorship-i… Governments around the world have gotten a taste for internet censorship and they like it. Through the use of mandatory filters and new "cybercrime laws", internet freedom is being crushed around the world like never before. *In February, New Zealand will implement Section 92 of their Copyright Amendment Act which allows the government [26]to immediately disconnect someone from the internet if they are even accused of illegal file sharing. *The new mandatory internet filter being imposed on the people of Australia is so restrictive that it is being called [27]"The Great Firewall of Australia". *In China, the new year [28]has brought a severe crackdown on websites and search engines that offer material that the Chinese government decides is "too vulgar" or "too subversive" for the Chinese people to see. *Internet activists in Thailand are getting increasingly upset by efforts of that government [29]to censor the internet in that country. *A new set of laws in India [30]is so brutal that it will allow a government official to break in to someone's home to check if they were surfing porn, and it will allow the government of India to block any website they want for any reason. The internet has truly been one of the greatest advances in communication in the history of the world. For the past few years, we all have experienced an era of unlimited, high speed internet with the freedom to say almost anything we have wanted to. It has been a golden age for the internet, but every golden age ends, and the golden age of the internet is now being crushed by repressive governments all over the globe. So will we see such restrictive measures in the United States soon? While such repressive measures as a mandatory filter have not been imposed yet, we have been seeing more limits and restrictions on internet usage. Many of these subtle restrictions are very quietly being put into place..... On November 1st, AT&T, the largest U.S. Internet provider, [31]began testing limits that would curb internet usage for customers whose video and music downloads are flooding their network. Are fundamental changes to our beloved internet on the horizon? Are we about to face increased restrictions regarding what we can say on the internet even in the U.S.? Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions is very clearly yes, and the following are ten reasons why the golden age of the internet is ending: #1) Once one or two large internet providers get away with putting a cap on internet use all of the other providers will follow very quickly. [32]Now that Comcast has announced a hard cap on internet use, it is only a matter of time until more internet providers follow suit. #2) Bandwidth is very expensive. With the explosion of online gaming and the massive increase of internet users downloading video and music files, there has been a huge increase in the average bandwidth utilized by the average consumer. Bandwidth costs money, and those costs have to be passed on to the consumer somehow. #3) There has never been a greater information tool than the internet in the history of the world. The free flow of information that has resulted has given a lot of power to the people of the world. Many governments around the world, including the Western establishment, do not like this one bit. Increased censorship and other types of "internet reform" are being introduced in order to curtail our freedom of speech to a more acceptable level. #4) Greed. Every single day health insurance companies deny healthcare to sick people in the United States and they make billions of dollars doing it. Why? Because they can. Now that we have all become addicted to the internet do you think internet providers will not get greedy? The reality is that they already are getting greedy. #5) This is all part of the plan to transition us over to Internet 2, which will be much more heavily restricted and controlled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2 #6) Canada's new internet subscription model appeals to a lot of powerful interests. What some internet providers in Canada are getting ready to do is to provide internet service on a subscription model similar to how cable television service is provided. In other words, your "package" will include 400 or 500 of the top websites, and if you want more than that you will have to pay for it: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/commentary_news/2008/07/death-of-free-inter… #7) Up until now, the internet has largely avoided taxation. However, with governments increasingly looking at significant shortfalls, it is only a matter of time before some politicians look at the internet as a great source of tax revenue. #8) The world is heading for incredibly difficult economic times, and when the economy crashes you won't get anything "for free". If you doubt that the economy is headed for a crash then you really need to read this article: http://themoralcollapseofamerica.blogspot.com/2008/08/10-trillion-debt-mean… #9) Giant media companies are sick and tired of giving away their media for free. Huge newspapers are going broke, movie companies are losing revenue, news organizations have lost control over the flow of information and the "small guy" is finding a way to carve out a bigger piece of the pie. Giant media organizations desperately want their power and control back. #10) Most people in modern society are sheep, and they will pay whatever someone tells them to pay, and they will passively accept whatever controls and restrictions are put on them without even a whimper. Hopefully this last point is wrong and more people will stand up and will have the backbone to fight for the future of the internet. References 26. http://torrentfreak.com/campaign-to-stop-file-sharers-being-guilty-upon-acc… 27. http://www.inquisitr.com/12909/great-firewall-of-australia-whats-not-mentio… 28. http://www.moneymorning.com/2009/01/05/china-internet-censorship/ 29. http://www.upiasia.com/Human_Rights/2009/01/08/censorship_and_madness_in_th… 30. http://www.countercurrents.org/karun020109.htm 31. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aoDISWH.TEak&refer=us 32. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5689480&page=1 _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt(a)postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[tt] Power Blogging Tips: The Grip Of Internet Censorship Is Tightening Worldwide
by Premise Checker 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

The Grip Of Internet Censorship Is Tightening Worldwide http://powerbloggingtips.blogspot.com/2009/01/grip-of-internet-censorship-i… Governments around the world have gotten a taste for internet censorship and they like it. Through the use of mandatory filters and new "cybercrime laws", internet freedom is being crushed around the world like never before. *In February, New Zealand will implement Section 92 of their Copyright Amendment Act which allows the government [26]to immediately disconnect someone from the internet if they are even accused of illegal file sharing. *The new mandatory internet filter being imposed on the people of Australia is so restrictive that it is being called [27]"The Great Firewall of Australia". *In China, the new year [28]has brought a severe crackdown on websites and search engines that offer material that the Chinese government decides is "too vulgar" or "too subversive" for the Chinese people to see. *Internet activists in Thailand are getting increasingly upset by efforts of that government [29]to censor the internet in that country. *A new set of laws in India [30]is so brutal that it will allow a government official to break in to someone's home to check if they were surfing porn, and it will allow the government of India to block any website they want for any reason. The internet has truly been one of the greatest advances in communication in the history of the world. For the past few years, we all have experienced an era of unlimited, high speed internet with the freedom to say almost anything we have wanted to. It has been a golden age for the internet, but every golden age ends, and the golden age of the internet is now being crushed by repressive governments all over the globe. So will we see such restrictive measures in the United States soon? While such repressive measures as a mandatory filter have not been imposed yet, we have been seeing more limits and restrictions on internet usage. Many of these subtle restrictions are very quietly being put into place..... On November 1st, AT&T, the largest U.S. Internet provider, [31]began testing limits that would curb internet usage for customers whose video and music downloads are flooding their network. Are fundamental changes to our beloved internet on the horizon? Are we about to face increased restrictions regarding what we can say on the internet even in the U.S.? Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions is very clearly yes, and the following are ten reasons why the golden age of the internet is ending: #1) Once one or two large internet providers get away with putting a cap on internet use all of the other providers will follow very quickly. [32]Now that Comcast has announced a hard cap on internet use, it is only a matter of time until more internet providers follow suit. #2) Bandwidth is very expensive. With the explosion of online gaming and the massive increase of internet users downloading video and music files, there has been a huge increase in the average bandwidth utilized by the average consumer. Bandwidth costs money, and those costs have to be passed on to the consumer somehow. #3) There has never been a greater information tool than the internet in the history of the world. The free flow of information that has resulted has given a lot of power to the people of the world. Many governments around the world, including the Western establishment, do not like this one bit. Increased censorship and other types of "internet reform" are being introduced in order to curtail our freedom of speech to a more acceptable level. #4) Greed. Every single day health insurance companies deny healthcare to sick people in the United States and they make billions of dollars doing it. Why? Because they can. Now that we have all become addicted to the internet do you think internet providers will not get greedy? The reality is that they already are getting greedy. #5) This is all part of the plan to transition us over to Internet 2, which will be much more heavily restricted and controlled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2 #6) Canada's new internet subscription model appeals to a lot of powerful interests. What some internet providers in Canada are getting ready to do is to provide internet service on a subscription model similar to how cable television service is provided. In other words, your "package" will include 400 or 500 of the top websites, and if you want more than that you will have to pay for it: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/commentary_news/2008/07/death-of-free-inter… #7) Up until now, the internet has largely avoided taxation. However, with governments increasingly looking at significant shortfalls, it is only a matter of time before some politicians look at the internet as a great source of tax revenue. #8) The world is heading for incredibly difficult economic times, and when the economy crashes you won't get anything "for free". If you doubt that the economy is headed for a crash then you really need to read this article: http://themoralcollapseofamerica.blogspot.com/2008/08/10-trillion-debt-mean… #9) Giant media companies are sick and tired of giving away their media for free. Huge newspapers are going broke, movie companies are losing revenue, news organizations have lost control over the flow of information and the "small guy" is finding a way to carve out a bigger piece of the pie. Giant media organizations desperately want their power and control back. #10) Most people in modern society are sheep, and they will pay whatever someone tells them to pay, and they will passively accept whatever controls and restrictions are put on them without even a whimper. Hopefully this last point is wrong and more people will stand up and will have the backbone to fight for the future of the internet. References 26. http://torrentfreak.com/campaign-to-stop-file-sharers-being-guilty-upon-acc… 27. http://www.inquisitr.com/12909/great-firewall-of-australia-whats-not-mentio… 28. http://www.moneymorning.com/2009/01/05/china-internet-censorship/ 29. http://www.upiasia.com/Human_Rights/2009/01/08/censorship_and_madness_in_th… 30. http://www.countercurrents.org/karun020109.htm 31. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aoDISWH.TEak&refer=us 32. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5689480&page=1 _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt(a)postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [liberationtech] Travel with notebook habit
by liberationtech＠lewman.us 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:51:02 +0100 Jerzy Eogiewa <jerzyma(a)interia.eu> wrote: > Without removing drive, what is the best habit for FDE for prevent > attacks as Schneier describe? Full power-down? No hibernate file? Any > other things? What comes to mind first is the EFF's guide: https://www.eff.org/wp/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-carrying… Or https://ssd.eff.org for a full picture. Jake is somewhat extreme, but not without reason. I wrote up my practices after having the same conversation again and again with people around the world. Slightly less extreme, but here's what I do now, http://wiki.lewman.is/blog/2012-07-14-modern-day-weapons-dealers#how-i-trav… While it's fun to worry about the borders and foreign agents, the real concern is the common criminal walking away with laptops and phones. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x6B4D6475 -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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