Amerika

Rushlimbo

Russia or the United States? Hard to distinguish anymore.
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N.Y. Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention
By JIM DWYER

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.

In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police departments in other cities. A police report on an organization of artists called Bands Against Bush noted that the group was planning concerts on Oct. 11, 2003, in New York, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Between musical sets, the report said, there would be political speeches and videos.

“Activists are showing a well-organized network made up of anti-Bush sentiment; the mixing of music and political rhetoric indicates sophisticated organizing skills with a specific agenda,” said the report, dated Oct. 9, 2003. “Police departments in above listed areas have been contacted regarding this event.”

Police records indicate that in addition to sharing information with other police departments, New York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe.

article continued at link............

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/25infiltrate.html?hp

Alex_Coe

I don't know what to think of this. Hm...

soulsinging

we've got cameras all over chicago.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

23,000+ posts. Holy crap. At a modest 100 characters per post, that's going on over 2.3 million keystrokes.

how many keyboards is that?

chopitdown

soulsinging wrote:

we've got cameras all over chicago.

and then everything can get posted on youtube...forget about the gov't watching you...everyone who has a cell phone has a video camera and can capture, then post, anything at anytime...now that's scary.

Rats of Multa

perhaps the interesting facet of this story is that such surveillance has been directly related to the political operations surrounding the Republican party specifically,..?

i mean, if american gov't intends to be this cautious surrounding all of her political affairs, then that is not necessarily an unjust invasion of privacies,...