Operation Whistle Pig: Inside the secret CBP unit with no rules that investigates AmericansDecember 30, 2021
It was almost 10 p.m. on a Thursday night, and Ali Watkins was walking around the capital following instructions texted by a stranger. One message instructed her to walk through an abandoned parking lot near Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle, and then wait at a laundromat. Then came a final cryptic instruction: She was to enter an unmarked door on Connecticut Avenue leading to a hidden bar.
The Sheppard, an upscale speakeasy, was so dimly lit it was sometimes hard to see the menu, let alone a stranger at the bar. But amid the red velvet upholstery, Watkins, then a reporter at Politico, almost immediately spotted the man she was supposed to meet: He was wearing a corduroy blazer and jeans and had a distinctive gap between his teeth.
lees meer
How the recent CAIR spy scandal unveils an Islamophobic Informant Industrial Complex in US surveillance (2021)December 30, 2021
The recent discovery of two informants within the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reveals one of the most nefarious dimensions of Islamophobic surveillance in the US: the informant industrial complex, writes Khaled A. Beydoun.
This past September marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. It also marked two decades of state-sponsored surveillance that pierced deep into the most intimate spaces of Muslim American life. Students and civic organizations, homes and the very electronic devices lodged within them – and more recently – those we carry in our very palms.
If anything, the past twenty years revealed that surveillance – the enterprise of monitoring people on account of their ethnic or spiritual identity – is the touchstone of structural Islamophobia. The system whereby the state conflates Muslim identity with “terror suspects” and justifies strident measures of policing that violate foundational constitutional safeguards.
lees meer
Informant tells of role in FBI probes (2009)December 30, 2021
Since he was a teen, Craig Monteilh has pretended to be someone he wasn’t – Russian, Muslim, a white supremacist.
It was a skill he learned early, says Monteilh, a 47-year-old Irvine man who, according to court records, provided information to the FBI.
He learned to gain people’s trust – even while pretending to be someone else. It’s a skill that FBI agents and police officers helped him hone, he says. It’s a skill that he sharpened in his role as an informant in several investigations.
First recruited by narcotics investigators in late 2003, Monteilh says he gained the trust of law enforcement officials by giving information on bank robberies, murder-for-hire investigations and cases involving white-supremacist gangs.
lees meer
How the FBI Spied on Orange County Muslims And Attempted to Get Away With It (2021)December 30, 2021
In 2006, the FBI ordered an informant to pose as a Muslim convert and spy on the congregants of several large, diverse mosques in Orange County, California. The agent, Craig Monteilh, professed his conversion before hundreds of congregants during the month of Ramadan. Renaming himself “Farouk,” the informant quickly made friends and impressed members of the community with his seeming devotion. The whole time, he was secretly recording conversations and filming inside people’s homes, mosques, and businesses using devices hidden in everyday objects, like the keychain fob of his car keys.
Among those subjected to FBI spying were Sheik Yassir Fazaga, the imam of the Orange County Islamic Foundation (OCIF), and Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser Abdelrahim, congregants at the Islamic Center of Irvine (ICOI). Together, they sued the FBI in 2011 for unlawfully targeting Muslim community members in violation of their constitutional rights to religious freedom and privacy. The FBI attempted to stop the litigation of the plaintiffs’ religious discrimination claims by arguing that further proceedings could reveal state secrets. After an appeals court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor in 2019, the FBI appealed to the Supreme Court, which will hear the case on Nov. 8.
lees meer
How an FBI informant destroyed the fabric of an entire communityDecember 30, 2021
As the Supreme Court hears the case of three Muslim Americans suing the FBI for spying on them, the trio detail how the operation tore apart their community
During the early 2000s, the Muslim community in Southern California was thriving. While the faith group as a whole was dealing with a deluge of Islamophobic attacks post 9/11, the Muslim community in the suburbs of Los Angeles seemed to be expanding every day.
Soon after the doors of the Islamic Centre of Irvine opened in 2004, it was regularly welcoming around a thousand people for Friday prayers.
“I don’t use this word sanctuary lightly. It was exactly that, a sanctuary. It was literally a place where you can get away from the hustle and bustle of the day to day. You can get away from the media onslaught on Muslims post-9/11 and you can come to a location where you can feel proud and at peace with being Muslim,” Ali Uddin Malik, a member of the community, told Middle East Eye.
lees meer
Post-9/11 surveillance has left a generation of Muslim Americans in a shadow of distrust and fearDecember 30, 2021
Mohamed Bahe tries not to remember the overwhelming pain he felt the night he learned a volunteer with his organization, Muslims Giving Back, was a paid informant for the New York City Police Department.
In 2011, Bahe, a Muslim American whose family came to the U.S. from Algeria, had spent months kickstarting his community volunteer group, focused on feeding the homeless and delivering food to families in need. The group worked with different mosques near where he lived in Queens, and its members were becoming familiar faces in a community that had grown wary of outsiders. The heightened scrutiny of law enforcement on Muslim communities had mosque-goers skeptical of people they had not seen before. Mosques, once the center of social life in a community, had become a quiet place where people felt like a stranger could be an informant or an undercover police officer.
lees meer
Police intelligence officer ‘told to doctor reports’ about terrorism informantDecember 30, 2021
A police intelligence officer fabricated reports about a terrorism informant in a highly classified database after allegedly being instructed to by superiors, The Times has learnt.
The rogue special branch unit, linked with MI5, that the detective constable worked for was disbanded after he retrospectively altered intelligence reports
Phil Moran, a counterterrorism agent handler at British Transport Police (BTP), claimed that he was ordered by his superiors to manipulate information on the National Special Branch Intelligence System to deceive the surveillance watchdog. BTP’s director of intelligence, Detective Superintendent Paul Shrubsole, was dismissed at a secret misconduct hearing and another senior officer retired before disciplinary proceedings were brought. Shrubsole denies any wrongdoing.
lees meer
DECLASSIFIED UK Britain’s secret political policeNovember 1, 2021
A shocking story of how a special squad of Britain’s Metropolitan Police, in collusion with MI5 – the domestic ‘security’ service – secretly infiltrated hundreds of UK political and campaign groups, and the question of whether the spying continues. As told by Asa Winstanley, who has personal experience.
- “The man we’d thought had been our friend had actually been a spy for the state all along”
- Industrial-levels of police infiltration of progressive campaign groups began during anti-Vietnam war movement in 1968
- Metropolitan Police admits for the first time to Declassified that it spied for MI5
- Justice campaigns led by families of people killed in police custody were a particular target of so-called “spycops”. The victims were mostly black men
- Undercover police spied on Labour politicians and nearly every group to party’s left
- Some women, who were tricked into romantic relationships, say it was like being “raped by the state”
- Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter believed to be the most likely targets of current undercover police infiltration
lees meer
Met police ‘tried to recruit ex-officer to spy on climate change activists’November 1, 2021
A former police officer who is now a prominent climate crisis campaigner has accused the Metropolitan police of attempting to recruit him to spy on Extinction Rebellion.
Former detective sergeant Paul Stephens, who joined XR after he retired from the London force in 2018, claims he was approached by an officer he knew near Parliament Square during the group’s campaign of non-violent mass civil disobedience in London in October 2019.
“He asked if I wanted to come on the books – to become a covert human intelligence source [Chis],” Stephens said. “But I turned him down straight away. I joined XR to make those in power do something about climate change, not to spy on peaceful people doing their bit for the planet.”
The Met said it could “neither confirm nor deny any Chis activity in relation to Extinction Rebellion”.
lees meer
The NYPD Paid An Informant To Help A BLM Protester Charged With Sabotaging Police VanNovember 1, 2021
The NYPD sent a paid informant to surveil, befriend and ultimately drive a Black Lives Matter protester to attack a police van last month, according to a new federal complaint unsealed on Wednesday.
The civilian informant — identified in the filing as the NYPD’s “confidential source” — was involved in the arrest of Jeremy Trapp, a 24-year-old Brooklyn man accused of sabotaging an NYPD vehicle.
“At best, Mr. Trapp is unsophisticated and easily susceptible,” his defense attorney, Ashley Burrell, said during his arraignment on Wednesday afternoon.
According to federal prosecutors, Trapp met the NYPD informant outside Brooklyn Criminal Court on July 13th, as protesters gathered to demand the release of individuals arrested during a demonstration in Bay Ridge.
Trapp told the source that he thought cops were racist, that he wanted to harm police, and that he was previously involved in burning an NYPD vehicle, according to the complaint. After exchanging phone numbers, the two arranged to meet in the informant’s car.
lees meer
FBI Tracked an Activist Involved With Black Lives Matter as They Traveled Across the U.S., Documents ShowNovember 1, 2021
Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that the FBI surveilled Black Lives Matter activists — and that the Department of Homeland Security drafted a mysterious “race paper.”
At the height of 2014’s Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, FBI agents tracked the movements of an activist flying in from New York, and appear to have surveilled the homes and cars of individuals somehow tied to the protests, according to recently released documents provided to The Intercept.
The documents, which include FBI emails and intelligence reports from November 2014, suggest that federal surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests went far beyond the online intelligence-gathering first reported on by The Intercept in 2015. That intelligence-gathering by the federal government had employed open-source information, such as social media, to profile and keep track of activists. The newly released documents suggest the FBI put resources toward running informants, as well as physical surveillance of antiracist activists.
The heavily redacted records were obtained by two civil rights groups, Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and are being published here for the first time. Internal communications from Department of Homeland Security officials, released through this lawsuit, also revealed the existence of a document described by DHS officials as the “Race Paper,” which was the subject of a filing by the civil rights groups on Monday.
lees meer
Newly Released Documents Show FBI Used Stakeouts And Informants To Follow Black Lives Matter ActivistsNovember 1, 2021
Newly released documents show that the FBI’s surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement extends far beyond social media, according to The Intercept.
The documents were acquired by two civil rights groups, Color of Change and The Center for Constitutional Rights, through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents reveal that the FBI not only used social media to track the whereabouts of black activists, but they also used informants and stakeouts. One of the emails also mentioned the existence of a document called the “Race Paper.” While the papers don’t specifically mention Black Lives Matter, the inquest that resulted in their release was centered around the movement.
A lot of the content is redacted, but what is available provides an overview of the FBI’s movements during the height of the Black Lives Matter fervor in late 2014.
lees meer
Why Was an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Tracking a Black Lives Matter Protest? Email obtained by The Intercept shows bureau discussion of Mall of America protest and an informant who relayed plans.November 1, 2021
Members of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked the time and location of a Black Lives Matter protest last December at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, email obtained by The Intercept shows.
The email from David S. Langfellow, a St. Paul police officer and member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, informs a fellow task force member from the Bloomington police that “CHS just confirmed the MOA protest I was taking to you about today, for the 20th of DEC @ 1400 hours.” CHS is a law enforcement acronym for “confidential human source.”
Jeffrey VanNest, an FBI special agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor at the FBI’s Minneapolis office, was CC’d on the email. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces are based in 104 U.S. cities and are made up of approximately 4,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The FBI characterizes them as “our nation’s front line on terrorism.”
lees meer
Palestinians are being arrested by Israel for posting on FacebookOctober 11, 2017
Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl
One of the more insidious aspects of Israel’s military dictatorship in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is its blanket monitoring of Palestinian social networks and other forms of communication via the internet. This often leads to arrests being made. A recent report by 7amleh, the Arab Centre for Social Media Advancement, names 21 Palestinians who have been imprisoned or detained by Israel for their posts on Facebook.
An ongoing narrative popular among Israeli propagandists in the past few years blames the nebulous concept of “incitement” for the phenomenon of Palestinians fighting back against Israel’s brutal occupation forces. A Mossad proxy organisation misleadingly known as the “Israel Law Centre” (aka Shurat HaDin) has even launched lawsuits against Facebook for supposedly facilitating terrorism. A US federal court threw the billion-dollar case out in May.
Last year, Israel’s anti-BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) minister Gilad Erdan claimed that Israeli blood was “on the hands of Facebook” and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Shurat HaDin even organised a campaign to raise money for a billboard that would have been erected outside Zuckerberg’s home.
lees meer
Predictive Policing: “Falsches” Facebook-Posting führt in Israel oft zu HaftOctober 11, 2017
Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl
Predictive Policing: “Falsches” Facebook-Posting führt in Israel oft zu Haft
Palästinensische Aktivisten haben rund 800 Fälle dokumentiert, in denen junge Leute in Israel wegen Facebook-Äußerungen festgenommen wurden. Auf der Konferenz von Netzpolitik.org ertönte der Ruf nach einer “Gemeinwohlförderung” von Algorithmen.
Marwa Fatafta vom Arab Center for Social Media Advancement 7amleh hat am Freitag auf der vierten Konferenz von Netzpolitik.org in Berlin ein düsteres Bild von “Predictive Policing” in Israel gezeichnet. Seit Oktober 2015 habe die palästinensische Organisation rund 800 Fälle dokumentiert, in denen junge Leute wegen Facebook-Postings verhaftet worden seien, erklärte die Aktivistin. Die Betroffenen verschwänden oft einfach einige Monate im Gefängnis, ohne dass ihnen ein ordentlicher Prozess gemacht werde.
lees meer
<< oudere artikelen
