by Michael Steinberg
Thursday, May. 29, 2014 at 5:14 AM blackrainpress@hotmail.com (email address validated)
A recent report released detailed a government spy network that was employed to monitor the Occupy movement “hour-to-hour” during 2011.
The Washington DC- based Partnership for Justice Fund today released an investigative report on May 23, “The Hidden Role of Fusion Centers in the Nationwide Spying Operations against the Occupy Movement and Peaceful Protest in America” It took two years to carry out this investigation. Its principal authors are PFJF members Maria Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo.
Fusion Centers, funded by hundred of millions of dollars from the Department of Homeland Security, sprung up across the nation after the 911 attacks. Their mission was ostensibly to fight terrorism. But ten years later they made fighting the Occupy Movement their Number 1 priority.
The report “provides highlights and analysis of how the Department 0f Homeland Security funded Fusion Centers used their vast anti-terrorism and anti-crime authority and funds to conduct a sprawling and nationwide hour-by-hour surveillance effort that targeted even the smallest activity of peaceful protesters in the Occupy Movement in the Fall and Winter of 2011.”
The PFJF obtained 400 pages of unclassified documents through the Freedom of Information Act that “show the communications, interactions and emails of a massive national web of federal agents, officials, police and private ‘security’ contractors to accumulate and share information, reporting on all manner of peaceful and lawful protester activity that took place during the Occupy Movement, from protests and rallies to meetings and educational lectures,” the report stated.
Furthermore, the report continued, “This enormous spying and monitoring apparatus included the Pentagon, FBI, DHS, police departments and chiefs, private contractors, and commercial business interests.
, ”This incontrovertible evidence of systematic and not incidental evidence of conduct and practices of Fusion Centers and their personnel to direct their sights against a peaceful movement that advocated social and economic justice in the US.’
The Partnership for Justice Fund’s Maria Verhayden-Hilliard concluded, “People must have the ability to speak out freely to express dissent without the fear that the government will treat them as enemies of the state.”
The PFJF is organizing a campaign to abolish Fusion Centers.
Today’s report was accompanied by an article about its release in the New York Times. Though the report stressed the peaceful nature of the Occupy Movement, the Times chose to run the following document from the report:
“ December 1, 2011. Police found Punji sticks in the grass at the Occupy San Francisco site, located in Justin Herman Plaza. Punji sticks are described as ‘ a spike made out of wood or bamboo.’ ”
Where They Are
According to the website publicintelligence.net, the following are Fusion Centers in California;
Northern California Regional Intelligent Center, 450 Golden Gate Ave, 14th floor, San Francisco.
Central California Intelligence Center, McClellan
Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center, Silverado
State Terror Threat Center, Mather
San Diego Law Enforcement Coordinating Center, San Diego
California State Threat Assessment Center
Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center, Norwalk
For more information, contact the Partnership for Justice Fund at jusriceonline.org.