Operation Tripwire exists so that law enforcement and businesses can have a formal connection to share information. This is handy when stores sell things like chemicals or weapons etc. They can let law enforcement know of any strange activity. I'm absolutely opposed to govt spying of citizens. I think the benefits don't justify the means. But if law enforcement looks at your FB page and sees you are planning a protest at a mall and then calls the mall to let them know in advance. I don't have a problem with that.How private groups and individuals, such as Charles Koch, his son Chase Koch, Koch Industries and the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have hired off-duty cops—sometimes still armed and in uniform—to perform the private security functions of keeping undesirable people (e.g., reporters and activists) away. At one ALEC conference, off-duty officers, working on behalf of ALEC and the resort at which the conference was held, led on-duty, riot-gear-clad police in the pepper-spraying and arrests of several peaceful, law-abiding protestors.
Police officers should not be allowed to work in private security and have a job as a police officer. This is a clear conflict of interest. If I were to work a second job that was directly analogous to my primary job, and my primary employer found out... I would likelyHow “counterterrorism” personnel monitored the protest activities of citizens opposed to the “indefinite detention” language contained in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (which is being challenged in court, in a lawsuit in which the CMD has filed an amicus brief).
-How did they monitor?How the FBI applied “Operation Tripwire,” an initiative originally intended to apprehend domestic terrorists through the use of private-sector informants, to its monitoring of Occupy Wall Street groups.
-How did they apply it? When reading the report that this piece is based on (a much better read btw), it appears they applied it to notify a mall in Gainesville FL that an occupy protest was likely to happen there. It turned out to be 9 people dancing and doing a chant.
Not long ago this kind of story would have been in the #conspiracy realm.
Governments usually justify their spying apparatus to stop terrorism or pedophilia. Both noble causes. I've never seen government officials publicly admitting that they use the same tools to stop public dissent, legal peaceful protests and free speech. It generally doesn't bode well.
Where in the case of this article does it show that the govt attempted to stop public dissent? I read a lot about monitoring and nothing about stopping. I also read a lot about using the same tools any of us with a laptop and a phone could use. My guess is that some atrocious things happen in the world of govt spying on citizens, but they're not on display here imo.
My comment was a generalization in reply to minimum_wage and not specific to this article.