There are numerous news accounts and reports of local police,
Department of Homeland Security and FBI surveillance of the Occupy
Wall Street movement. For example, Matthew Rothschild of the
Progressive magazine reported that:
"Over the last few years, the Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement officers have engaged in widespread domestic spying on Occupy Wall Street activists, among others, on the shaky premise that these activists pose a terrorist threat. Often, Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies have coordinated with the private sector, working on behalf of, or in cooperation with, Wall Street firms and other companies the protesters have criticized".The documents reveal many instances of such misdirected work by law enforcement around the country. The picture they paint of law enforcement in the Phoenix area is a case in point. The police departments there, working with a statewide fusion center and heavily financed by the Department of Homeland Security, devoted tremendous resources to tracking and infiltrating Occupy Phoenix and other activist groups." [14]
Similarly, in March 2012, the New York Times reported that "For the last few months, protest organizers say, police officers or detectives have been posted outside buildings where private meetings were taking place, have visited the homes of organizers and have questioned protesters arrested on minor charges." It tells the story of four people who were arrested, strip-searched and questioned about Occupy protests, even though they were more than a dozen blocks away from an Occupy Wall Street "day of action." [15]
InfraGard: an FBI-corporate intelligence partnershipGiven the well-documented abuses both by corporations and the FBI in spying on nonprofits, the question arises whether the secretive FBI-corporate intelligence partnership called InfraGard is or could become another vehicle or tool for unethical or illegal espionage against nonprofit organizations.
The cover of the March 2008 issue of The Progressive featured an article about InfraGard, a little-known partnership between private industry, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. [16] As of then, InfraGard claimed the participation of "more than 23,000 representatives of private industry," including 350 of the Fortune 500 companies. The InfraGard website claims that its "primary focus" is to share actionable intelligence information for investigative purposes." [17]
According to The Progressive,
"One of the advantages of InfraGard, according to its leading
members, is that the FBI gives them a heads-up on a secure portal
about any threatening information related to infrastructure
disruption or terrorism". "We get very easy access to secure
information that only goes to InfraGard members,' [Chairman of the
Board of Directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance
Phyllis] Schneck says. "People are happy to be in the know.'". In
return for being in the know, InfraGard members cooperate with the
FBI and Homeland Security. "InfraGard members have contributed to
about 100 FBI cases,' Schneck says. [18]
The American Civil Liberties Union is concerned about the special advantages granted to corporations under InfraGard. According to the ACLU's Jay Stanley,
""The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment".There's no "business class' in law enforcement. If there's information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don't they just share it with the public? That's who their real "special relationship' is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends".This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI's handing out "goodies' to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.'" [19]
We don't really know. Here's what we do know.
Most major companies have created an institutionalized internal chief security position -- a chief intelligence officer of some sort. These people often start by asking the question: what "threats" exist to our company? In some cases -- but we don't know how many -- corporations identify nonprofit organizations as "threats." They may research the nonprofits by accessing public records and news stories, or consulting public relations firms. But if they find the "threat" serious enough, they may wish to obtain human, physical or electronic intelligence about the organization's plans and activities. And if the corporation is desperate enough, and its ethics are pliable enough, its leaders may even conduct unethical or illegal intelligence-gathering against nonprofits.
Most of the cases of corporate espionage we know about in recent years have been uncovered by accident. There has been no comprehensive, systematic effort by federal or state government to determine how much corporate espionage is actually occurring, and what tactics are being used. It is likely that corporate espionage against nonprofits occurs much more often than is known.
Regarding corporate espionage in the United Kingdom, the Guardian reported that "Privately, senior officers claim there are "without question' more corporate spies embedded in the protest movement than police officers. Among their number are former police officers cashing in on their surveillance skills for a host of companies that target protesters." [20]
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