Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Matt Sledge — Homeland Security Tracked Occupy Wall Street 'Peaceful Activist Demonstrations'

A Department of Homeland Security division produced daily briefings on "peaceful activist demonstrations" during the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests, documents released Tuesday revealed.
The 252 pages of documents were obtained in a March 14 letter from DHS by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which in November 2011 launched a campaign to unearth public records that would show whether the federal government was spying on Occupy Wall Street. FBI records obtained by the group in Decembershowed that the bureau investigated Occupy as a potential "domestic terrorism" threat.
"Taken together, the two sets of documents paint a disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said in a statement. "The federal agencies’ actions were not because Occupy represented a 'terrorist threat' or a 'criminal threat,' but rather because it posed a significant grassroots political challenge to the status quo."
The Huffington Post
Homeland Security Tracked Occupy Wall Street 'Peaceful Activist Demonstrations'
Matt Sledge

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