Security services relationship to social movements

post by whpearson · 2017-12-15T22:56:46.602Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

As there has been talk of the necessities of a security mindset for forming an agi research project, I thought it worthwhile to share this so that rationalists have some information about the types of forces that may be at play, if someone decided to form such a group.

I'm just going to be pulling from wikipedia, as I hope it is relatively factual. Lots of searches pull up non-mainstream media, which I do not trust.

From the wiki page on UK undercover policing relationships scandal.

Around the end of 2010 and during 2011, it was disclosed in UK media, that a number of undercover police officers had, as part of their 'false persona', entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups and in some cases proposed marriage or fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties.[1] Various legal actions followed, including eight women who took action against the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), stating they were deceived into long-term intimate relationships by five officers, including Mark Kennedy, the first officer to be identified as such, who was publicly identified on 21 October 2010[2][3] as infiltrating social and environmental justice campaigns,[4][5] and Mark Kennedy himself who claimed in turn that he had been incompetently handled by his superiors and denied psychological counselling.[1] According to The Guardian,[6] Kennedy sued the police for ruining his life and failing to "protect" him from falling in love with one of the environmental activists whose movement he infiltrated.

Although the units had been previously disbanded, other cases continued to emerge. In 2015 a public inquiry under a senior judge was announced. In November 2015 the Metropolitan Police published an unreserved apology in which it exonerated and apologised to those women who had been deceived and stated the methodology had constituted abuse and a "gross violation" with severely harmful effects, as part of a settlement of their cases. In 2016 new cases continued to come to light.

From the wiki page on Project Minaret

Project MINARET was a sister project to Project SHAMROCK operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), which, after intercepting electronic communications that contained the names of predesignated US citizens, passed them to other government law enforcement and intelligence organizations.[1] Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Department of Defense.

<snip>.... Then, from 1967 onwards, President Lyndon B Johnsonincluded the names of activists in the anti-war movement. Nixon further expanded the list to include civil rights leaders, journalists and two senators. The NSA included David Kahn.[2]

The names were on "watch lists" of American citizens, generated by Executive Branch law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to detect communications involving the listed individuals. There was no judicial oversight, and the project had no warrants for interception.

From the wiki page on COINTELPRO

Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally.[18] An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists.[19] In 1956, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rightsleader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other black people in the South.[20] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and, eventually, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.[21]

There is also snowdonian global surveillance to consider.

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