MassPrivateIChicago. IL – Testimony given by an undercover officer in a state terrorism prosecution in Illinois sheds new light on the Chicago Police Department’s surveillance of dissidents, including what appears to be a targeted campaign to keep an eye on the activities of people who call themselves anarchists.
Journalist Kevin Gosztola is in Chicago covering the trial of the NATO 3, protesters who may have been set up by undercover Chicago police officers and are facing state terrorism and felony conspiracy charges. Gosztola’s reporting provides new insight into the CPD’s modern day red squad.
The three men charged—Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase, and Brent Betterly—were arrested in a pre-dawn raid before the major anti-NATO protests took place in the spring of 2012. Their defense has argued that by charging the defendants under a state terrorism statute, the government could “maximize the sensationalism of the announcement of charges the day before a massive non-violent anti-NATO protest in Chicago in order to discourage and frighten people from attending the protest, and to justify the massive expenditure of public and private dollars to host and provide security for the NATO conference.”
During the trial, which began this week, defense attorneys have had the opportunity to cross examine one of the undercover police officers who infiltrated leftist movements in Chicago in advance of the NATO summit. Officer Nadia Chikko explained to the court that her job was to monitor these dissident groups, to see if activists were violating the law. According to her testimony, as relayed here by Gosztola, she found no criminal activity:
Chikko was tasked to go undercover with the police intelligence unit in February 2012. For two months prior to the summit, in March and April, she went to community meetings, cafes, concerts, protests, etc, in order to—as she stated multiple times from the stand—”observe, listen and report back any criminal activity.” But there was no criminal activity to report.
Despite this fact, Chikko wrote reports on what was happening at these public gatherings and events and wrote about the people who attended. She and her partner took photographs of license plates, which Chikko justified by saying, “If we needed to look into that, we would.”
On March 16, 2012, around two months before the “NATO 3″ would be arrested in a preemptive police raid, Chikko went to a concert by a female band. She submitted a report that indicated, “This band has been known to attract anarchists in the past.”
Chikko explained to the court that “violent anarchists” were known to “infiltrate peaceful protesters or peaceful organizers” and get them to commit criminal acts. “We were trying to weed them out,” she added.
She and her partner spent an hour walking around the concert and then wrote down license plates of people there,” which she justified by saying, “That’s our job as police.” Police “run intelligence.” That is our “job when we go out there.”
On March 17, at the Permanent Records Store, Chikko and her partner made their way to the second floor where a band was playing and stayed for an hour. They found no criminal activity. They then went to another event, where they took down more license plates of cars.
“If there was license plates, we’d record them,” Chikko said, as if it was absolutely no big deal at all.
Deutsch asked why they would run the license plates at public events. She answered, “Sir, we’re police officers. That’s what we do.” They run the license plates to find out if there are warrants on them.
“We did attend a lot of cafes,” Chikko stated. One of those cafes was a well-known cafe in Chicago called the Heartland Café
The Chicago police intelligence unit, at one point prior to the summit, deployed six police officers to go to the cafe and conduct surveillance.
“Any sort of suspicion at all that any violent anarchists were sitting in the Heartland Cafe?” Deutsch asked. Chikko answered no.
Deutsch asked if she was just eavesdropping on people, who were eating in the Heartland Cafe. “As police officers, you have a right to go into anywhere and listen to conversations to if they’re talking about criminal activity?”
The state objected to this question and it was not answered.
On Division Street, a major thoroughfare in Chicago, the police apparently had gone up and down the street looking for graffiti from “anarchists.” They were looking to find and identify “anarchists” too, according to Deutsch, who was referencing police reports. But Chikko denied that they had been looking for “anarchists.”
http://privacysos.org/node/1310
Dissent on Terror: How the nation’s counter terrorism apparatus, in partnership with corporate America, turned on occupy Wall Street
http://www.prwatch.org/files/Dissent%20or%20Terror%20FINAL_0.pdf
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/pdf/policy-briefs/corporate-and-police-spying-on-activists.pdf
Police State Amerika wants to use homeowners cameras to spy on citizens:
San Jose, CA – Police would be able to tap into private video camera recordings from San Jose residents who agree to provide access to authorities under a new proposal that would expand investigators’ watchful eye over the city but already is raising big brother-type privacy concerns.
Councilman Sam Liccardo’s proposal, unveiled Thursday and set to be discussed by a City Council committee next week, would allow property owners voluntarily to register their security cameras for a new San Jose Police Department database. Officers then would be able to access the footage quickly after a nearby crime has occurred.
Already police can ask property owners like the ones in the arson-ravaged neighborhood for surveillance footage but have to go door-to-door searching for cameras, a cumbersome process for a police force that is understaffed.
The new program would allow property owners to sign up for a security camera database so that police responding to burglaries, assaults and other crimes would see a map of nearby locations with cameras. As long as property owners agree, police would be able to remotely tap into feeds for high-tech cameras, but older models would require residents to turn over the actual tapes.
Privacy groups say the latest proposal is part of a broader trend toward a world where authorities have more surveillance access to places that once were considered private.
“To me the really interesting and troublesome part of it is the way we are starting to privatize government surveillance — to enlist private citizens in a way that is kind of unprecedented and could be potentially really dangerous,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. “Once you give the police unfettered access 24/7, you’re relying on them to exercise their restraint.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24979753/san-jose-police-would-tap-into-residents-private
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/01/nato-3-trial-exposes-illegal-police.html
I love her lackadaisical and matter of fact responses to collecting data and investigation techniques that violate us on so many levels. As if the mere accusation of being a “suspected violent anarchist” were enough to lock you up and throw away the key. The comfort level they operate in is very telling as to what they think we deserve as citizens as the question regarding privacy was objected to and disregarded.
Also very telling here, is that their biggest concern is silencing dissent by “frightening” activists.
They can’t win, and they know it. Fear is the ONLY card they can play. Don’t fall for it.
That’s the whole purpose behind the Snowden saga. It’s all just a show designed to silence you, and he’s only the latest in a long string of them.
He’s only receiving national media coverage because it’s become necessary, and that’s because our numbers are much larger than you realize.
You’ve been conditioned to think that you’re all alone in this struggle, but the appearance of Snowden in the propaganda press to stir a national debate is proof that the entire population now needs to be scared into silence.