State infiltration and attempted disruption of activist websites
New revelations published in an excellent article in today’s Schnews show police and/or government employees actively disrupting activist websites, posting comments designed to “sow mistrust, demoralise movements and to incite violence and illegality”.
We understand well over one hundred posts have been made to Indymedia UK, the activists open publishing news website, made by anonymous posters hiding behind the ‘303 gateway’ - part of the Government Secure Intranet (GSI). The GSI was set up to provide secure communications between government bodies, but appears also to be used to hide the origin of defamatory, misleading and malicious comments made on a number of activist websites.
Fitwatch has also been the target of posts from IP: 62.25.109.196, gateway-303.energis.gsi.gov.uk, leading to serious questions regarding how many political sites and blogs have been targeted.
Some posts have been deliberately provocative and divisive. One bleated, “Still a bit worried about the FITWATCH policy - is ALL fit activity to be opposed? Or is it only that we disagree with - hence not opposing FIT activity against the EDL?”
Other comments have publicised legal action taken against Fitwatch activists, presumably in an attempt to undermine our support. During one case, three people convicted for obstructing police cameras found the news of the verdict posted before they had even left court. Similarly, a Fitwatch activist deported from Copenhagen after being caught up in the mass (unlawful) preventative arrests during the COP 15 protests, had the news – along with her name – posted on the then unmoderated site from the 303 gateway address. The post was removed by Fitwatch in order to protect her privacy.
The latest comment from gateway 303 on Fitwatch, on 20 December 2010, crows that some of the Ratcliffe defendants – subjects of surveillance by undercover cop, Mark Kennedy – had been found guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass, and asks people to change/retract their comments.
The content and style of the posts, on both sites, strongly suggests they are part of a campaign of disruption by the police and home office, aimed at protest groups. The three ‘domestic extremism’ units, currently headed up by ACPO, are known to have several ‘disruption’ techniques in their armoury, including the use of undercover police officers. Given much protest organising and discussion now occurs over the internet, it is logical the same tactics of disruption and manipulation used by undercover operatives in activist meetings and communities is extended to internet debates.
Although the exact origin of these posts is unknown, we strongly suspect the ACPO domestic extremism units are behind them – and at least one was signed NETCU. However, given the cloaking nature of the gateway, there may be other police and government units involved in the monitoring and disruption of ‘extremist’ websites like Indymedia and Fitwatch
Clearly the state feels able to act without restraint when dealing with political activism and dissent. Increasingly protest activity is being treated in a similar way to terrorist activity – extremism that must be monitored, and disrupted. We must be vigilant to these attempts at subversion and develop strategies to deal with them. We are still investigating how many sites have been targeted by the gateway – please get in touch if you have further examples and we will collate the information.
We’d love to know the origin of these posts, who wrote them, and what the objectives of the operation were. Anyone from NCDE care to respond?
Police seek to capitalise on student demo to justify further repression and their own budgets
The new National Coordinator of Domestic Extremism, Adrian Tudway
Although the actions of the students last week were inspiring and empowering, it should come as no surprise the media savvy police are using it as an ideal opportunity to both fight back against cuts to their budgets and to counter the recent bad press regarding protest policing.
The NCDE domestic extremist units are claiming they have suffered in the cuts. Former head of NCDE, Anton Setchell has retired, and head of NETCU, Steve Pearl has been given the boot, and both have been replaced by a cheaper, junior model - Detective Chief Supt Adrian Tudway. Steve seems particularly upset about getting sacked and has been whining to the Telegraph about how, if he was still running the units, their intelligence on the riots would have been better.
As usual, he is talking nonsense. The police didn’t predict the disorder because it wasn’t planned; the march wasn’t hijacked. I read the same websites as the cops, I know lots of activists, the intelligence we all had before the demo would have been similar. Yes, there were rumours of civil disobedience, and autonomous blocs, but this is true of every major demonstration. It would certainly have been true on the entirely peaceful February 15 Iraq demo, and there was no particular reason to believe this would be any different.
This is a desperate attempt by an unpopular unit to appear relevant and we must not be fooled. NCDE are bleating about cuts when only a few weeks ago they were squandering money sending Ian Caswell to Plymouth to monitor and photograph Trident Ploughshares pacifists.
The lack of police action at the protest had nothing to do with the cuts. Ever since the bad publicity surrounding G20 and Kingsnorth Climate Camp, the MET have taken a softly softly approach towards protest, and it was always obvious that eventually this would fail and it would be used as an excuse to continue repressing and harassing protesters. One senior police officer, speaking to The Guardian admitted the protests had done them “a favour”, stating “In the past we have been criticised for being too provocative. During the next demo no one can say a word.”
The students who occupied Millbank are not domestic extremists, they are angry, brave and passionate people who care about what this government is doing to the country. They have grown up witnessing the futility of being herded from A to B and listening to the platitudes of irrelevant politicians.
Ordinary people are angry, with even a Daily Star poll showing the majority in favour of the students rioting. The fight back is on, people will not be repressed, and no amount of intelligence on the usual suspects from a redundant unit is going to make a difference.
Mark ‘Stone/Kennedy’ exposed as undercover police officer
The following post has been taken from Indymedia. There is no reason to doubt it's authenticity. While it is sickening, it is no surprise to discover undercover police working in this way. There have been other accounts of such things happening.
Update, 25 October 2010: Fitwatch can now confirm the accuracy of following statement. Several other groups have also provided confirmation.
"Mark 'Stone' has been an undercover police officer from 2000 to at least the end of 2009. We are unsure whether he is still a serving police officer or not. His real name is Mark Kennedy. Investigations into this identity revealed evidence that he has been a police officer, and a face-to-face confession has confirmed this. Mark claims that he left the police force in late 2009, and that before becoming an undercover officer he was a Metropolitan police constable.
Please pass this information on to anyone who may have been in contact with Mark in the last decade, both in the UK and abroad."
Fitwatching at Climate Camp Edinburgh
The poor old FIT coppers from the shadowy National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) seem to be having a hard time in Edinburgh this week.
A video put out on you tube yesterday showed a great bit of Fitwatching by Climate Camp activists. With determination and some nerve they surrounded NPOIU cop Mark Sully and his expensive long zoom lens camera with scarves and banners. They then held their ground as Sully clearly became frustrated, pointlessly snapping his camera over the banners.
This sort of action is far from being a mere bit of bravado. Sully (CO996) and his sidekick Ian Caswell (1818), are not neutral keepers of the peace, as the police often pretend they are. Their role is to gather intelligence on, and disrupt the actions of climate camp activists. Activists identified photographed by Sully’s long lens camera will find themselves labelled domestic extremists with their own file on NPOIU’s database. Climate campers should buy these guys a drink!
According to reports, Scottish FIT were keen to come across as different to the Met. They were friendly, extremely friendly, happy to hang out on the gate, chatting with the gate shift, passing the time of day. There is nothing wrong with friendly, of course, but activists should know that with a FIT cop all is rarely what it seems. Climate campers would be wise to keep them at a very long arms length, no matter how friendly they are.
Overall policing has been described as fairly low key, perhaps reflecting the desire of RBS to keep the whole thing out of the press. There have been scuffles though, between police and activists outside the RBS building. Two people are reported to have been injured enough to need hospital treatment, both injuries apparently the result of being kicked by police officers. Two others were arrested for breach of the police offences, apparently entirely randomly.
Were you there? Reports on the policing of the site / arrests / assaults on activists are very welcome. Mail us on info@fitwatch.org.uk
Fitwatch, Policing and Climate Camp Cymru
1818 - Ian Caswell
A Fitwatchers experience at Climate Camp Cymru (CCC):
The policing strategy for CCC 2010 was bizarre, disproportionate and manipulative. The event started when we swooped the site for CCC. We had already had to turn down two previous options for the site, one because of bad luck and an angry farmer and the second (which was the site of the previous camp) was crawling in cops from early morning.
The first sign of the police was a helicopter which flew around the site and the surrounding area and disappeared. When the police arrived on site the Community Liaison Officers from the year before identified themselves (Sergeant Conker-Female and Inspector Smith-Male), both promised a quiet relaxed policing style with minimal uniform presence and an eye to keeping the peace. This was shattered several hours later by two plain clothes police climbing out of a blue BMW.
They identified themselves simply as Police Negotiators and were very aggressive. They told us that the owner of the land had been duped and that we had effectively squatted the land and committed trespass. He also said that we could be committing aggravated trespass since the farmer had intentions for the field which we were preventing him from carrying out. He also said that the site was of interest to CADW which are the Welsh historical preservation society and that we could be damaging the field. During these negotiations the police began to bring in several vans of EGT officers (numbers to follow) and several Intelligence Officers. The day ended with us being told that the farmer would negotiate with us in the morning with the negotiating team present. We agreed and got some sleep.
The next morning the negotiations began, and whilst they started the police cynically brought in an Wildlife Crime Officer to chat to us on the gate. The negotiations ended with us having no official or implied permission from the farmer. We were also told that we had committed damage to an ancient site by placing tent pegs in the ground. From then on the police attitude become more confrontational, they stopped anyone from entering the camp. If we left we would not be allowed back in (denying us water) stopping new members of CCC from joining us. The police brought in floodlights, dozens of vans, a bizarre mobile intelligence van with the words EXCELERATE on the sides, mounted police and more EGT teams in an un-marked van (reg CON6DBZ).
We were essentially surrounded and eventually the police told us that if we did not leave the site we would be arrested for aggravated trespass. We made a decision to leave the site and save ourselves for further actions. We began to pack up as over one hundred cops came on site and ensured that we left. Intelligence Officers used EGT teams to identify those of significance, particularly those in masks, medics and perceived organisers. We left the site and made our way to another, followed the whole while by vans of police. They continued to monitor us for several days, but did not manage to prevent several affinity groups from leaving the site, making their way back to Neath, making their way through forests and mine security to enter and leave an open cast mine without any interference from the police.
Also worthy of note is the presence of the female negotiator from the Cardiff EDL demo. She was on the lawn in plain clothes and unidentifiable as police advising people to leave. Also present was 1818 Ian Caswell from NPIOU.
There is a lot of information that has been gathered by many from CCC including Fitwatchers, Legal Observers and Photographers. The intention of CCC is to gather all such evidence and present it in a more formal style to the Fit-watch blog and thus to other Fitwatchers
Thus far this is a preliminary report and will be continued as soon as we centralise information.
>ACPO 'extremist' units operating at Climate Camp
>
The cop above is Ian Caswell, known to many of us as 1818 of South Yorkshire police - many thanks to those who have sent us his name! He is often seen in the company of PS Mark Sully, pictured here at the top of this post.
These two are regularly seen with their cameras at demonstrations, meetings and gatherings. They have been photographed at protests against Heckler and Koch in Nottingham, at No Borders demonstrations at Crawley, at Climate Camp in Kingsnorth, at Smash EDO in Brighton, and many more. They do not seem limited to one geographical area, but tirelessly travel up and down the country in search of protesters to photograph.
It is this aspect of their role that has led FITwatch to speculate that these two officers work for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). This is a sister organisation to NETCU, which many of the readers of this blog will be aware of. These organisations are run as private companies under the management of ACPO, who spend at least £2m a year on them. Their role is to provide intelligence (NPOIU), support the interests of business (NETCU) and manage prosecutions (NDET - National Domestic Extremism Team).
The recent report on the policing of Climate Camp by South Yorkshire police provides evidence that we were correct. A debrief report, containing comments from individual officers, makes frequent mention of the role of NPOIU at the Camp in managing FIT teams and surveillance in general - both overt and covert. It also contains one comment commending PS Sully in particular for his role as the FIT's NPOIU manager.
The NPOIU collects and collates huge amounts of data. Despite being a private company it has access to police databases. This information is presumably made available to NETCU. How much information they deem appropriate to pass on to the private sector businesses they support (EDO, Heckler and Koch etc) is anyone's guess.
Carswell and Sully are, then, in a strange position. They are serving police officers, apparently working for a private company. It is not clear whether they are contracted to the NPOIU, or are working on secondment. FITwatchers who find themselves standing in the way of their cameras may want to speculate as to whether there is a criminal offence of obstructing a police officer who isn't really a police officer....
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