Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPD Gawker

[sce56]

http://gawker.com/5850054/meet-the-guy-who-snitched-on-occupy-wall-street-to-the-fbi-and-nypd

The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters' moves thanks to a conservative computer security expert who gained access to one of the group's internal mailing lists, and then handed over information on the group's plans to authorities and corporations targeted by protesters.

Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he's done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.




As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets. What may much more alarming to Occupy Wall Street organizers is that while Ryan was monitoring September17discuss, he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI, including special agent Jordan T. Loyd, a member of the FBI's New York-based cyber security team.





Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPDOn September 18th, the day after the protest's start, Ryan forwarded an email exchange between Occupy Wall Street organizers to Loyd. The email exchange is harmless: Organizers discuss how they need to increase union participation in the protest. "We need more outreach to workers. The best way to do that is by showing solidarity with them," writes organizer Jackie DiSalvo in the thread. She then lists a group of potential unions to work with.

More at link

[MADem]

1. Two-chin Tommy is a well larded little shitheel, isn't he?

He's got easily recognizable features, too. He'll have to be a bit more clever in future.

[Puget Progressive]

2. When he loses his cover he can always get a job

with Blackwater or Xe or whatever those a-hole mercenaries call themselves now. People like this jerk are hopeless. What a warped view of the world they have. A pathetic little empire whore and he loves it that way.

[digidigido]

3. I was there and I'm pretty sure I saw him, he was muttering

"a bunch of communist cocksuckers" under his breathe

[digidigido]

4. and yes, he is an ignorant corpulent ass

[slay]

5. What a piece of shit

for real.

[pnorman]

6. We all exected this sort of shit, didn't we?

n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Duplicate post from yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=2124074&mesg_id=2124074

[1Smart_Fellow]

8. Occupy Wall Street and the 'Crime' of Non-violent Dissent

Occupy Wall Street and the 'Crime' of Non-violent Dissent
By Ritt Goldstein
Copyright October 2011

I just watched video of an alleged observer with the National Lawyer's Guild being struck by a New York City police scooter, screaming in agony as his foot was pinned under it, then arrested for kicking the scooter in freeing his trapped foot. I watched videos earlier in the protests of Occupy Wall Street's non-violent freedom fighters being pepper sprayed, one video, of four women simultaneously subjected to this torturous punishment, thankfully went global. But history shows the price of popular change is too often measured in the agony of those pursuing it, and today's efforts, the struggle towards a genuine 'liberty and justice for all', are not proving an exception.

Every day I continue to read of a number of further instances of Occupy's heroes being pepper sprayed and abused, and every day their courage makes it difficult to recall a time that I've been prouder to be an American. On many occasions, some years ago, I too was pepper sprayed, and I too was perceived by some as having committed 'a crime', the 'crime' of Non-violent Dissent.

In 2005, a German film emerged that garnered critical acclaim for its examination of such 'criminality', the setting being 1940s Nazi Germany, the name of the film is 'Sophie Scholl - The Final Days'. It examines how non-violent dissent has indeed sometimes been quite criminalized, sometimes even demanding the ultimate sacrifice. Sophie, her brother, and a friend were tortured, then tried and executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943.

It might be well for those attacking Occupy particpants to see this film, to be reminded of what kind of State uses brutal force against those brave souls with the vision and courage to attempt the righting of grievous wrongs.

In 2006, New York Times film critic Stephen Holden wrote of the film: In a climate of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism, the movie looks back on a worst possible scenario in which such liberties were taken away. It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here? And given the beatings, the abuses, and the pepper sprayings that have occurred, the question of how far from what's left of the Constitution our government might go is a good one, particularly if the Occupy movement continues to succeed and expand as it is.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT... http://www.opednews.com/articles/Occupy-Wall-Street-and-the-by-Ritt-Goldstein-111014-242.html



At the OpEd News site this article has some noteworthy video clips reagarding who is a threat to whom, as well as video of a police accountability hearing from Connecticut's legislature that shows how far in the wrong direction 'the authorities' can go.