NELSON: Spying on Canadians: What can we do?

[Oscar]

NELSON: Spying on Canadians: What can we do?

[ http://rabble.ca/news/2014/04/spying-on ... -can-we-do ]

By Joyce Nelson | April 30, 2014

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QUOTE: "In December 2013, Canadian Press reported that between 2009 and 2011, 13 Canadian federal government departments (including Natural Resources Canada, Public Safety Canada and the RCMP) had hired the services of Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor -- the Texas-based private intelligence firm which has been called a "shadow CIA" and which is known for spying on environmental and other activists."

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Environmental and First Nations activists are increasingly appalled by the continuing revelations that they are being spied on by police and the Canadian security establishment on behalf of the corporate sector.

First Nations activist Ambrose Williams recently told The Georgia Straight that last year, when he and other anti-fracking activists left Vancouver in a three-vehicle caravan bound for New Brunswick, they were followed and watched by police during the entire cross-country trip. They were heading East to reinforce the Mi'kmaq protestors fighting Texas-based SWN Resources. The company has been exploring for shale gas on unceded Mi'kmaq territory in that province.

As The Georgia Straight's Carlito Pablo reported, before the group left Vancouver they "posted on social media the place, date and time of their departure. They barely made it four blocks from their starting point when they were stopped by the police," who pulled them over and took all their names. "This happened like pretty much in most of the provinces," Williams said. "Like we were being monitored and followed the whole way."

On October 17, their peaceful 134 Unity Camp was attacked by more than 100 RCMP officers armed with tear-gas, assault rifles, pepper-spray, tasers and police dogs, who descended on the encampment to enforce an injunction obtained by SWM Resources, a subsidiary of Texas-based Southwest Energy Co., which holds shale gas leases covering 1.1 million hectares of New Brunswick.

Williams warned that Canada "really is becoming a police state. We need to become aware of that."

Of course, elders will recall that we've endured a century of spying on labour and union activists, "communists" and "fellow travellers," Black power and other civil rights activists, anti-Vietnam war activists, Red power and other Native activists, etc., so environmentalists are just the latest target. One difference now, however, is that the 21st century technologies for spying have become far more elaborate, as have the interconnections between spy agencies and the corporate sector.

At the same time, the Internet is allowing us to be more informed about spying actions taken against the movement.

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