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Huh?
UPDATE (1 PM): Cambridge Common knows more and has some discomfiting stories. I think there are two issues here; the first is the macro question, of whether HUPD and the authorities create an environment that welcomes dissent. (Fairly obviously not.) The second is the micro question, of whether our privacy rights are being directly violated, and whether (this seems to be the ACLU's concern) information is being fed by HUPD to the federal government, specifically the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. This second one is the potentially explosive issue we should focus on.
Nothing yet on the MA-ACLU website, I'll try to keep an eye on it. Hopefully this won't be a one-day story.
The nation’s preeminent civil liberties group is accusing the University of maintaining a political intelligence unit within the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD), an allegation that comes after two protesters were arrested during a demonstration in the Square.
The protesters allege that undercover HUPD officers were photographing the demonstration, according to John Reinstein, the legal director of the Massachusetts division of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“What we found really quite surprising and disturbing is that the Harvard police department has an undercover, plainclothes, political intelligence unit which so far as I know has never been acknowledged by them before,” Reinstein said.
...Reinstein said that the ACLU has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to discover whether Harvard shares the intelligence it gathers with the federal government. Other schools have connections with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), local teams of law enforcement and intelligence specialists formed to investigate terrorism...
Reinstein said that Nieves noticed a bystander in plainclothes taking photos of the protest and decided to go photograph him. When she did, the man informed her that he was an undercover police officer with HUPD and placed her under arrest for refusing to delete the photos. Kearney said that the officer would have to arrest him if he was going to arrest Nieves and so Kearney was also arrested, according to both Fam and Reinstein.
“It’s a little unnerving to find Harvard undercover police spying and taking pictures of Harvard students on public property,” Fam said.
WTF? Has anybody heard anything about this? I know Katie posted some questions back in March when those people got arrested, but... the ACLU? "Political intelligence"? The FBI? This is some weirdness. If HUPD (a private organization paid for by our tuition) is secretly monitoring student activism on behalf of the federal government, that's pretty obviously unacceptable...
No mention by the Guy by the
No mention by the Guy by the door... http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/fensterm/
Wasn't he there? He's always at these things snapping photos--how did no one else get a picture of these alleged arrests?
No mention on Boston
No mention on Boston Indymedia which is the one place I would expect to find news of such an arrest well documented...
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/index.php?limit_start=190
How odd, eh? I would hope someone would take this up with the Crimson and HUPD. I would, but they (the Crimson) don't like me much. I have no official relationship with HUPD or the CIA or any other hidden agenda, btw... :)
http://www.wickedlocal.com/ca
http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/archive/x691147438
This Cambridge Police log says the pair was arrested for disorderly conduct at 3:29 p.m., as opposed to resisting arrest and disturbing the peace at 12:53 which is what the Crimson's HUPD log said... How many times can you get arrested? Since the rally had ended by 12:53 (started at 11:45) did Bonnie and Clyde escape the clutches of the HUPD only to be re-apprehended later by the CPD? What the heck is going on here?
Perhaps I shouldn't get into
Perhaps I shouldn't get into this subject, RT, which is rather a sidenote to the real question (the FBI!!?!!?!?), but: isn't it possible that HUPD would transfer those people, if they weren't Harvard affiliates, into CPD custody, and CPD would record when it took custody of them (presumably after several hours of processing/general bureaucracy)? Would make sense to me...
(Also, I find it a little hard to believe that Katie could also have been in on this enormous conspiracy, back over a month ago...)
I considered that, but it's
I considered that, but it's still very odd, since they both say that they were arrested, not booked, and mention the location. Also, no one seems to remember this happening, Markus, and that doesn't mean Katie is in on any conspiracy, just that she passed on a rumor that she heard and quite appropriately mentioned that she had not confirmed it, only to find it published a week later in the Crimson's police log. Don't you think that maybe the idea here MIGHT be to intimidate would-be activists?
The whole FBI thing is a bit of a red herring, IMO. Disturbing? Yes, and as I said I have experienced similar weirdness before. Harvard cooperating with the surveillance state is nothing new under the sun, dude. That is an issue unto itself and of course deserves to be investigated. But until I see some picture of those two being arrested I think there is something fishy going on here. I've known of Patrick Keaney since the time I attended a Jamaica Plain Green party meeting he led with a friend of mine. I saw him at the protest. I was counterprotesting and exchanged words with him. I hung out well past the end and neither saw anyone get arrested nor heard of anyone getting arrested. I've searched in vain for any reference to the arrests on any of the likely places where it would have been announced (indymedia, etc.) That is very odd.
Anyway, as it turns out Lisa Nieves used to work for the medical school, and if I remember correctly Keaney also got himself arrested afetr occupying Senator Kerry's office a few years back--he seems to like this kind of attention, anyway...
Oh I see... Today's
Oh I see... Today's Crimson clarifies everything! The FBI is looking to protect protestors. And I imagine that includes counterprotestors like the "Support the troops" folks who show up at peace rallies, or 9/11 truthers who show up at, say, pro-Palestinian rallies. So what's the issue then? Do we or do we not demonstrate in order to be seen and indeed photographed? I'd like to think that someone going over my own FBI file might learn a thing or two. And from what I hear from my elders getting a copy of said file decades later makes for a marvelous trip down memory lane, a personal scrapbook including transcripts of conversations, photos (and these days video no doubt) collected at no cost to oneself and handed over with a smile once the state-sponsored paranoia has become outdated! Anyway, don't blame me--all of this hysteria came out of the 9/11 fraud against America and the world. So long as you don't question the premise that there is a global arab muslim jihadist conspiracy to overthrow democracy and establish a global caliphate then you will have to accept that many people will consider these measures quite acceptable!
From the Crimpson:
Both Catalano and the FBI declined to say whether Harvard has appointed someone to a Boston joint terrorism task force.
Special agent Gail A. Marcinkiewicz said, however, that the FBI does not film protests.
“The right to protest is protected under the First Amendment,” she said. “What we are interested in are the people who are thwarting or interfering with people who are protesting.”
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I was at that rally and
I was at that rally and didn't see anyone get arrested. I also didn't hear of anyone getting arrested. Patrick Keaney is in fact a Green Party guy who worked on Jill Stein's campaign in 2004. No idea who Nieves is. Of course Harvard DOES have undercover cops circling the square and its environs, but until someone other than me says so no one seems to care. Here is some more background on the phenomenon:
http://www.wtcdemolition.com/blog/node/1069