MEDIA ROOTS — Abby Martin of Media Roots was interviewed on The Bob Tuskin Radio Show for 1 1/2 hours to discuss an array of issues including the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Occupy Oakland and the “Black Bloc”, Project Censored and the role of citizen journalism.

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MEDIA ROOTS — On Monday, November 14, 2011, Abby Martin of Media Roots went to Occupy Oakland (OO) at 4 am to cover the second police state raid on the peaceful OO encampment.  Under direct orders from Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, over 500 riot cops in another coordinated, increasingly fascistic, multi-police agency operation stormed the peaceful OO encampment at Oscar Grant Plaza (aka Frank Ogawa Plaza) in an attempt to crush the OO movement once and for all. 

Mayor Quan’s legal adviser resigned at 2 am in protest to the heavy police repression at OO.  Quan’s Deputy Mayor also resigned in protest a few hours later.

Media Roots documents the intensity in the air leading up to the police raid, as the peaceful protesters brace themselves for another show of force by the heavily militarised riot platoons.  This footage evidences the insane level of militarised police presence, which showed up to crackdown and destroy the camp in yesterday’s predawn raid. 

Meanwhile, similar raids occurred this weekend with mass arrests against Occupy Movement encampments across the nation.  This morning in another predawn raid, Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park in NYC was ordered cleared under the pretext of sanitation concerns.  Mass arrests were carried out at OWS, involving police beating arrestees with batons and the use of pepper spray.  And now, OWS protesters have been told they will not be allowed to return with tents or tarps as the winter chill approaches. 

One may wonder if notions of America, land of the free, still carry any meaning in Obama’s post-P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act/anti-First Amendment political climate.  If they do anywhere in the U.S., it’s at the fiercely idealistic Occupy encampments across the nation.

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Abby Martin of Media Roots covers the latest police state raid against Occupy Oakland.

MEDIA ROOTS – On Wednesday, November 2, 2011, Abby Martin of Media Roots was on the front lines of the bedlam in the streets of Oakland providing unembedded coverage during the aftermath of the Occupy Oakland general strike and shutdown of the Port of Oakland.

Tens of thousands of peaceful protesters successfully shut down the Port of Oakland, the nation’s fifth largest port, at 8pm earlier that evening.  About two hours later, so-called “Black Bloc” ‘anarchists,’ or opportunists, arrived in downtown Oakland, smashing windows of banks and setting trash cans on fire.

In full riot gear, the Oakland PD lined up at about 11:30 pm and marched toward the rally, now tainted by masked “Black Bloc” saboteurs.  Police started firing smoke grenades and tear gas into the crowd of people, provoking some, particularly the masked “Black Bloc” individuals, to respond by throwing bottles and other objects back at the police.  Rather than detaining the individuals engaging in property destruction, the police advanced on everyone in sight.

After the crowd scattered, the police lined up in apparent hammer-and-anvil formation to close in and arrest the remaining protesters at the Occupy Oakland encampment.

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 Abby Martin, Media Roots Founder, catches a dose of tear gas reporting from the front lines.

MEDIA ROOTS— As people in the U.S. and abroad endeavour to exercise their rights and civil liberties, such as the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, the state and its police forces continue finding methods to repress such civic activity.  An important component of social control and repression of dissent has been the curtailment of telecommunications. 

Earlier this year, when San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police killings spurred groups, such as ‘No Justice, No Bart!,’ to call for critical mass demonstrations, BART officials attempted to thwart communication among activists by cutting mobile phone service entirely to transit stations targeted by demonstrators.

Not to be outdone in the U.K., the Metropolitan Police Service of Greater London has been “operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.”

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THE GUARDIAN– The surveillance system has been procured by the Metropolitan police from Leeds-based company Datong plc, which counts the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East among its customers. Strictly classified under government protocol as “Listed X”, it can emit a signal over an area of up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person’s movements in real time.

The disclosure has caused concern among lawyers and privacy groups that large numbers of innocent people could be unwittingly implicated in covert intelligence gathering. The Met has refused to confirm whether the system is used in public order situations, such as during large protests or demonstrations.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, warned the technology could give police the ability to conduct “blanket and indiscriminate” monitoring: “It raises a number of serious civil liberties concerns and clarification is urgently needed on when and where this technology has been deployed, and what data has been gathered,” he said. “Such invasive surveillance must be tightly regulated, authorised at the highest level and only used in the most serious of investigations. It should be absolutely clear that only data directly relating to targets of investigations is monitored or stored,” he said.

The company’s systems, showcased at the DSEi arms fair in east London last month, allow authorities to intercept SMS messages and phone calls by secretly duping mobile phones within range into operating on a false network, where they can be subjected to “intelligent denial of service”. This function is designed to cut off a phone used as a trigger for an explosive device.

A transceiver around the size of a suitcase can be placed in a vehicle or at another static location and operated remotely by officers wirelessly. Datong also offers clandestine portable transceivers with “covered antennae options available”. Datong sells its products to nearly 40 countries around the world, including in Eastern Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. In 2009 it was refused an export licence to ship technology worth £0.8m to an unnamed Asia Pacific country, after the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills judged it could be used to commit human rights abuses.

Read more about Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

Photo by flickr user Hozinja