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Corporate (and agency) Spies



Greegor
4/26/2008 1:12:50 PM


Quackwatch 'Guerrilla' Tactics
Quoth Stephen J. Barrett, writing in AMA News on August 25, 1975,
describing the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud:
"By working "undercover" using assumed names and box numbers, we've
gotten all sorts of information and publications other groups, like
the medical societies, haven't been able to lay their hands on.
...Really, we're a bunch of guerrillas - we're not a large group,
there are about 40 members, but we're the only such group in the
country."
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7208
A Bad Week for Corporate Spies
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 15:46.
If Cara Schaffer contacts you, be wary. Take emails and online
comments from "activist2008" and "stopcorporategreed" with a grain of
salt. Londoners, be on the lookout for Toby Kendall, a.k.a. "Ken
Tobias." And activists everywhere should think twice before putting
documents in the recycling or trash bins.
Over the past week, reporters and activists outed three different
corporate spying operations. As John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
wrote in their 1995 book "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!": "Movements
for social and political reform have often become targets of
surveillance. ... The public relations industry has developed a
lucrative side business scrutinizing the thoughts and actions of
citizen activists, using paid spies who are often recruited from
government, military or private security backgrounds."
Last week's revelations show that these underhanded tactics are very
much in use today. And they don't just impact the groups being
infiltrated. By privileging corporate interests, effectively giving
them the first and last word on an issue, they distort vital public
debates.
Picking on the Pickers
The Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) advocates for
better working conditions and fairer pay for the state's low-wage
farmworkers. The plight of many tomato pickers is so dire that it's
attracted the attention of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions, which invited CIW's co-founder to
testify at a hearing this week.
CIW has won two high-profile campaigns, convincing Taco Bell and
McDonald's to pay tomato pickers one penny more per pound. These
victories did not come easily. McDonald's resisted by joining the
less-than-independent "Socially Accountable Farm Employer"
program and pressuring a labor researcher to release a preliminary,
error-filled report on tomato picker wages, as the Center for
Media and Democracy reported previously.
CIW action outside Burger King headquartersCIW is now petitioning
Burger King to give the same penny-a-pound raise. The fast feeder
refused, and CIW began being "vilified online and in e-mails that can
be traced to the Miami headquarters of Burger King," reports the Fort
Myers News-Press. The emails and comments were posted under the names
"activist2008" and "stopcorporategreed."
Then a college student started taking a strange interest in CIW
conference calls. Cara Shaffer contacted a student group allied with
CIW and said she wanted to start a farmworker alliance group on her
campus. But Shaffer isn't the student she claimed to be. She heads
Diplomatic Tactical Services, a Florida-based security firm that
offers such "labor relations" services as "covert surveillance" and
"undercover operations."
Shaffer has refused to explain her involvement with CIW. A Burger
King spokesperson "says he knows nothing about any Burger King
effort to spy on the Immokalee groups," reports the News-Press.
The not-so- slick spokesperson added, "I have no idea what should
be secret about helping farmworkers."
In Plane Sight
The London-based group "Plane Stupid" campaigns against airport
expansions, out of concern at airplanes' significant greenhouse gas
emissions.
"After last year's Camp for Climate Action, new activists began
turning up to London Plane Stupid meetings," recounts the group's
website. "Most were perfectly normal people angry at the expansion of
Heathrow airport. But one newbie didn't fit in with the rest -- Ken
Tobias."
To test their suspicions, the group gave Tobias false information.
When the aviation industry responded and newspapers reported on "the
ludicrous idea of a Climate Camp in Hyde Park," Plane Stupid knew
they were being spied on. Soon after, they were able to identify "Ken
Tobias" as Toby Kendall, an employee of the "risk management" firm
C2i International.
C2i's website "puts 'aerospace' at the top of a list of industries
for
which it works," notes the London Times. Heathrow's owner, BAA,
said it "had no contact with the named individuals but was subject
to an unsolicited pitch by C2i. We rejected their invitation to enter
into an arrangement with them."
Trashing the Greens
From 1995 to 2001, the Maryland-based firm Beckett Brown
International (BBI) offered a range of security and intelligence
services to government and corporate clients. BBI frequently
"produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and
major corporations involved in environmental controversies,"
reports Mother Jones magazine.
BBI's insider information greatly helped the Ketchum, Nichols-
Dezenhall, and Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin firms defend their
environmentally-challenged clients. In a September 2000 email,
one BBI employee wrote, "Received a call from Ketchum
yesterday afternoon. ... It seems Taco Bell turned out some
product made from bioengineered corn. The chemicals used
on the corn have not been approved for human consumption."
On behalf of Kraft, Ketchum asked BBI for "pre release information"
about environmental groups' response to the "glow-in-the-dark taco"
news. BBI immediately began planning to go through the trash of three
activist groups fingered by Ketchum: the Center for Food Safety,
Friends of the Earth and GE Food Alert. BBI had previously provided
Ketchum with information about a private strategy session involving
35 environmental groups, as well as reports on "tightly held" plans
for future Greenpeace campaigns.
BBI frequently used dumpster-diving to collect information -- at
least once against progressive PR firm Fenton Communcations,
which counts environmental groups among its clients. In
December 1999, a BBI employee staked out David Fenton's
home, noting "the time of the morning garbage pick-up and
that he returned to the office to 'sort material' and 'analyze,'"
according to Mother Jones.
Fair Play
While BBI (later called S2i) no longer exists, its principals
currently work for at least three other security firms: Chesapeake
Strategies, the Annapolis Group and Global Security Services. And
corporate espionage continues, as the Plane Stupid and CIW incidents
show.
"Inside information gives companies a strategic advantage," wrote
Amsterdam-based investigative reporter Eveline Lubbers in the 2002
book "Battling Big Business." Lubbers helped uncover an eight year-
long scam by a Dutch security firm, where one of its employees posed
as an activist. He collected discarded paperwork from at least 30
different activist groups, saying he would sell it to recycling
plants and give the proceeds to charity. Instead, the documents
were carefully reviewed and often used against the groups.
Lubbers has seen corporate spying not only undermine activist
campaigns, but also destroy groups. Even "non-c
 
 
wm.bush1@gmail.com
4/27/2008 2:54:43 AM


consensual pedophilia is not harmful
check out these sources
The Rind Report by 2 Temple University psychology professors.
The book, Harmful to Minors, by journalist Judith Levine
The work of anthropologist Gilbert Herdt on the sambia people
The Kinsey Report
The Gay Report
Your own common sense
Dont support the persecution of innocent people
 
 
Greegor
4/28/2008 9:51:25 AM


On Apr 27, 4:54=A0am, wm.bush1 at gmail dot com wrote:
consensual pedophilia is not harmful
Which CPS agency do you work out of?
 
 
Kent Wills
4/28/2008 7:51:03 PM


On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:51:25 -0700 (PDT), Greegor
<Greegor47@gmail.com> wrote:
On Apr 27, 4:54am, wm.bush1 at gmail dot com wrote:
Which CPS agency do you work out of?
Do you want to move to that jurisdiction? Do you think you'll be
able to get away with molesting children there?
For those unaware, GregWhore would hang out in the bathroom while
his girlfriend's six-year-old daughter was showering.
He's also been accused of touching the girl's genital area with
his bare hands. By GregWhore's standards of proof, he's guilty of the
act.
"My family's case is for Neglect, but we are treated
in virtually every regard as child abusers, marked on
the Child Abuse registry, for example."
-- GregWhore Hanson telling Usenet he's a FOUNDED child abuser.
Message-ID: <35120b16.0401111639.6825febd@posting.google.com>
 
 
Greegor
4/28/2008 6:57:12 PM


wm.bush1 > consensual pedophilia is not harmful
G > Which CPS agency do you work out of?
Kent Bradley Wills wrote
=A0 =A0 Do you want to move to that jurisdiction? =A0Do you think you'll b=
e
able to get away with molesting children there?
=A0 =A0 For those unaware, GregWhore would hang out in the bathroom while
his girlfriend's six-year-old daughter was showering. =A0
=A0 =A0 He's also been accused of touching the girl's genital area with
his bare hands. =A0By GregWhore's standards of proof, he's guilty of the
act.
http://www.judicial.state.ia.us/Supreme_Court/Recent_Opinions/20050506/04-02=
02.asp?Printable=3Dtrue
 
 
Greegor
5/7/2008 6:46:18 PM


Quackwatch 'Guerrilla' Tactics
Quoth Stephen J. Barrett, writing in AMA News on August 25, 1975,
describing the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud:
"By working "undercover" using assumed names and box numbers, we've
gotten all sorts of information and publications other groups, like
the medical societies, haven't been able to lay their hands on.
...Really, we're a bunch of guerrillas - we're not a large group,
there are about 40 members, but we're the only such group in the
country."
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7208
A Bad Week for Corporate Spies
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 15:46.
If Cara Schaffer contacts you, be wary. Take emails and online
comments from "activist2008" and "stopcorporategreed" with a grain of
salt. Londoners, be on the lookout for Toby Kendall, a.k.a. "Ken
Tobias." And activists everywhere should think twice before putting
documents in the recycling or trash bins.
Over the past week, reporters and activists outed three different
corporate spying operations. As John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
wrote in their 1995 book "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!": "Movements
for social and political reform have often become targets of
surveillance. ... The public relations industry has developed a
lucrative side business scrutinizing the thoughts and actions of
citizen activists, using paid spies who are often recruited from
government, military or private security backgrounds."
Last week's revelations show that these underhanded tactics are very
much in use today. And they don't just impact the groups being
infiltrated. By privileging corporate interests, effectively giving
them the first and last word on an issue, they distort vital public
debates.
Picking on the Pickers
The Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) advocates for
better working conditions and fairer pay for the state's low-wage
farmworkers. The plight of many tomato pickers is so dire that it's
attracted the attention of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions, which invited CIW's co-founder to
testify at a hearing this week.
CIW has won two high-profile campaigns, convincing Taco Bell and
McDonald's to pay tomato pickers one penny more per pound. These
victories did not come easily. McDonald's resisted by joining the
less-than-independent "Socially Accountable Farm Employer"
program and pressuring a labor researcher to release a preliminary,
error-filled report on tomato picker wages, as the Center for
Media and Democracy reported previously.
CIW action outside Burger King headquartersCIW is now petitioning
Burger King to give the same penny-a-pound raise. The fast feeder
refused, and CIW began being "vilified online and in e-mails that can
be traced to the Miami headquarters of Burger King," reports the Fort
Myers News-Press. The emails and comments were posted under the names
"activist2008" and "stopcorporategreed."
Then a college student started taking a strange interest in CIW
conference calls. Cara Shaffer contacted a student group allied with
CIW and said she wanted to start a farmworker alliance group on her
campus. But Shaffer isn't the student she claimed to be. She heads
Diplomatic Tactical Services, a Florida-based security firm that
offers such "labor relations" services as "covert surveillance" and
"undercover operations."
Shaffer has refused to explain her involvement with CIW. A Burger
King spokesperson "says he knows nothing about any Burger King
effort to spy on the Immokalee groups," reports the News-Press.
The not-so- slick spokesperson added, "I have no idea what should
be secret about helping farmworkers."
In Plane Sight
The London-based group "Plane Stupid" campaigns against airport
expansions, out of concern at airplanes' significant greenhouse gas
emissions.
"After last year's Camp for Climate Action, new activists began
turning up to London Plane Stupid meetings," recounts the group's
website. "Most were perfectly normal people angry at the expansion of
Heathrow airport. But one newbie didn't fit in with the rest -- Ken
Tobias."
To test their suspicions, the group gave Tobias false information.
When the aviation industry responded and newspapers reported on "the
ludicrous idea of a Climate Camp in Hyde Park," Plane Stupid knew
they were being spied on. Soon after, they were able to identify "Ken
Tobias" as Toby Kendall, an employee of the "risk management" firm
C2i International.
C2i's website "puts 'aerospace' at the top of a list of industries
for
which it works," notes the London Times. Heathrow's owner, BAA,
said it "had no contact with the named individuals but was subject
to an unsolicited pitch by C2i. We rejected their invitation to enter
into an arrangement with them."
Trashing the Greens
From 1995 to 2001, the Maryland-based firm Beckett Brown
International (BBI) offered a range of security and intelligence
services to government and corporate clients. BBI frequently
"produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and
major corporations involved in environmental controversies,"
reports Mother Jones magazine.
BBI's insider information greatly helped the Ketchum, Nichols-
Dezenhall, and Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin firms defend their
environmentally-challenged clients. In a September 2000 email,
one BBI employee wrote, "Received a call from Ketchum
yesterday afternoon. ... It seems Taco Bell turned out some
product made from bioengineered corn. The chemicals used
on the corn have not been approved for human consumption."
On behalf of Kraft, Ketchum asked BBI for "pre release information"
about environmental groups' response to the "glow-in-the-dark taco"
news. BBI immediately began planning to go through the trash of three
activist groups fingered by Ketchum: the Center for Food Safety,
Friends of the Earth and GE Food Alert. BBI had previously provided
Ketchum with information about a private strategy session involving
35 environmental groups, as well as reports on "tightly held" plans
for future Greenpeace campaigns.
BBI frequently used dumpster-diving to collect information -- at
least once against progressive PR firm Fenton Communcations,
which counts environmental groups among its clients. In
December 1999, a BBI employee staked out David Fenton's
home, noting "the time of the morning garbage pick-up and
that he returned to the office to 'sort material' and 'analyze,'"
according to Mother Jones.
Fair Play
While BBI (later called S2i) no longer exists, its principals
currently work for at least three other security firms: Chesapeake
Strategies, the Annapolis Group and Global Security Services. And
corporate espionage continues, as the Plane Stupid and CIW incidents
show.
"Inside information gives companies a strategic advantage," wrote
Amsterdam-based investigative reporter Eveline Lubbers in the 2002
book "Battling Big Business." Lubbers helped uncover an eight year-
long scam by a Dutch security firm, where one of its employees posed
as an activist. He collected discarded paperwork from at least 30
different activist groups, saying he would sell it to recycling
plants and give the proceeds to charity. Instead, the documents
were carefully reviewed and often used against the groups.
Lubbers has seen corporate spying not only undermine activist
campaigns, but also destroy groups. Even "non-con
 
 
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