Category: Secret Manoeuvres Preface

What do you expect from the workshop in Essex?

Preparing the workshop in Essex, discussing this with Tom Anderson from Corporate Watch: there is just so much to talk about!
Since the workshop as a format implies input from those who join, we may as well make it interactive from the very start. So, there you go: what would you expect from a workshop on corporate and police spying on activists? And what would your own contribution be?

  • I could talk through one of the case studies featuring in Secret Manoeuvres, just to get an idea.
  • Explain how the research I do is different from investigative journalism (“I start where the papers stop”).
  • We could address the issue of what is needed to understand the issue of corporate spying: case studies, time lines, following the money, the people/companies behind it.
  • Address the question of approaching corporate & police spying on activists within the larger context of so called ‘issue management’, reputation, globalisation, undermining of protest.
  • We can talk about infiltrator’s role in the undermining of social movements.
  • How to balance between talking about research and talking about spies?

Do we expect our participants to read Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark first?   ->-> Purchase it now – or get a copy in Essex! <-<-

Let me know, I’ll open the comments, tweet your feedback to @evelinelubbers, or use the Secret Manoeuvres mailbox at xs4all.nl.

N.B. If you can’t come to Essex, I can come to you – we might turn this into a tour!

1

Mark Kennedy in Corporate Intelligence

Originally posted at my blog spin.off , while working on the book.

 

Mark Kennedy is now selling his experience as an undercover agent within ‘extreme left political and animal right groups’ to the highest bidder.  His apparent move into corporate spying is yet another sign of the increasingly blurred boundaries between public and private forces in undermining protest.

Kennedy’s LinkedIn profile –  first spotted by Indymedia early June – is clarifying in many ways.  On a personal front, it strips away any last doubt about his position. He is not a turned agent, as he suggested just after he was first exposed in the mainstream media. Nor is he a lonely soul longing for his true love and missing his activist friends, as he claimed in a documentary devoted to his double play.

Kennedy claims to now work as a consultant for the US based Densus Group, a security firm specialised in risk analysis and assessing threats from protest groups and domestic extremism. Densus serves both companies and law enforcement – a prime example of the blurred boundaries mentioned above. Today its focus is on containing the Occupy movement. Continue reading “Mark Kennedy in Corporate Intelligence” →

Sir Hugh Orde and ACPO’s ‘lack of transparency”

Originally posted at my blog spin.off , while working on the book.

Sir Hugh Orde has criticised the News of the World for ‘lack of transparency’ and for ‘withholding information from an important investigation’.

Last week the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) appeared on BBC Radio’s Today programme again, promoting himself as the next commissioner of the Metropolitan police. Now he has accused Rupert Murdoch of a complete denial of responsibility for what went on at News Corp. (Watch Orde on the BBC).

What seems to have been forgotten in the current media frenzy, is that ACPO itself is under investigation as well … for very similar facts.

Under Hugh’s presidency, the organisation had Mark Kennedy (pictured) infiltrate the climate movement for seven years. The ACPO undercover agent secretly recorded meetings of environmentalists who had discussed occupying the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant. But in the case brought against them, the tapes were not among the evidence in court. Continue reading “Sir Hugh Orde and ACPO’s ‘lack of transparency”” →

Only A Public Inquiry Will Do Into Green Spy

Originally posted at SpinWatch.org.

Andy Rowell and Eveline Lubbers, 17 January 2011

The solicitor acting for the climate protestors, Mike Schwarz from Bindmans, is calling for a full public inquiry into the Mark Kennedy case. Schwarz believes the new IPCC investigation that was announced last Friday, will not go nearly far enough.

“We need a public inquiry into what has happened, similar to the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence,” argues Schwarz. “We must have a measured inquiry to get the whole picture, including the policing of protest generally. It needs to be independent, with clout, with full disclosure”.

One of the main areas of concern is Kennedy’s actions as an agent provocateur. “We need to look at the whole issue of whether Kennedy in this case, and police officers generally, act as agent provocateurs in protests”, says Schwartz. “What are their limits about encouraging, condoning, and facilitating offences?” Continue reading “Only A Public Inquiry Will Do Into Green Spy” →

Nestlé infiltrates Attac Switzerland

Originally posted at my blog spin.off , while working on the book.

Last week, 12 June 2008, the Swiss investigative reporters program Temps Present revealed that Nestlé had infiltrated Attac Switzerland, for more than a year. The food multinational paid Securitas, one of Switzerland’s largest security firms, to plant a woman in the protest group from the summer of 2003 until 2004.

Using a false name the infiltrator participated in meetings and preparation sessions around the time of the July 2003 G8 summit in Evian. Continue reading “Nestlé infiltrates Attac Switzerland” →

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑