Oakland emails give another glimpse into the Google-Military-Surveillance Complex

OAKLAND—On February 18, several hundred privacy, labor, civil rights activists and Black Bloc anarchists packed Oakland’s city hall. They were there to protest the construction of a citywide surveillance center that would turn a firehouse in downtown Oakland into a high-tech intelligence hub straight outta Mission Impossible.

It was a rowdy crowd, and there was a heavy police presence. Some people carried “State Surveillance No!” signs. A few had their faces covered in rags, and taunted and provoked city officials by jamming smartphones in their faces and snapping photos.

Oakland emails give another glimpse into the Google-Military-Surveillance Complex

In a good piece of hard journalism, Pando has printed a damning report which shows that Oakland is building a “Domain Awareness Center” (DAC) — a federally funded project that, if built as planned, would link up real time audio and video feeds from thousands of sensors across the city.... which was for protection but Pando shows it is used mainly for crowd control and labor dispute protection..

Further, Google seems to be implicated in the process which includes emails that Pando includes in the article. It is interesting how after Occupy, the system is building protection to inhibit what used to be Free Speech....

as stated by Pando : in email after email, Oakland officials had discussed the DAC usefulness for keeping tabs on activists, monitoring non-violent political protests and minimize port disruption due to union/labor strikes....

reply to post by R_Clark


Ugh, I really hate Google. It worries me how they keep expanding and expanding into creepier and creepier things like that acquisition of Motorola and the bloody neck tattoo. Oakland's political and feisty attitudes coupled with the proximity to Google's hq are probably why it is targeted for this DAC.

Adding another troubling expansion, Google is expanding itself into fiber networking and it's being spun as a good thing. The issue I have with it is, knowing that Google does sell information about us all, with maneuvers like this, it essentially makes it that, if you're using the internet period, they have your traffic regardless if you use one of their other products. www.portlandmercury.com...

Somebody needs to make a bumper sticker that says "F*** Google".

reply to post by WhiteAlice

It worries me how they keep expanding and expanding into creepier and creepier things

Me too. It is also interesting to me that one might consider that all expansion at this point in time seems to be into the creepier.
Kind of like this whole paradigm of expansion is cancerous. We seem to have little ability to find a non-expansive sustainable rhythm for our selves. But that is my extensional bent speaking. Extrapolating universals from your simple statement. Kinda creepy, huh?

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


I hear you and agree with your existentialist foray. I feel that way, too. A lot of times it feels like it all started like a little snowball coasting down a hill and now it's become a monstrous one that will just flatten you in it, cartoon style, if you try to stop it.

Trees are a good cure for that. Trees and gardens.

R_Clark
Further, Google seems to be implicated in the process which includes emails that Pando includes in the article. It is interesting how after Occupy, the system is building protection to inhibit what used to be Free Speech....

as stated by Pando : in email after email, Oakland officials had discussed the DAC usefulness for keeping tabs on activists, monitoring non-violent political protests and minimize port disruption due to union/labor strikes....

Free speech and the right to peaceably assemble do not include disrupting commerce, preventing people from moving about freely in a public space, destroying property public or private, and defecating in the streets. Sadly, that's the definition of a typical "Occupy" movement. People don't seen able to distinguish between "rioting" and "peacable assembly." The word "peaceably" was not put into the Bill of Rights by accident. If you don't like Starbucks, don't go there and don't buy their products. That doesn't give you the right to break their windows. Crapping on cop cars is not "free speech."

reply to post by schuyler


Strikes are legal by US law except in a few rather understandable circumstances so yeah, it can be done even if it's a shipping port. en.wikipedia.org...

Aside from the fact that you're lumping any political activist as being Occupy, which is an obvious fallacy, the streets, sidewalks and more are actually considered, by law, to be a public forum. Local governments can provide additional rules to avoid disruptions. The problem with protesting is that you can't always control who else shows up or what they do. All it takes is a few bad eggs. As far as window breaking and Occupy goes, I saw NYPD break a window with a guy's head if that counts.

Is a reason why, because the protection that surveillance is getting from the government after the fiasco of the NSA, now officially gathering information on citizens is legal and very profitable.

first the building of huge data bases has been done, in the name of sharing information on social media, free membership and people feel for it, specially the main target the younger population, unsuspecting, gullible and innocent.

As the young generation become the citizens of tomorrow the damage is already done.

These entities have already all the need to keep track of anybody.