....LMB: "To Infiltrate and Serve"....

October 05, 2003

On August 30, members of the Fresno anti-war organization Peace Fresno noticed an photo of one of their members in the oobituary section of the local paper: Aaron Stokes, an independently wealthy man who came to their meetings regularly, spoke little, and took copious notes. He had died in a motorcycle accident.

Except that obituary listed him as "Aaron Kilner", detective for the Fresno County Sheriff's Department, and member of the "anti-terrorism" team.

Yes, apparently the Fresno police felt that the peace group, based out of the Fresno Center for Nonviolence, was potentially a violent threat to the community. And therefore, they needed to be spied upon.

The sheriff's department claims that Peace Fresno "was not and is not the subject of any investigation by the Fresno County Sheriff's Department." Then is it possible that Kilner was attending the meetings because he was truly against the war, yet hid his true identity because he feared it could cause trouble? Kilner's mother and brother both say no, that he was both too busy, and that he would have mentioned it if he was going to these meetings on his own.

Which leaves the most likely explanation: the Fresno police are wasting their manhours and resources investigating peace groups when they could instead be actually protecting us from terrorism. Good work, fellas.

The article's quote from Kilner's brother is also a little creepy: "We asked him, 'How do you do it when your views don't coincide [with those of the group your surveilling]?' And he said, 'The really great thing about this country is that people are allowed to express themselves.' He really strongly believed in that, but he was concerned about the line where opinions become actions."

That's a comforting thought. Every organization needs a cop to monitor their meetings just to make sure that they behave themselves, and don't get out of hand. "I love you Big Brother", and all that.

There is another article on the Kilner story here, with more context, but it is less objective than the previous one.

Posted by Jake at 10:24 AM | TrackBack (0)
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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

Posted by Jake at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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