another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby justdrew » Sat May 03, 2014 3:30 am

FBI informants may be revealed after agency loses court battle
• Photographer arrested after 2008 protest wins ruling
• FBI sought to protect 'confidential sources'
Paul Lewis in Washington | theguardian.com | Friday 2 May 2014 13.01 EDT

FBI The FBI launched a joint terrorism task force days after anarchists protested in Washington in April 2008. Photograph: Michael Sohn/AP

The FBI has lost a legal battle to prevent the disclosure of documents that could reveal the identity of two of its covert informants.

In highly unusual case Laura Sennett, a freelance photojournalist, has won a ruling from a district court that compels the FBI to provide her with documents that shed light on informants use by agents used in their investigation into a protest which resulted in damage to a hotel lobby in Washington.

The FBI launched its joint terrorism task force investigation days after anarchists protested a World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in the capital in April 2008.

Protesters stormed into the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel around 2.30am, chanting slogans and throwing paint-filled balloons. Most of the criminal damage, including a broken window, was minor, although the hotel said a statue worth more than $200,000 was damaged.

Sennett had been tipped off about the protest and attended to take photographs. She believed the protesters planned to wake up the IMF delegates by making a commotion, and maintains she had no prior knowledge of their criminal intent. She did not enter the hotel lobby – choosing to photograph events from outside.

Both of the “confidential sources” cited in the court case were asked by the FBI to review surveillance footage of the protest, in order to help identify who was there. They identified a handful of activists as well as Sennett, who specialises in reporting grass-roots activism.

The FBI placed the photojournalist under surveillance before raiding her home with two-dozen armed law enforcement officials, who seized memory cards, hard drives and computer and camera equipment.

In an effort to find out more about why she was targeted, Sennett, 51, has been running a legal campaign to obtain information the bureau holds about her, using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

She had so far been given more than 1,000 pages of FBI documents, which the Guardian has seen, but the bureau withheld key portions, claiming they fell under an exemption intended to protect the identity of “confidential sources”. That decision has been challenged in court by Sennett’s lawyers.

On Wednesday, district judge James E Boasberg sided with Sennett, ordering the FBI to release the contested documents, which all parties accept “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source”.

The judge said that despite three attempts, the FBI had failed to convince him the sources would have inferred confidentiality from their interactions with agents.

Dan Metcalfe, who directed the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy for more than 25 years before retiring in 2007, and has represented the FBI in dozens of similar cases, said it was "extremely rare" for the bureau to be forced to reveal the identity of a source.

"I can think of just a handful of cases at most in which the FBI has had to disclose potentially identifying information about a confidential source over the past 40 years," he said.

The case, he said, was a significant blow for the FBI, which is very strongly opposed to revealing the identity of its sources, not least because doing so could discourage future informants from co-operating.

Metcalfe, now a law professor at the American University, said the solicitor general was highly unlikely to launch an appeal.

"I've read thousands and thousands of FOIA opinions," he said. "I would put this in the top percentile for being analytically sound and written exceptionally well. Based upon the facts that one gleans from reading the opinion, this is an entirely correct outcome. I see little or no prospect for reversal on appeal."

Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said he believed the two informants in the case, one of whom is said to have attended anti-capitalist meetings, could be private investigators.

“That is something that, having seen the documents, the judge may be less keen on keeping secret,” he said.

German said the fact an act of vandalism against the Four Seasons was even investigated by the FBI’s counter-terrorism teams followed a pattern of investigations into protest movements that are “more about suppressing dissent than investigating serious or violent crime”.

Detective Vincent Antignano, the federal marshall deputised to run the FBI's investigation into the protest, said in a deposition conducted by Sennett’s legal team he believed Sennett was “like-minded like anarchists”, because she was among the 16 people captured on the hotel’s surveillance video.

“Everyone on that video is a suspect, so that’s the way I look at it,” he said, adding that he assumed she had similar views to the protesters captured in the video “who despise their government”.

Asked to elaborate, Antignano said that while he did not know Sennett’s dietary preference, “she could also be a vegan like … [people] who are against animal protests [sic] or animal research or won’t eat meat and stuff like that.”

Antignano had a broad notion of what behaviour constituted “terrorism”, saying that even an assault could fall within the definition.

“If you get assaulted and you believe you’ve been terrorised, then maybe that is terrorism,” he told Sennett’s lawyer.

The deposition was part of a separate case, in which Sennett's lawyers sued the FBI for damages they said Sennett suffered as part of the raid on her home, which was led by Antignano.

Sennett said the raid was traumatising. Around two-dozen agents “yanked my 19-year-old son out of bed at gunpoint”, she said, before quizzing her about political books on her shelf and asking what “kind of an American” she was.

Sennet said she replied: “I’m a photographer.”

A freelancer whose images have appeared on CNN, MSNBC and the History Channel and in the Toronto Free Press, Sennett is adamant the FBI must have known she was present at the protest in a journalistic capacity. The FBI denied its agents knew of her occupation.

Sennett was never arrested or charged. She believes undercover police or moles within the protest group may have been responsible for giving the FBI details, including a cellphone number, which allowed agents to track her down.

Her lawyer, DC-based Jeffrey Light, argued that her status as a photojournalist should have barred agents from seizing her material, under a clause of the Privacy Protection Act.

However in that case a district court ruled against Sennett – a decision upheld in 2012 by the court of appeal, which found that while Sennett’s occupation provided “an innocent explanation” for her presence at the protest, the FBI, when it launched its inquiry, still had “probable cause” to believe she was part of a conspiracy to commit vandalism.

Wednesday’s court ruling by judge Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, was far more sympathetic to Sennett’s case.

Boasberg said the FBI had failed to provide sufficient proof that its informants “inferred that their communications with the bureau would remain confidential”. While acknowledging the FBI’s argument regarding preserving the confidentiality of informants – “one of source protection and empowerment of law-enforcement agencies” – Boasberg added: “That solicitude, however, can only carry the court so far.”

Light said he hoped Wednesday’s victory, which the government has 90 days to appeal, would take the capital’s protest community a step closer to discovering the identity of potential moles in their midst.

“People want to know who is spying on them,” he said.

Sennett said she hoped that by identification of the FBI’s informants in her case would discourage the bureau from conducting similar quasi-terrorist investigation in the future.

“I pursued this case because I don’t think anyone – activists, freelancers, bloggers – should have to go through what I went through.”

The US attorney’s office said it was reviewing the case but declined to offer further comment.

The FBI also declined a request for comment.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby 82_28 » Tue May 06, 2014 12:57 pm

I must be dense, but at long last, I have to ask: what is this thread about and why is it named such?
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby peartreed » Tue May 06, 2014 2:08 pm

This thread is about – 13 pages long so far.

I’m guessing its title and commonality is obfuscation – an intentionally cryptic collection of diverse data, discussions and disparities that do not easily fit elsewhere.

Channeling my genetic alter ego, I assume that a trip to the hairdresser involves idle time to read various, current magazine articles and get the latest gossip updates in an eclectic download while getting an upload of style upgrade.

The most interesting aspect of this thread is the tangled stitching of contributor bitching because it violates obsessive-compulsive categorization of common content. That, in itself, is revealing of the resistance here to random impulse.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby KUAN » Tue May 06, 2014 4:31 pm

.

Wouldn't it be better to say one needs 'a wash and a perm' to avoid the image of someone spending good money on a perm only to wash it right out again?
I know the title isn't 'I need a perm then a wash' but still, the said image is nigh on impossible to avoid.

.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue May 06, 2014 5:26 pm

peartreed » Tue May 06, 2014 1:08 pm wrote:This thread is about – 13 pages long so far.

I’m guessing its title and commonality is obfuscation – an intentionally cryptic collection of diverse data, discussions and disparities that do not easily fit elsewhere.

Channeling my genetic alter ego, I assume that a trip to the hairdresser involves idle time to read various, current magazine articles and get the latest gossip updates in an eclectic download while getting an upload of style upgrade.

The most interesting aspect of this thread is the tangled stitching of contributor bitching because it violates obsessive-compulsive categorization of common content. That, in itself, is revealing of the resistance here to random impulse.


Nope. You'll have to make more of an effort with that amateur psychoanalysis. In fact, all it reveals is resistance to selfishness, timewasting, and blatant egotistical misuse of this public discussion board as a private playground* and data dump**.

*Just one of several with equally nonsensical titles started by the same poster.

**A Data Dump already exists on this board.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby KUAN » Tue May 06, 2014 6:06 pm

My apologies to fruhmenschen. Yes one can wash after a perm as long as you follow this.
Take special note at the 3:30 mark

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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby peartreed » Tue May 06, 2014 9:59 pm

Other thread originators distinguish themselves and their temperament with characteristic character assassinations, gratuitous obscenities and caustic acrimony added to the ambience. To each their own. I enjoy the variety and diversity of contributions without the corruption.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby 82_28 » Tue May 06, 2014 10:36 pm

Though, all I did was ask two questions, I'm still curious. I don't mind what anyone posts as long as they're not obvious dicks or trolls. It's not like we're down to our last pallet of paper.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Wed May 07, 2014 12:46 am

My impression is the common theme seems to be FBI misdoings, but it is not exclusive to that. Gov't agency cover-ups and related misdeeds in general. There may be an underlying them beyond that. I suspect there is. I haven't done an extensive evaluation, just what I recall from past visits to the thread. The odd name doesn't bother me. Admittedly, in the past I have become annoyed when there were multiple obfuscated data dump style threads from Fruh at the top of RI. But I think there's a method to the madness, and said poster has been responsive to criticism and is not currently littering GD with copypasta, so I'm no longer letting it bother me.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 07, 2014 7:47 am

peartreed » Tue May 06, 2014 8:59 pm wrote:Other thread originators distinguish themselves and their temperament with characteristic character assassinations, gratuitous obscenities and caustic acrimony added to the ambience. To each their own. I enjoy the variety and diversity of contributions without the corruption.


"Corruption", forsooth!

It is me you're talking about, isn't it, peartreed? Of course it is. And this is the second time in this thread alone that you've chosen to talk about me -- quite gratuitously, and with real venom, too -- without condescending either to name me or to address me. No doubt, to you, this demonstrates your sheer uncorrupt adorableness, your admirable high-mindedness and maturity. To me, it just looks evasive, sneaky, dishonest and vindictive. There is a difference between maturity and rottenness, and you are still positively festering with resentment about an exchange we had on another thread many months ago. Get over yourself.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby peartreed » Wed May 07, 2014 2:13 pm

An informal definition of paranoia involves the unfounded fear and suspicion of other people, while megalomania inserts an exaggerated belief in one’s own importance which, combined, causes one to think a critical post is all about a personal attack on them, especially if the defensiveness is founded upon a repressed sense of guilt or shame. Both prevent the paranoid megalomaniac to get over themselves and accept impersonal observations as simply topical discussion.

If I was forced to think of you, MacCruiskeen, which I try not to, what comes to mind is an imagined funny fantasy of a fiery fomenter of froth and fury firing f-words freely at all foreigners found foraging in front of his fortress of fear in the far-off fields of furry, frolicking sheep.

Otherwise, my whimsical comments were intended for all of us wonderful people posting here, and appreciating the thread originator.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 07, 2014 2:22 pm

You are so full of ordure.
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby 82_28 » Wed May 07, 2014 2:42 pm

peartreed » Wed May 07, 2014 10:13 am wrote:An informal definition of paranoia involves the unfounded fear and suspicion of other people, while megalomania inserts an exaggerated belief in one’s own importance which, combined, causes one to think a critical post is all about a personal attack on them, especially if the defensiveness is founded upon a repressed sense of guilt or shame. Both prevent the paranoid megalomaniac to get over themselves and accept impersonal observations as simply topical discussion.

If I was forced to think of you, MacCruiskeen, which I try not to, what comes to mind is an imagined funny fantasy of a fiery fomenter of froth and fury firing f-words freely at all foreigners found foraging in front of his fortress of fear in the far-off fields of furry, frolicking sheep.

Otherwise, my whimsical comments were intended for all of us wonderful people posting here, and appreciating the thread originator.


Eh, just let it lie. The fact remains that this thread is totally, in a word, stupid. There's no focus to it for the reader. I've been told that my OP titles can sometimes be that way as well. So I'm not exempt. Just that last non-descript link to something about climate change caused me to finally ask. Still no answer. No reason to get upset with one another over. . .
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Re: another day at the hairdresser-I need a perm and wash

Postby justdrew » Wed May 07, 2014 3:15 pm

I will just interject to say the thread title seems to me like a simple way of saying, "same old thing, different day" or "and so it goes"
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