This speech was given in front of the Boston Fusion Center on June 1 for International Day of Privacy

Dear friends today is the International Day of Privacy. I thank you for joining MassOps here in front of this DHS monstrosity, I’m excited to note that Alex from Digital fourth will be speaking today about the BRIC fusion center behind us. Additionally we will be passing out info pamphlets about our loss of privacy. Today to be forthright and upfront we do not have any civil disobedience planned instead we want to as citizens with the right to free speech and free assembly peacefully share a discussion about how our country is being mismanaged- to put it lightly. Once again thank you all for coming out to have this discussion.

        I want to quickly introduce you to our detainees- they’d wave I’m sure except for the shackles. They are here as a visible demonstration of what is at stake when we talk about the second tier justice system created by the NDAA 2012. For anyone who hasn’t paid attention the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 had a clause in it which allows the Military to indefinitely detain anyone including US citizens without trial or charges. This is Gitmo for citizens based simply of having your name put on a list of people the government “suspects” of aiding terrorism. So today our detainees are here to represent the potential of US citizens being detained with no rights forever because it is now legal to do so, and as we can see the ongoing torture at Gitmo and scandal at Abu Ghraib the US military indefinite detention is characterized by abuse of human rights.

        Here in Massachusetts maybe more than anywhere else in America- today is a day to speak out about the complete lack of privacy we have as citizens. When I say there is a complete lack of privacy I mean we have none whatsoever. There has been a bipartisan effort to strip each and every citizen of their constitutional rights, and bad news it has succeeded. Today on IDP I believe it is time to push back against naked tyranny. Our government has passed and recently renewed the Patriot Act wiretaps allowing The Department of Homeland Security to monitor the electronic communications of citizens with secret warrants- which I'm sure would never be abused- oh wait I guess our present department of justice just got busted for monitoring the AP and Congress for fucks sake. If they are brazen enough to tap media and congress be sure that they can will and do tap citizens without regard to the fourth amendment. 

      We're here today at the BRIC- the Boston Fusion Center another piece of the tyrannical DHS/Police state apparatus. This is where the names and info on Occupy Boston was sent to be disseminated to all branches of law enforcement as “potential terrorists.” That’s Occupy Boston... a peaceful group of dissenters. The reason we chose to hold IDP here is that there is a shocking lack of knowledge in the general population that “Fusion centers” even exist. Well we're here and behind us is the fusion center where the DHS surveillance state collates it's info on all of us and spreads it around to the various policing bodies. Who do they answer too? Well it's a murky question but given the secret warrants from the patriot act and second justice track created by the NDAA... the answer is most likely not a pleasant one for freedom. We already know that this fusion center was used to collate and distribute data on occupiers so it's clear the targets for this DHS monstrosity are the citizens of Massachusetts- because these fucks were too busy spying and labeling us to pass along intel on the boston bombers oops. We are being told we must give up some liberty to protect our safety- but clearly the simple truth is this is an assault on liberty with no safety benefit whatsoever.

        We in Massachusetts have a very recent demonstration of our lack of privacy- the Martial Law lockdown of a million citizens where the police when door to door in Armored Military vehicles dragging citizens from their homes at gunpoint and conducting massive warrant-less searches. I realize this goes far beyond just a lack of privacy. There are many levels of issues I have with what happened & as a citizen who wasn’t breaking any law I had a rifle pointed at me here in the streets of Boston. But today we’ll discuss the privacy breach… when you think about it those warrant-less searches of people’s homes are an indicator that we are not protected from that sort of home invasion and searchdespite the fourth amendment. Now I understand there was an unarmed “Armed and dangerous” 19 year old on the loose, but think about the precedent set. We often have potentially armed and dangerous people loose and have never needed to suspend the constitution over such a wide area and institute martial law before, I mean police arrest entire armed gangs without this sort of violation of the rights of citizens, but now we have the blueprint for warrant-less search and martial law.  

    Further troubling issues from the recent tragedy in Boston in regards to citizen rights and privacy is that the Marathon bombing is being used as an excuse to roll out more invasive surveillance cameras across the country. But basic logic should raise red flags here. The marathon is a heavily mediated event and as such there were many many extra cameras on the event, but those cameras didn't protect anyone from the bombs that were detonated. Those cameras may have aided in the apprehension of the bombers, but supposedly police have found all sorts of evidence linking the bombers that could have been used- not to mention all the data they had beforehand but didn’t follow up on... so did the pictures actually help? I think the person with an interesting view on this would be Officer Collier who died because the pictures of the bombers were released causing the bombers to panic. The pictures didn't even help the police identify the bombers... the FBI who had been talking with the older bother for years didn't recognize him- they obviously didn't try looking at the pictures of the bombers compared to people they investigated as extremists in the area... because we know they had been warned of the older bother's radicalization by Russian intelligence. So to me if anything this shows beyond a doubt that the cameras are not effective against terrorists... and the DHS state doesn't care or pay attention to terrorists anyway. The cameras are there to monitor us and help control us. That's what the DHS state does, and they want to collect as much data on each citizen as possible without warrants or oversight.

        Another grave issue here in Massachusetts regards to your privacy that makes today especially important to citizens of the commonwealth is the border zones issue. We are a border sate- most people don’t think about it but the coastline is our border. The US border is a place where anyone and everyone can be stopped and searched without a warrant or probable cause- I’m not really going to debate the merits of such law. But the point is our government has now asserted that the area in which these sorts of stops and searches can occur is within 100 miles of a border. The ACLU calls these areas “constitution free” zones. 100 miles of a border- like the ocean, so horrifyingly this means that the ENTIRE State is a boarder zone where the fourth amendment doesn’t apply. Worse yet is that in these constitution free stops and searches the government says it can take and check the contents of any electronic device. This is unreasonable in fact this is beyond unreasonable.

        Our police want drones to do areal surveillance I suggest you look at the ACLU of Mass’s website they have some fantastic information as to why this is a massive violation of privacy. But the simple explination is they can track a person or hover above say a protest and ID everyone there (who are private citizens and should not be subject to IDing by law enforcement) both of which are wrong. Drones are military weapons and like the LRADS and rifles and armored vehicles and stormtrooper gear that our police have- they should be taken out of the hands of law enforcement. This is no longer law enforcement it is occupation (and not in the friendly commune-y activist way).        This IDP I want to start to push back. We the People need to start exercising our rights if we want to keep them. I ask that if your home was invaded during the martial law period you file a complaint with the police. I suggest everyone downloads some basic free software from TOR project to make it slightly harder for DHS to track us all. I suggest everyone opens a free Tormail account. It's a simple way to have some encryption on your communication. Be vocal with your government tell them you demand your rights be protected and get involved in protests- like this one. Check out & support the Free Speech bill before the Massachusetts legislature. Please pay attention and consider protesting over Cameron D’Ambrosio’s case. Cameron is a 18 year old Methuen resident who has been denied bail and is facing twenty years for the lyrics to a rap video he posted on facebook which our government calls terrorism but which contained no specific threat or even a target. You can check out our FreeCameron page on the MassOps site for more info.

        My last thought for today is addressed to the people in Law enforcement. Never again. What happened and what you did after the Boston Bombing is totally unacceptable. What was asked of you was unacceptable as well. You were ordered to carry heavy arms and move through neighborhoods conducting searches and detaining civilians without any regard to civil rights. You were ordered to point your guns at civilians in their homes and to extract them and send them down the street… this can never happen again. If you are ever given these orders again it is your duty as a patriot, as a law enforcement agent, and as a human being to reject the order- arrest the person who issued the order, notify the public about the order, and to then do what you can to make sure that the order is not followed by anyone. These are grave responsibilities but they are of the utmost importance. Simply put officers you do not know what is at the end of the street, so when you yank innocent civilians from their homes and send them off you have no idea what will happen to them. At the end of the street could be another officer similarly uninformed about what will happen to those civilians who has been to told the civilians are being evacuated into a safe zone… and told he must put the civilians on a train. Without knowing what will happen officers your willingness to carry out these orders- like you did in Boston- can lead to the internment and death of civilians in massive numbers. We have had interment in America before, so it is possible, and Gitmo is an internment camp. Gitmo isn’t a prison there is no justice system- it is internment, and at present under the NDAA and patriot act US citizens can be interned at a facility like gitmo. To all law enforcement officers understand that if you follow orders like the ones given in Boston you are assisting in the interment of US citizens in no uncertain terms. “just following orders” is not a valid excuse.       

So to everyone, Talk about these real issues at work and with family spread the word that it’s time to show our dissent- it’s time to stop cooperating with the abusers of power. Thank you, and much love to all of you

Our site is MassOps.weebly.com and the information flyers we’re handing out today will be available under the IDPBoston section if you want to check them out or help distribute them or if you want to see what we’re up to that’s the place to go. Thanks again