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According to Keystone XL Companies, Activists May Really Be Terrorists

None of this should really be surprising at this point.
Photo: Stephen Melkisethian/Flickr

Paranoia regarding photographers and gross misrepresentation about environmentalists continues unabated. The latest example: Photography Is Not A Crime highlights how the Nebraska Information Analysis Center produced a report back in April which compares activists opposed to Keystone XL as potential terrorists, and lists photography as surveillance and the first step down to the path to terrorism.

Based on the Powerpoint of the report and not what was actually said in the presentation (the former which we have access to via a FOIA request from Bold Nebraska), the characterization is pretty vague, and does clearly mention acts of protest as civil disobedience. However, the presentation's blanket characterizations of photographers and activists as terror-related security risks is disturbing. Not to mention the fact that the presentation, as PINAC notes, fails "to provide a single confirmed example of a photographer taking pictures with the intent of committing an act of terrorism."

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This latest report comes to light less than a week after other documents, dating back to December 2012, came into public view, in which Keystone XL developer TransCanada briefs police and prosecutors in Nebraska on the activities of opponents of the pipeline. They also urge both to consider the acts of civil disobedience, led by Tar Sands Blockade, as acts of terrorism.

In this presentation, the information goes beyond that of the one from April, in that TransCanada provided police with photographs, names, and background info on key members of the Keystone XL opposition.

Green is the New Red sums up what's really disturbing about the tone and context of the presentation:

What’s particularly troubling about this presentation is that a corporation is briefing law enforcement about who, when, why, and how they should prosecute.

TransCanada offers police a playbook on how to go after activists. They company suggests prosecuting using criminal trespass, criminal conspiracy, criminal instrument or device (the PVC pipe used for non-violent civil disobedience), grand juries, and "federal/state anti-terrorism statues [sic]."

None of this should really be surprising at this point. It's of course nothing new, going well behind the fight against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline—something which former vice-president Al Gore recently got even more vocal about; is he now supporting terrorism in the eyes of TransCanada? Just a few examples should make clear the general suspicion with which many forms of environmental advocacy are viewed.

In 2011 it came to light that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force kept fils on activists who expose abuse of animal of factory farms, going to far as to recommend prosecuting them as terrorists.

In 2010, documents obtained by ProPublica revealed that the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security warned that "environmental extremists" were a serious threat to fracking in the state and would "try to intimidate companies into making policy decisions deemed appropriate by extremists." Opponents of fracking were also characterized as "militants." In fairness, the confidential briefing admitted that there were at the time no incidents of militancy, but rather communities should be on the lookout for it.

Going back two more years, the deputy director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network found out in 2008 that several years earlier he had been surveilled on suspicion of terrorism for his activist work—after the police determined that they had "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime."

If we broaden the view a bit, and accept that the Occupy Wall Street protests had a significant (if not always explicit) environmental component, then surveillance of OWS by the Department of Homeland Security, which aided in the coordinated multi-city effort to stymie the protests, also falls into the category or government and corporate interests acting together to squash dissent and characterize dissenters in what's become one of the most powerful terms of derogation in the English language: terrorist.