OMG... Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters In Tax-Funded Center - CounterPunch/Truthout

[WillyT]

Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters In Tax-Funded Center
Sunday 23 October 2011
by: Pam Martens, CounterPunch | Report

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Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan . . . One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

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Much More: http://www.truth-out.org/wall-street-firms-spy-protesters-tax-funded-center/1319394553

:wtf:

:mad:

:kick:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. They're DYING to find a leader to this movement, aren't they? Such scuzz buckets! nt

[arbusto_baboso]

8. Yes. Then that leader would die in a "tragic accident" which...

would be blamed on other OWS protestors.

You KNOW that's what they want to do...

[sabrina 1]

2. This movement really is exposing them and with every counter

move they make, they only confirm the Movement's main theme, that Wall Street Occupies our Government, it is the root of almost all of our problems, and here's just one more example, and it has to be completely removed from our Government.

Also agree with Post #1, they DESPERATELY want Leaders. Bloomberg is so amateur at this. I guess he was told to appear to be conciliatory and pretend he wants to talk to the Protesters, 'IF ONLY THEY HAD A LEADER"! :rofl:

They are accustomed to smearing and/or destroying leaders, 'cutting off the head' of movements and the taunting by their Propaganda Machine that the movement has no credibility without a leader, makes it all the more clear that naming leaders is the worst thing this movement could do. As Anonymous says, 'we are legion'. And even if they get a few people, more will step up, like Shark's teeth, to replace them.

But this is horrifying in a free country. I hope our Representatives in Congress will be on this violation of rights right away! :eyes:

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. No...not on our watch.

[saras]

4. So fess up. How many would have screamed "tinfoil helmet!" in 2005?

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Time for folks to read both a brave new world and 1984 as prophecy

[WillyT]

5. Kick !!!

:kick:

[stormpilot]

7. Kick

I'm not surprised at all. It's for this very reason I keep my face covered at demonstrations.

[mod mom]

9. They should NOT be allowed to coordinate with the police!