FBI tracking animal videotapers as terrorists?
It is far past time to roll back the Patriot Act encroachments on civil protections. The FBI is zealously using the provisions for almost anything. Far beyond the scope of terrorism.
By Dean Kuipers
December 29, 2011, 2:12 p.m.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has recommended for many years that animal activists who carry out undercover investigations on farms could be prosecuted as domestic terrorists.
New documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by activist Ryan Shapiro show the FBI advising that activists - including Shapiro - who walked onto a farm, videotaped animals there and “rescued” an animal had violated terrorism statutes.
The documents, which were first published on Will Potter’s website, Green Is the New Red, were issued by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2003 in response to an article in an animal rights publication in which Shapiro and two other activists (whose names were redacted from the document), openly claimed responsibility for shooting video and taking animals from a farm.
