– “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.” DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy. May 20, 2013.
The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how state/regional “fusion center” personnel monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012. Personnel engaged in this activity at fusion centers include employees of municipal, county and federal counter terrorism/homeland security entities. Such entities include local police departments, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration).
The report also examines how fusion centers and other counter terrorism entities that have emerged since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have worked to benefit numerous corporations engaged in public-private intelligence sharing partnerships.
Report appendix:
– “Buying Influence: how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) uses corporate-funded ‘scholarships’ to send lawmakers on trips with corporate lobbyists,” (October, 2012) authored by CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves, offers a detailed accounting of where these ALEC “scholarship” funds come from, how they benefit their legislative recipients and how the use of such funds benefit ALEC’s private sector/special interest members.
The report offers, for the first time, a comprehensive nationwide overview of ALEC “scholarship” spending, revealing an estimated $4 million in travel, rooming at swank resorts and gourmet dining events, handed out since 2006 to state lawmakers by lobbyists representing many of the nation’s largest corporations/special interests. These corporations/special interest groups comprise the bulk of ALEC’s private sector membership. And, thanks to various legal loopholes, these gifts handed out under the ALEC banner have largely been hidden from public disclosure.
The report is derived primarily from data obtained by DBA Press through public records requests submitted to the offices of ALEC member lawmakers in Arizona, Florida and Ohio (view these and other ALEC records here). Additional data discussed in the report was unearthed though public records requests submitted by CMD and Common Cause in Ohio and Wisconsin.
While the bulk of this data was derived from the offices of ALEC-member lawmakers in these four states, the scope of the report is not limited to an examination of lobbyist-funded junkets in these states alone; records obtained by DBA Press from the office of Florida ALEC private sector chair, Representative Jimmy Patronis, give a detailed nationwide accounting of ALEC scholarship activity (including donors and recipients) from 2006 through 2008. Discussion of ALEC scholarship fund activity from 2009 to 2012 is based on an aggregation of data collected by DBA Press, CMD and Common Cause through the use public records requests submitted in multiple states.
– “Legacy of Corruption: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s unsettling history of extremely close ties to private prison operator Geo Group and the evident federal investigation into Florida’s private prison giveaway of more than $120 million.” January, 2011.
Freshman U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, as former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives (R-Miami, 2006-2008)—as well as other state GOP lawmakers and party contributors– are currently the likely subjects of multiple wide-ranging state and federal investigations conducted by the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) into improper use of credit cards issued by the Republican Party of Florida, as well as tax evasion and improper budgetary appropriations.
One such set of appropriations/legislative actions reportedly being investigated by federal authorities are those which led to the development of the state’s largest private prison, the Blackwater River Correctional Facility (CF), which opened its gates for operation in November. The prison was designed and is operated by Florida-based Geo Group, the nation’s second largest private prison operator.