Alex Kane of Alternet reports that Beau Hodai’s Source Watch report “provides an eye-opening look into how US counter-terrorism agencies monitored the Occupy movement in 2011 and 2012.” Government documents, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy/DBA Press, from the National Security Agency and other government offices revealed “a grim mosaic of ‘counter-terrorism’ operations” and negative attitudes towards activists and other citizens.

For instance, the largest Occupy Phoenix action took place in early December of 2011, outside of meetings held there by the American Legislative Council (ALEC). ALEC hired 49 active but off-duty Phoenix Police Department (PPD) officers and nine retired PPD officers to act as private security during ALEC’s meetings.

The upshot, Hodai reports, is “the wholesale criminalization of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of American citizens who have dared to voice opposition to what is increasingly viewed as the undue influence of private corporate/financial interests in the functions of public government.”

Beau Hodai, “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch/DBA Press, May 2013, http://www.prwatch.org/files/Dissent or Terror FINAL.pdf.

Alex Kane, “How America’s National Security Apparatus- in Partnership With Big Corporations—Cracked Down on Dissent,” Alternet, May 21, 2013, http://www.alternet.org/print/news-amp-politics/how-americas-national-security-apparatus-partnership-big-corporations-cracked-down.

Student Researcher: Andie Bugajski, Sonoma State University

Faculty Evaluator: Melinda Milligan, Sonoma State University

Review Article with Credder