Activist tricked into 6-year relationship with undercover cop tells her story
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
UK Special Branch have said (in the 1980s) that they want an informant on every street. Duncan Campbell (who released information about eg ECHELON 30 years ago) has a great book about pervasive UK surveillance.
It does not surprise me that law enforcement would want to keep tabs on the more extreme elements of the environmental movement, any more than that they'd want to keep tabs on the more extreme elements of any other political or religious movement. (Unfortunately, it can be hard to filter the truly extreme from the loudmouthed-but-harmless, and there has probably been a lot of wasted effort over the years in infiltrating groups and surveilling individuals who weren't at all dangerous.)
Here's a different group from the 1980s.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19841227&id=...
They tried to dig up a corpse in order to send the head to a member of the royal family. That may have been posturing, but it's obviously going to draw law enforcement attention.
Here's another group that did dig up a corpse in order to blackmail a family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Newchurch_Guinea_Pigs
There was a bunch of firebombing activity in the 1980s. The animal rights activists said the intent was to create a small fire that would be discovered by smoke detectors, triggering the sprinkler systems, causing water damage. This happened in department stores selling fur coats.
Animal Liberation Front pretty much started in UK, and some people claim it's caused many millions of pounds of economic damage. There are unacceptable levels of harassment and intimidation in some recent animal rights campaigns (and this is partly driven in changes to law which make protesting less legal).
So, police have these spiky things which they probably should be investigating. But it's hard to tell when someone has a "Rats Have Rights" mug whether they're a peaceful protestor using strictly legal means, or if they're going to become radicalised and start doing actions under the name of ALF. And police clearly didn't understand the mostly youthy animal rights movement in UK.
Anti hunt campaigns had uneasy alliances of anarchists, class war activists, and animal rights campaigners. Class War caused extra attention because their newsletter had "page 3 beauties" - photos of police officers who'd been hospitalised after violence, and they'd made many statements about being prepared to use violence against people. (Hunt saboteurs had strict rules about not using violence against people. There was some debate about whether it was okay to use violence to defend yourself if you were attacked by hunt followers.)
There were a bunch of legal, peaceful, campaigning groups that tackled things like vegetarianism and veganism; vivisection; primate rights; farm animal welfare. There were a bunch of groups that appeared to be peaceful but which were used as feeder groups to more extreme groups. (EG the National Front and British National Party set up an animal rights group, campaigning on ritual slaughter, to drive people to their fascistic groups.) And then there were the obvious activist groups who would raid laboratories. Some of those groups tried to use legal loopholes - they would enter a lab, not cause any damage or take any animals but take all the paperwork they could find, then scan and copy as much of the paperwork and then return the papers. Theft requires the intent to permanently deprive the owner. That tactic didn't work, they were caught and prosecuted, and so activists went back to liberating animals and causing as much damage as they could.)
If you're looking for an at the time account you could try to find back issues of "ArkAngel", which had debate and information about activist action.
Later they got backlash for stealing dogs, and not the rats and other un-cute animals, so they invaded again, and released all the other animals.
Then people started to notice that the stolen dogs were being released on the streets too, with the activists realizing they could not care for the dogs.
The laboratory if I remember correctly was working with antibiotics and some other medicine, meaning that people spread in nature diseased animals, or animals that needed medicine to survive anyway.
Those animals are very destructive.
Essentially you had lots of surveillance teams and analysts who had nothing more to do, because the Irish terrorist threat had pretty much evaporated over night.
They kept watching the Russians and some internal SOCA type targets (organised crime), but mostly there were lots of people twiddling their thumbs.
Alongside this, the animal rights campaigners had done things that were vaguely "terroristic" in nature. Since the target of the animal rights campaigners were often the elite who hunted foxes, the hunt group lobbied to make sure these groups got Special Branch's attention. Special Branch like paid overtime, hence they got someone new to focus on. The hunt campaigners won however and hunting with hounds got banned. Though it must be pointed out that a large number of the public in general favoured the ban by 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_Act_2004#Public_opinio...
Now nearly everyone is working on the Islamic desks. Some Russian stuff still and maybe 1% on the Irish to keep an eye on them, but the large Irish informant network will have been left to rot.
As a side note, the Security Services have traditionally had difficulties building informant networks inside the Islamic targets (inside the UK). The Irish responded well to payment in cash and drugs and "look the other way whilst we continue our Mafia-like activities", since for the most part, they were a well armed and well funded crime syndicate with a religious hard-core. Islamic fundamentalists haven't responded so well to offers of cash for information.
Also in terms of putting officers inside these groups, the UK has a very small minority of officers that could actually blend in undercover, although the trend is increasing. Total minority ethnic police officers made up 5.5% of all officers on 31 March 2015. There were 6,715 Minority Ethnic police officers in the 43 police forces on 31 March 2014. This represents 5.2 per cent of the police officer total. Only a handful of officers become Special Branch officers and they are hand picked (I believe unofficially). The chances of a having a Muslim minority Special Branch officer, prepared to spy of other Muslims is therefore rather slight.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-workforce-...
They were a major target in the 1980s when they were firebombing department stores.
Anti hunt campaigners got increased attention when the Hunt Retribution Squad started desecrated a grave with the intent to remove the corpse and send the head to Princess Anne, again in the 1980s.
There was some crossover between the groups. Increased restriction on rights to protest and increased protections of businesses have probably created more extremism. Now instead of campaigning against a laboratory using animals the protestors will campaign against the companies who supply the lab - companies selling stationary or office equipment or chairs, or supplying admin staff.
See ref role of "Anna" here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_McDavid
What value would not having children of your own have if you were a woman of childbearing age when the relationship started and that time had passed by the time your fake relationship fell apart and a new one had gotten underway after a long time of dealing with trust issues?
I hope she takes the government to the cleaners for an extremely large sum of money. Millions of pounds at a minimum.
The problem with this kind of punishment is that when we refer to taking "the government's money," we really mean making taxpayers pay because of the government's mistake. How many police departments (or school districts[1], for another example) are going to go bankrupt because they got sued into the ground for doing something abominable? Would that really be a net benefit for everyone if they did?
Ideally, the cost would force taxpayers to force the government to institute some kind of reform, but the repercussions are usually far too indirect to create real reform incentives, so we basically just end up paying taxes to people we hurt because of our bad policies, while nothing really changes.
Lawsuits against public sector entities without reform are basically useless. They have no reason to care when it's not their money. Rather, I'd prefer to see the careers of everyone responsible for these things thrown into the gutter, maybe criminally prosecuted for it, to send a real message that such things will not be tolerated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...
> Lawsuits against public sector entities without reform are basically useless.
No, they send a very clear message about what is and what is not appropriate behavior on the part of government entities and their representatives.
Note that it still won't give her back those 6 years of her life and it will not heal the psychological scars. But it will send a message.
As for the careers of those involved: good luck bringing criminal charges, the star witness and principal agent made off to the United States.
What the grandparent is suggesting is making sure that the signal doesn't have to travel as far to have an effect, which is a good thing.
I don't think there's a clear answer, like the "do you push one person in front of a train to save three other people?" question. It's unfortunate that this happened to her, and she should definitely be compensated. As to whether or not the police should continue these tactics, everything involves tradeoffs and most things are best decided on a case by case basis.
I don't see any lives saved here, only a life ruined.
So sure, let's do this on a 'case-by-case' basis. This is the case we're looking at.
No, on a case-by-case basis does not mean 'let's protect people we identify or sympathize with' that's your words, not mine. It means: when looking at these cases we look at each of them individually and try to decide whether or not the good outweighed the bad, it does not say anything about the gender, the attractiveness, the skin color, the weight or the general disposition of the person involved.
You added those things, for no apparent reason.
Applying principles is a way to force ourselves to either make unbiased (or less biased) decisions, or to acknowledge and codify them (e.g. "my principle is that black people = 3/5"). Of course, acknowledging and codifying them makes their horribleness pretty obvious...
I note that: if the case had been reversed and the operative had been a female and the victim a male I would not see the case in any different light.
If the person had been black (which I have no idea about, they might be for all I know) or white, or any other skin color it would not make me feel any different.
If they had been ugly or pretty it would not make a difference (again, I don't know what she looks like).
And finally, if they were assholes in general or sweet personalities I'd not make any difference about it.
What would make a difference is whether or not there was any actual suspicion about this person and whether or not this person was charged with some crime, which is what the case-by-case referred to.
The rest you simply made up.
Absent some grave danger that we are currently not aware of I really see absolutely no reason why a government operative would engage in a multi-year exclusive partner-level relationship involving sex with another person under false pretenses.
On the scale of Bad Things Cops Have Done In The Last Six Years, pretending to be someone's boyfriend seems pretty insignificant. Cops in America will shoot a black teenager just for walking down the street (literally). That's the loss of someone's entire life, not just six years of it. In fact, police frequently kill innocent people of all races due to misunderstandings or with stray bullets. It is unfortunate, but we all understand that it happens.
It is possible that you would be equally eloquent in your deridement of police procedures if those stories were on the homepage of hackernews. But I doubt it.
It's not one officer, it was a group of officers who lied to women, created lives with those women, had children by those women.
That's a pretty bad thing to do to another person but that subtlety may be lost on you.
> On the scale of Bad Things Cops Have Done In The Last Six Years, pretending to be someone's boyfriend seems pretty insignificant.
That's the subject of this thread, it's not as simple as pretending to be someone's boyfriend, it is pretending to be someone's boyfriend for 6 whole years. That is not something trivial, that is a very bad abuse of government power if the person you do this to is not engaging in a crime proportionate to that measure. Note that without government assistance he would not have been able to pull this off.
> Cops in America will shoot a black teenager just for walking down the street (literally).
Yes, and it is an extremely bad thing that this should happen. And I think that there is a lot wrong with American society that such excesses are not dealt with swiftly and very forcefully because the general message appears to be that this is ok. See also: driving while black and a whole pile of evidence that seem to indicate that America, while on the outside seen as inclusive and a place where everybody is equal is underneath that veneer a terribly racist society where being born black is equal to a much higher percentage chance of being murdered by the police or jailed for a significant portion of your life. But that is not the subject of this thread.
> In fact, police frequently kill innocent people of all races due to misunderstandings or with stray bullets. It is unfortunate, but we all understand that it happens.
It is not just 'unfortunate', it is an extremely bad thing and the lack of police restraint in the USA is something that has never ceased to amaze me and I'm really happy I don't live there. Police should be respected, not feared and the color of your skin should not be a major factor in whether or not you're going to end up with a police bullet in your back (or 16 of them, to refer to one recently in the news case).
> It is possible that you would be equally eloquent in your deridement of police procedures if those stories were on the homepage of hackernews. But I doubt it.
That's your problem, not mine. If you followed my comment threads over the years you'd know that I'm a pretty outspoken fellow when it comes to issues like these. If such a thread were to gain enough votes on HN (even though strictly speaking not HN material) and if I were to notice it (I really don't read every thread and the homepage scrolls by pretty quickly) then I'm sure you'd find me just about as incensed as I'm now if not a whole lot worse.
Your projections of what I would or would not do are entirely your own.
Your comment reminds me of those comments that we shouldn't do 'x' because there is still world hunger. Yes, all those things you listed are bad and we should do something about them. But we should also do something about this particular case because it is bad all by itself and we don't have to limit our attempts to improve to the world to the very worst things.
"driving while black" is not a real thing. Here's the study that debunked it:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820500088952
The phrase/meme of "driving while black" came about because in the 1990s black drivers were highly overrepresented among those pulled over for speeding in New Jersey. But on inspection it turned out they were only overrepresented among people pulled over because they were equally overrepresented among people who were speeding.
(this was checked using hidden speed cameras to see how much people speed when cops aren't around - those who commissioned the study expected to find a bias and were surprised at the result.)
More here: http://zombiemeditations.com/2015/05/02/profiling/
If they have evidence of a plot, then they can act on that. But there is no right for police to fuck up someone's life on the suspicion that they might do something (and in this case, something non-specific).
It's the same act, just for a worse motive (grabbing his wealth rather than stopping terrorists). Yet few would suggest the law should get involved.
Hint: this wasn't just a relationship between two people, one of whom was deceiving the other about their intentions: it was a relationship that existed because a government agency wanted to spy on the target and their friends.
Would it also be wrong for the state to send a sexy lady cop to seduce a gay basher/abortion doctor killer/female genital mutilator/other unpopular terrorist group?
Or is there no principle, but this just seems unpleasant and the lady seems like a sympathetic person with a good cause? (I too don't think it was an effective use of police resources.)
Yes. That's the entire point of the United States Constitution. The State has an overwhelming amount of power and resources relative to any of its citizens, including the richest ones. Our entire union is based on a document that outlines limits to that power, limits that often don't apply to citizens and corporations.
That's why the state can only rarely stifle speech or actively exclude minorities (at least jn theory) but private organizations like the Boy Scouts of America can discriminate against legally protected groups and corporations can fire employees at the drop of a hat if they say something publicly that the employer disapproves of.
》Would it also be wrong for the state to send a sexy lady cop to seduce a gay basher/abortion doctor killer/female genital mutilator/other unpopular terrorist group?
On a sting or a short term undercover op to catch someone who is actually dangerous to the public? Sure, it would be acceptable. This isn't an issue with an absolute answer, but six years of subversion that cause immense emotional pain to an environmentalist who clearly poses no threat (assuming they were competent it should maybe take 6-12 months to figure that out)? Are we talking about US Law enforcement or the Soviet era KGB?
Well, that's generally the case. Free speech is essentially a restriction of government power.
Also you are purposefully ignoring the scale. It is ok to jail someone for a few days, even weeks until their innocence is proven. If you jail them for decades, that's another story.
So pretend relationship is fine, 6 years of pretend relationship is not ok.
This man changed his name with the intent to deceive. That's not legal for other citizens.
And it is very plausible that an act done for Motive X should have a punishment, while one done for Motive Y should not -- particularly when Motive X is the real problem and restricting the scope of the law is desirable.
It's also totally reasonable for laws to outlaw some kinds of deceit but not others. Some kinds of deceit are to be tolerated -- "I like your sense of humor" -- but others -- "I don't have an STD" -- are not.
The fact that he's doing this as a deception at the orders of his boss makes this relationship a-symmetrical and causes the lady to lose a number of years that she'll never have back and will likely cause her grave trust issues for many years to come. The fact that it lasted for 6 whole years makes it a lot worse. How big a chunk of someone's life wasted is 'acceptable damage'? 10? 50? All of it?
You don't mess with people like that, especially not when you're nominally tasked with protecting people.
Pretending to be someone else as a private individual would be deplorable behavior, setting this up as a government institution makes it actionable and in my opinion this sort of operation should be illegal unless there is a very clear and very present danger related to that particular person, I see no evidence of that.
Note that the lady was never charged with anything whatsoever, she was simply used as a tool for a substantial chunk of her life and then discarded the moment the game was up.
> His covert mission was terminated in October 2009 when he was summoned by his handlers to a meeting at an anonymous truckstop.
> In January 2010, he mysteriously reappeared. What Lisa and the other campaigners did not know at that time was that Kennedy was quitting the police to avoid being assigned to a humdrum desk job. But he had not discarded his fictional persona of “Mark Stone”, and continued to be involved in political campaigns. He has admitted that he was employed by a clandestine private security firm that was paid by commercial firms to monitor protesters.
Presumably this wasn't just due to his desire for the relationship itself, since he could have simply resigned the police force and continued the relationship without being an undercover operative.
Is sending a sexy lady cop go seduce anti-gay terrorists also unacceptable? Particularly if it turned out that they weren't actually gay bashing but instead just protesting gay weddings, pushing employers to fire gay employees, and other assholeish but legal behavior?
Yes, and that would be a very bad thing.
> Again - would this be OK if he just wanted a shag while undercover and his bosses were unaware?
He's an undercover cop, what his bosses are or are not aware of is immaterial. He's on 'company time' so to speak and if he does things while on 'company time' when interacting with people the company tasked him to interact with and he does not tell them about it that does not absolve them, especially not if that lasts for 6 years. That would make them dangerously incompetent if they weren't aware of it.
> Is sending a sexy lady cop go seduce anti-gay terrorists also unacceptable?
To seduce them per-se: absolutely not acceptable, especially not if she sexy lady cop is the one taking the initiative.
To gather evidence: to pretend to be their friend (not to seduce them) for a limited time, maybe, if the crimes those people are engaged in are serious enough and that is the only way that evidence can be gathered.
A police officer being ordered by their superior to have sex with a subject is already crossing a whole pile of lines. After all, the police is supposedly there to serve the public, not to get off on the public.
> Particularly if it turned out that they weren't actually gay bashing but instead just protesting gay weddings, pushing employers to fire gay employees, and other assholeish but legal behavior?
See above. It's all about proportionality.
Depending on the jurisdiction such impersonation could be a crime all by itself.
If people are suggesting the law get involved in this particular case, it's because a state actor is involved. If a state actor ruined a man's life in the manner you describe, I think almost everybody of sane mind would want to see heads roll.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland...
edit: I looked around a bit, apparently wherever this happened has "Sexual Assault by Fraud" laws. Apparently the only law that exists of this type in the US is pretending to be someone's spouse and having sex with them (written in the 1800s but updated in California a few years ago): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception#United_State...
Though there have been attempts to make it illegal in the US to lie about pretty much anything in order to get consent for sex: http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/11/rape_by_fraud_n...
How far will this go? What if I lie about loving someone to get them consent, will whether I actually loved them suddenly be decided by a jury of my peers? We're going to see a lot of jail sentences being given to people (let's be honest - men) who lied about being single.
> > But the jury convicted the marketing manager of three counts of sexual assault at the complainant’s flat in Chester.
This is a serious criminal offence, as serious as rape. It's in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (which, incidentally, covers David Cameron's alleged (totally not true) pig fucking - live animal is criminal, dead human is criminal, dead animal = not criminal)
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents
Sexual Assault by penetration: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead...
Sexual Assault: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead...
This person did not get consent and could not reasonably believe that consent was given. (According to the court.)
>According to The Guardian,[10] Kennedy sued the police for ruining his life and failing to "protect" him from falling in love with one of the environmental activists whose movement he infiltrated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_%28police_officer...)
no kidding. Now taxpayers are to pay him for all the pleasure he tortured himself with. "The things i'm gonna do for my Country" (NSFW - detailed picture of the dangers of an undercover agent's job. Very different from our office jobs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Rq... )
Words have meaning, and rape is forcing someone to have sex with you when they don't want to have sex with you. She wanted to have sex with him, although he deceived her about some of his key features.
Is it rape when one discovers afterwards that their partner is a closet alcoholic? No it isn't. What about if they're chronically unfaithful? Neither. If a golddigger has sex with someone who made them falsely believe they were rich, the former hasn't been raped, merely deceived. Even if they're HIV+, it's not rape. It might be poisoning, or homicide attempt, it certainly is awful and punishable, but it's not rape.
Concealing that you're a cop on duty is despicable and might be (at least ought to be) illegal, but rape it isn't; pretending otherwise is unhelpful and insulting to rape victims.
It's pointless to hang on technicalities though - regardless of whether this is legally 'rape', it is undoubtedly severe emotional trauma.
I don't think you'd consider it a mere technicality, if someone called it "murder", or "extortion", or "battery", although all of those are crimes, which generally entail severe emotional trauma. You can stay general and just call it a "crime", if you don't think the specifics are relevant, but it's not a rape.
This sloppy thinking, "it's an hideous deception and it's related to sex, so it must be rape", is the same kind of sloppy thinking that makes citizens accept things they shouldn't, for the sake of "homeland security" or "the war against Terror". So it does matter.
As for "Concealing who you are", if you pick an open / vague interpretation of what "who you are" means, you're creating an awful lot of legal insecurity. How many estranged spouses have you heard describing their ex as "(s)he wasn't the person I though (s)he was"? I've heard that one more than a couple of times. That is no basis for rape accusations.
The woman in the article has had her intimate life violated, funded and directed by the state, no less. That violation is the essence of rape. Whether or not it fits the relevant legal definition (which varies wildly between jurisdictions), what has happened is functionally the same.
It's just like it doesn't actually matter to the victim who comes home to find their house ransacked, whether the law terms it 'robbery' or 'burglary'. And when the victim says "our house was robbed yesterday", the person who corrects them with "actually, you mean 'burgled'" is missing the point.
But that's just a metaphor. In this case, he was literally not the person she thought he was.
No, rape is sex without consent. Force isn't required for something to be rape.
I'd be surprised if, for instance, seducing someone and getting laid by pretending to be substantially wealthier than you are was considered rape. Even pretending that you aren't a convicted felon when you are one would probably not constitute rape. I'd also be surprised if a woman who lied about being a virgin (and maybe had hymenoplasty) was prosecuted as a rapist by her devout husband.
My guess would be that it's considered rape if the deception made the victim believe they had to have intercourse with the liar. If the lie merely made the liar more desirable, it's (possibly unethical) seduction.
This hypothesis would mean, to come back to the original case, that:
* telling you're not a cop when you actually are one is not rape;
* telling that you're a cop when you aren't, and hitting that a sexual favor would buy you some leniency, does constitute rape.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland...
There are other coses from different places. A Jewish woman was told by a man that he was also Jewish. They had sex. He was in fact not Jewish, and he was convicted.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/...
I think the law is looking at what consent actually means.
A while ago there was a lawsuit: a woman had accused a man of raping her, when she found out he did not have magical healing powers. He had convinced her that sleeping with him would cure her of an ailment she had, and she had believed him.
The judge ruled: immoral, but not rape.
Rape is about lack of consent. Gullible people being tricked into consensual sex is bad, but it needs a new word, because rape is already taken. And it would be great if we could leave that definition alone, for the sake of everybody.
For the FBI[0], at least, rape is defined as:
“Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim."
Telling your potential partner that you're an astronaut or a surgeon does not make you a rapist. It's distasteful and immoral, but not rape.
Suggesting otherwise is dangerous to social progress in the fair legal treatment of women, children and other targeted groups.
0: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/recent-program-updates...
> 'A person consents if they agree by choice, and have the freedom and capacity to make that choice'.
An unfortunately interesting example where a small difference can have a major effect.
I think I should have made it an opinion and said "should not" instead of "does not". Thought I can understand the argument that feeling deceived can also lead to anguish, so I understand where there was logic in the way it's been written in the UK (and perhaps also interpreted in the US).
0: http://content.met.police.uk/Article/Definitions/14000084505...
For the FBI[0], at least, rape is defined as:
“Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim."
Telling your potential partner that you're an astronaut or a surgeon does not make you a rapist. Suggesting otherwise is dangerous to social progress in the fair legal treatment of women, children and other targeted groups.
0: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/recent-program-updates...
It's such a betrayal by a government who is supposed to protect us that I can't even fathom it. They stole her trust. There was no proof she herself was a criminal. There were no charges. No warrants.
I don't know whether either should be considered as rape, I'm just amazed how inconsistent the law can be.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-34901925
She consented to have sex with him, that's it. No, it's not right, but it's definitely not rape either. Calling it rape is just wrong and does injustice to real rape victims.
More accurately, he was Mark Kennedy pretending to be someone called Mark Stone. Saying he was Mark Stone didn't magically make him Mark Stone.
>> She consented to have sex with him, that's it.
Because she didn't know he was an undercover policeman. He obtained her consent by abusing his authority as a police officer. His superiors also abused their authority by ordering or permitting this to happen. They took away her ability to make an informed decision about whether she wanted to enter into a sexual relationship with that man.
Nothing justifies this level of abuse, but it's important to remember that "they" will say a small number of environmental and animal rights activists are extremists who use "violence" (against property, with strict rules about no violence against people).
"They" will give the examples of incendiary devices in department stores that sell fur coats or anti fox hunt activists digging up a corpse, and say those were the drivers of this style of surveillance.
They might forget to mention the police involvement in the incendiary devices activity.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/13/police-spies-anima...
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/elle_anna.pdf
Very interesting read.