I agree that it's not as bad as COINTELPRO. That doesn't make it right, though.

I'll inline my other comment: Mass gatherings of any kind are a public safety issue, and an organized nation-wide protest with anarchist overtones is hardly the least likely to result in violence and property damage. For police to not gather and share information on what to expect would be stupid.

You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.

See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Oakland#Protestor_conduc...

Go watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ6mhRZ8LjM

Now we can see the police and FBI behavior toward the civil rights movement for what it was: the police helping people in power stay in power.

One of the defaults on Hacker News is a general skepticism toward increasing police power. It's amazing to me how quickly that can switch to justification when it's the "wrong" people getting policed. The reason Aaron Swartz got pursued so vigorously is exactly the reason that Occupy did: they were both (correctly) perceived as a political threat to people with power and wealth.

I'm just saying the documents mentioned above[1] don't back up your claims, and that what they do describe is mundane, expected behavior. (I know this because I read them myself, rather than relying on the summary of someone with a clear agenda.) If you weren't speaking in the context of the thread, why post in it?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7881884

One of the defaults on Hacker News is a general skepticism toward increasing police power.

First of all, that's not a default of Hacker News, that's a default of individual users of Hacker News. If you want a community of uniform opinion, I suggest digging out your dog-eared copy of 1984 and re-reading the scene of the two-minutes' hate to see where that leads.

Secondly, I'd like to point out that I share that default, but with the additional (and seemingly rare) default of skepticism toward reporting about increasing police power.

That is something I would expect, as the grandparent indicates, in the USSR. I don't expect it in the United States.

You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.

See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Oakland#Protestor_conduc...

Or do they do striaghtforward police work, provide a detail of officers at protests and counterprotests just in case anything gets out of hand, and generally behave reasonably?

There is a very far divide between "wholly ignorant" and "actively subverting." There is also a far divide between that and "sharing information on what to expect."

See also: undercover police excesses in the UK and US, including having children with activists to maintain cover.

According to the documents Naomi Wolf (your link!) cites, this is pretty much what happened. Try reading them for yourself instead of ignorantly complaining about "propaganda".

The fact that your motivation is political does not provide a license to break the law, and you must expect a response from law enforcement if you do so.

Because of that, I believe that political activity should be given relatively wide latitude for anything that is basically related to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. For example, here in San Francisco, a person blocking traffic for the hell of it might get ticketed for jaywalking. But if a group of protestors takes to the streets, the police will just direct traffic around it and keep an eye on it as long as it stays peaceful. And I think that's about right.