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Spain: Anti-globalization webs criminalized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nueva Radio | 18.01.2002 19:23

The spanish police starts an operation of spionage and criminalization against the anti-globalization movement on the internet as a start of their period in the Presidence of the European Union.

january 15, 2002

Rebelión among the surveilled webs

Adolfo Mena/Rebelión

What was a voiced secret has now been acknowledged the last two days by the spanish National Police and spread by various press agencies -EFE and COLPISA- as well as several newsmedia -El Norte de Castilla, Ideal, Las Provincias, La Verdad-. The information services of the National Police and the Civil Guard have revealed that since December '01 they spy and track the alternative information networks on the Internet with the aim of facing the ati-globalization movement.

"Information and pervention are our two main weapons," has been the excuse of the experts of the National Police according to news agency COLPISA. The sources counted eight alternative web servers which they have criminalized as "main resources of anti-system elements to spread all over Europe schedules of the main protests as well as urban guerilla warfare tactics."

The criminalized webs are, according to informations offered by police services, Barcelona Indymedia, Observatorio Global, International Protest Action, Nodo50, Acción Internacional de Estudiantes, Rebelion, La Haine and Sin Dominio.

Without any judicial cause or legal action against these alternative collectives, the police services have started a campagin of criminalization. The sources of the police defend their spionage saying that these media organize sabotages against planned activities and "promote street-fighting." The security experts of the Ministry of the Interior, without giving any detailed informations or proof, say that they have detected urban guerilla warfare tactics and sabotage methods to provoke and face the security forces deployed under the demonstrations.

The police forces justify their actions with the events that took place in Genua, where the police killed an activist. Those days of repression and murder were described by a spanish police official that spoke to COLPISA as "important failures on the part of the police because of, taht's it, lack of information."

This spionage has also been acknowledged by the Guvernor of Valencia, Carmen Mas, who said last monday that "the police has been investigating during the last several months on the internet the movements of the anti-globalization groups" and explained that "those investigations have intensified because of the Euro-Mediterranean Summit taking place in Valencia next april," according to a report of EFE. The guvernor also acknowledged that "these sources of information are investigated by other the police in other autonomou communities as well."

Nueva Radio
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