Terminal behavior. The rhetoric of industry and this is the rhetoric of government and all corporations is that we dont need policing, to donate oversight. Most people i think would be shocked to learn that the agriculture industry actually , not one that protects farm animals are in their lives the Animal Welfare act does not apply to animals that are raised for food. It only applies to animals at the time of their death, and that law exempts poultry, which are 90 of the animals that are killed on factory farms. On top of that, 25 states carve out specific exemptions for customary practices, and those premises are defined by industry itself as whenever they see as business as usual. In other words, between 89 billion animals are killed every single year for food in this country alone. I say all this because it puts investigators in a different light. They are the only way that we can know what is going on behind closed doors. The response to these investigations has not been to change Animal Welfare standards, or to change the abusive practices, but to get the people who are exposing them. They were 10 bills introduced last year that criminalize undercover investigations of factory farms and slaughterhouses. They include language i will talk about in a minute about banning photography, videos, and enhance criminal penalties for that. This has passed in several states. They are green on the map. In 2013, 12 bills have been introduced. They had been defeated in every state. In tennessee, it got to the governors desk. Thats how toxic it became. I will talk about how there is one bill pending, by far the worst that has been introduced. These bills have really evolved into three different types. You should know about them. The bread and butter, the standard criminalizing photography. It includes language like this. Anyone who records an image or a sound from a factory farm and also include anyone who uploads, downloads, transfers or otherwise since recorded images of or sound from the Agricultural Operations over the internet. The second type of bill is what i will call mandatory reporting requirements. The industry is trying to say, we are not trying to outlaw these investigations. We care how animals are treated. If workers see this, you have to report it in 24 hours. If youre not familiar with these issues, it sounds reasonable. If you see workers beating turkeys with pipes, you should tell somebody about it. You know, see something, say something, right . Those are the catchphrases that are used. But its important to remember that on some of the most marginalized, disenfranchised populations, people who dont speak english, who dont have easy access to attorneys, the thought of blowing the whistle on these abuses, they could lose their job and not be able to provide for their family. Its an unfair burden on them. Thats what this is about. The third type of bill focuses on misrepresentation. That is an attempt to go after people who are applying for work lawfully and the industry gets punked on this. They didnt realize who was applying for the job, didnt do their research, and they try to go after them in hindsight as having fraudulent intention in applying for a job. The important thing to remember is its one thing to pad your resume applying for a job. Applying for a job here at the University Im sure there are some professors who have done that to enhance their c. V. A bit and thats totally appropriate to ask questions about. Its not something thats appropriate to go to jail for five years. Theve all heard of alec . American legislative exchange council. Alec in 2003, they gave 10,000 to the organization and in exchange they get a seat at the table in drafting legislations. Those bills are taken and introduced where the colleagues have no idea that the legislation was written by smithklein, monsanto, the others. This animal and terrorism act was written by these industries. The model includes things like undercover investigations and really dangerous language about materially or financially supporting people who are doing things like this in order to prepare, plan, carry out or promote these activities. This is not just about undercover investigators, about arsonists or the Animal Liberation front. Its about people like us. Make absolutely no mistake about the intent of this language. Its about people who are sharing the information on line, writing about it, and people like me who are speaking out in defense of political prisoners. This all has to be viewed in the post9 11 context. This is from the freedom of information act documented, obtained from the fbi that shows the bureau was actually considering terrorism prosecutions against undercover investigators as far as as 1993. 2003. Back as this isnt about property destruction or arson. This is about people taking photographs. This is another foia request. These are presentations given by the fbi to new fbi agents. This is one page on Animal Rights and ecoactivists. Notice them being engaged in a Public Relations war, how media is vital to every part of their campaigns. God forbid, sometimes media is even slanted in their favor and sometimes they use celebrities. This rhetoric, in addition to being a top fbi priority of a terrorism threat is also embraced by corporations and of course politicians. When that meat recall happened in california and soon after, another investigation shut down the slaughterhouse, the industry put pressure on law makers, members of congress, who in turn sent a letter to the usda and said undercover investigations were an act of terrorism. These were things that protected Public Safety and exposed illegal activity. Now the industry has just gone off the deep end with how they talk about these things. Theyre comparing them to hate crimes. Theyre saying its no different than carving out special legislation to go after people who were are burning crosses and attacking people at mosques. Theres kind of a difference difference being that one is about exposing information in order to benefit the public and empower us as consumers and individuals in a democracy, the other is about instilling fear using violence against disenfranchised groups. Now all this being said, if there is something to leave you all with through this presentation, and i think its a positive one, i say that because these aggag bills have overwhelmingly backfired across the country. This is a really good example. The chronicle had an editorial talking about how this was the worst p. R. Gaffe since new coke. I would have tweaked have a little and said crystal pepsi. Thats how bad this was for industry. But thats what happens, every time one of these aggag bills comes up, the clips run. The youtube videos are embedded. And as theyre speaking saying we care so much about animals, all this, the animal abuse footage is rolling behind them. I mean its unbelievable how much this has backfired. Not only people like carrie underwood, but its a very main stream demographic thats not left, not activist, thats not Animal Rights, thats outraged by this. I think a fantastic example of this, of how toxic sunshine is to these bills, is the first prosecution that happened in utah. A woman named amy meyer was charged for filming a slaughter house from the public easement. She went to this place because she knew abuse was happening. She heard that cows were being pushed around by bulldozers, much like that situation that led to the largest meat recall in u. S. History, and she had an interest in seeing what was happening. I have a video ill be putting up on my website. But it shows heavy equipment moving these sick animals and she was charged. I wrote an electoral article about it on my own web site and in 24 hours it was getting hundreds of thousands of views. Went up on reddit and it brought the site down. I know that word viral doesnt mean a lot any more, but i think this legitimately went viral pretty fast. The prosecutor was like, ok, were going to drop all the charges. Think about what this reflects. This is criminal activity until the point people know whats going on and get pissed off about it and then its oh, no, no, no, we didnt mean to do that, amy is not going to be prosecuted. This North Carolina bill thats still pending is not about agriculture. Its not about factory farming or slaughter houses. It is so broad it includes every industry and im not being hyperbolic there. It is called the commerce protection act. It includes tim perks mining, processing, workers rights violation at an automobile plant to someone exposing food safety issues at a cream cheese processor. I dont know why i pick these examples it could be anything. It could be monsanto because everyone is talking about monday about it right now. Theyre wrapped up in this legislation as well. Its really a reflection of how all this is expanding radically and expanding overseas. All of these tactics and arrests are showing up in spain, austria, finland, france, the u. K. So to wrap this up and to leave a bit of time for question and answer i think we need to dispel this rhetoric of the terrorism apparatus only being used against criminals. What were seeing is if you are effective enough, organized and bold and ambitious enough and are actually threatening corporate profits, criminal activity is redefined. That really is a theme throughout all the presentations you just heard. To me, though, thats incredibly inspiring. I focus on some pretty dark, depressing, horrible stuff as my, i guess, chosen area of work and its not the most uplifting work but this gives me a whole lot of work because you have a group of people that have a couple hundred dollars worth of course video and audio equipment that are rattling the industry to their core. We all have this. Some of the Biggest Industries on the planet are terrified of this, of using this to take photo and video documentation. They are also terrified not only about using that but about sharing it easily and cheaply online. If sinclair had a youtube account the dialogue would have changed that much faster. So in that spirit, thank you all for having me. [applause] all right. Well, thanks, everyone. I want to ask a couple questions of the panel, and then were going to open it up. We have about 40 minutes left so were good on time. I wanted to ask specifically to grainne, but id be curious to hear the cfa seems to be a law thats taken over and usurped any other laws in terms of this type of activism for hackers. They dont need aggag when they have the csa, right . Could you tell us just how the u. S. Is going after hackers and these types as opposed to other countries . Sure. So one of the really interesting things that happened as part of the lulsac case is that it was an International Group of anons that turned out to be involved and there were two on the indictment from ireland and two from england and Jeremy Hammond from the u. S. And what happened was that in ireland, the two people were spoken with by the police there and then were sort of let go. Im sure there is a trial in ireland, but no one ever talked about it. I guess im misinformed about this. But in england there was just the two people who were arrested and eventually pled guilty and were sentenced to between no time, probation, and 30 months. And in england, 30 months means 15 months and kind of just as a practicing attorney in the u. S. I just kind of couldnt believe it. But your time in prison is counted if you are on house arrest. They were all on house arrest during the time, so basically all of their time is already served. And i think that the u. S. Is probably not going to extradite them here, but if they were to come here they would be facing 40 years in prison. What were seeing with jeremy is the time hes been incarcerated without bail, the judge denied him any bail. Rapists are routinely granted bail. Other hackers are granted bail. He is not allowed out at all under any circumstances. So he has already served the same amount of time in prison that his codefendants could have served. Its a totally out of whack regime in the United States from an international perspective. Its just completely different. In the u. K. , the news also was saying how they received these really, really harsh sentences that amounted to make 30 days in prison and they were such extreme sentences. I was watching it with robby and he was ok, my god, this is going to be really high the judge kept saying this is a grievous crime, its terrible what you all did. And its like 30 months. In the u. S. That is like you let him off easy. Yeah, the same is true throughout the u. S. Criminal justice system, too. We would be remiss to not point out that the drug wars have been happening and young black and brown men have been going to prison on bogus conspiracy charges for decades. And right now we have an opportunity to draw a new group of peoples attention to that. The u. S. Prisonindustrial complex is out of control in many ways. Were seeing that with the cfa and seeing that with the targeting of political people but its happening throughout the country. Ireland . You want to talk about it in . I mean it looks like those two guys are going to trial in july. For what . The expectation is that the sentencing will be minimal to nothing. And i want to ask the group one more question. You address how the terrorism moniker has been used against Animal Rights and activists. Were starting to see more and more its obvious to me at least that they want to do that with the anons, with the hackers. The cyber crimes unit, and theyre saying in much the same way that 10 or so years ago they said that environmental, ecological terrorists are the number one domestic threat, and now theyre talking cyber terrorism. That is the new word they are getting amped on. I would like to hear peoples perspective on how is that creeping in and how do you see that affecting the future of the activists online world . And i think that is the future of where this all is heading. Part of the reason we focus so much on this in my work is the potential for these tactics being easily applied to a wide range of other social movements. Government repression is certainly nothing new to any radical movement but the specific tools and how theyre being used in my opinion were really pioneered against Animal Rights activists because they were seen as so marginalized, easy to break off into targets. Moving forward, some of the other movements, things to look out for are not only how this rhetoric is being used in the press, because thats how the foundation is really laid, but how is begins to creep into legal proceedings, whether or not people are actually charged under a terrorism enhansment. Its ways of injecting that language as much as possible. Then a dramatic shift happens which i would anticipate in the next couple years with groups like anonymous, specifically targeting people because of their politics and activism. Like the animal terrorism act, grainne talked about how legislation is already being used and misused as a way to go after internet activists. There is no doubt going to be new legislation coming down the pike targeting that brand of organization. When you have that line of foundation, people are being smeared outside in the press, pushing the limits of existing laws in the courtroom and when new laws are being drafted, thats when really the full weight of these apparatus are coming down on these movements. Were seeing a lot of the elements escalate very quickly with all thief heard about. Yeah, its interesting with anonymous. Do you remember the photo of the polish parliamentarians do donning that mask . A few weeks later there was a wall street journal with a headline claiming that anonymous is going to have the capability to take down the power grid in a couple years. I was not surprised about the timing of it because when the polish parliamentarians were using the mask, its clear the mask became a symbol for popular discontent and unrest, not terrorism, right . And it just felt like propaganda of some sort. And the story didnt stick. You know, everyone, subsequent news reports discounted it. They were like come on, why would anonymous want to take down the very thing that allows them to organize . [laughter] its like, so ridiculous, right . And their m. O. Is not about endangering lives at all. It just points to the fact that again, theyre often misunderstood. Theres a handful of news reports that call them terrorists but in some ways they kind of have won the Media Relations battle. Thats one of the reasons why the legal part has to be very effective as a way to scare the heck out of them against moving forward. I still think the hammer would be strong. The history of the Computer Fraud and abuse act is one in which its just become stronger and stronger with each passing year because theyve amended the bill many, many times. But it does point to the fact, and thats what i really liked about wills presentation, is that people are outraged. They see the benefits of these different movements, and people are seeing the benefits of them and the media is not delegitimizing them in the ways that they often do. Thats going to really freak out government officials and corporations and we have to really watch out because theyre going to be really crafty in their response, given the fact that these movements are accessible to some degree. I think one of the other things we saw, after Aaron Schwarz died there were calls all throughout the internet to reform the cfa. And they were talking about reducing the charges. What had been proposed right up to his death was to sort of double all the charges. So if you did the same thing you would get twice as long. Right now theres a 500 you have to be accused of 500 worth of damage. They wanted to lower that to 200. So there were all these like reform maneuvers in the works that were going to make it an even worse law. So when he died and there were all these calls for reform, everyone was saying reform it, make it a better law, and what came out of that was making it actually a worse law. I think it was kind of disheartening to watch and also sort of predictable that thats what lawmakers were going to return with. I think will is right and wills knowledge of sort of prior movements and precursors to this really will be illustrative to people watching the cfa. Were going to open up to questions. Because we dont have audio in here, you have to wait until its your turn and speak into the microphone. Im part of a group that supports all these activists and i want to encourage people to go to the websites of these activists and contribute to their restitution funds and legal funds. Jeremys twin brother has a hes asking the judge to basically ask to say time served instea