According to FBI documents obtained through FOIA by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) -- "a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector" -- produced a report specifically for the use of "the corporate security community" on the Occupy protests that aimed to shut down West Coast ports. DSAC also issued tips to corporate clients advising that they avoid "all large gatherings relating to civil issues." As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) put it, such documents show "federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

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Nouel Alba was arrested and arraigned in a Hartford court on Thursday, on charges that she lied to federal agents about an alleged fraud scheme connected to the shootings.

From NBC Connecticut:

Last week, NBC’s Jeff Rossen reported that Alba posted a solicitation on Facebook within hours of the shooting, identifying herself as an aunt of Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old victim.

Later, as families were grieving and the nation was looking for any and every way to help the victims’ families, she asked for funds to pay for the funeral, Rossen reported.

At Alba's instruction on the Facebook page "Victorian Glam Fairys," donors sent money to a PayPal account that Alba controlled and accessed, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

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Of course, it’s impossible to say with certainty which actions "Anonymous" actually pulled off, since its membership is ill-defined and anyone can claim association, not to mention that sometimes Anonymous hacktivists act alone or as part of a subgroup.  Even when Anonymous has put out one of its quintessential videos claiming responsibility for a hack or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service—shutting down a website by flooding it with requests) attack, it hasn’t always turned out to be true.

Given that, below are Anonymous’ “Top 20” for 2012. With its widening arsenal and focus, one can only imagine what these Internet denizens have in store for 2013.

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The Partnership for Civil Justice received the records after a Freedom of Information Act request. They show that once again the agency used counterterrorism agents to track domestic activists -- like they have in the past with environmental, anti-poverty and animal rights groups.

The Times reports that:

The memo said agents discussed “past and upcoming meetings” of the movement, and its spread. It said agents should contact Occupy Wall Street activists to ascertain whether people who attended their events had “violent tendencies.”

The memo said that because of high rates of unemployment, “the movement was spreading throughout Florida and there were several Facebook pages dedicated to specific chapters based on geographical areas.”

The F.B.I. was concerned that the movement would provide “an outlet for a lone offender exploiting the movement for reasons associated with general government dissatisfaction.”

The records provide one of the first glimpses into how deeply involved federal law-enforcement authorities were in monitoring the activities of the movement, which is sometimes described in extreme terms.

An agency spokesman told the paper that “The F.B.I. recognizes the rights of individuals and groups to engage in constitutionally protected activity. While the F.B.I. is obligated to thoroughly investigate any serious allegations involving threats of violence, we do not open investigations based solely on First Amendment activity."

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The bureau reported that there were 157 reported anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2011, down slightly from the 160 recorded in 2010. The 2011 crimes occurred during a period when Islam-bashing propaganda, which initially took off in 2010, continued apace.

The FBI statistics, which are compilations of state numbers, are notoriously understated. Two Department of Justice studies have indicated that the real level of hate crimes in America is some 20-30 times the number reported in the FBI statistics, in part because some 56% of hate crimes are never reported to police and more than half of those that are are mischaracterized as non-hate crimes. Nevertheless, the FBI statistics can be used to get a sense of general trends.

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Before killing himself, the 34-year-old man, who was exposed to Christian Identity white supremacy beliefs and a survivalist lifestyle as a teenager, confessed to killing an Anchorage barista, a Vermont couple and five others he coyly didn’t identify.

The 18-year-old barista was abducted at gunpoint last February, raped and strangled by Keyes, who later dismembered her body and disposed of it in a frozen Alaska lake. Those remains were recovered after Keyes’ arrest in Texas in March.

Now, with some urgency, the FBI is piecing together a timeline of Keyes’ life while various law enforcement investigators throughout the United States are dusting off old homicide cases to see if Keyes, who traveled extensively over the past decade, may be responsible. Those cold cases which have foreign DNA evidence could be the key to identifying Keyes’ as the killer.

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Anthony M. Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, the first to plead guilty and the last of the four to be sentenced, received a six-year term Friday after apologizing in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, Ohio, public radio station WKSU reported. A fifth defendant, Joshua S. Stafford, 23, is undergoing a psychiatric examination.

Earlier, U.S. District Court Judge David Dowd sentenced 26-year-old Douglas L. Wright to 11½ years; 20-year-old Brandon L. Baxter to 10 years, and 20-year-old Connor C. Stevens to eight years.

The men had ties to the Occupy Movement but decided it wasn’t proactive enough,  so they secretly formed an anarchist group — calling itself the Revolutionary People’s Party — and took steps to blow up a highway bridge near Cleveland after discussing bombing other targets, including a Ku Klux Klan gathering spot and a Federal Reserve Bank, court documents allege.

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While Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly endlessly tout the value of Manhattan’s "ring of steel," modeled after the security infrastructure of London’s financial district, they reveal little as to its role tracking car traffic in the city.  Both back the department’s Domain Awareness System (DAS), which can track individuals or incidents (e.g., a suspicious package) through live video feeds from some 3,000 CCTV cameras, 2,600 radiation substances detectors, check license plate numbers, pull up crime reports and cross-check all information against criminal and terrorist databases.

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“I screwed up royally,” Petraeus writes in the note to Shelton, sent November 20. He also notes that he and his wife are trying to work through the affair: “Team Petraeus will survive though [I] have obviously created enormous difficulty for us,” Petraeus wrote. “Holly is, however, once again demonstrating how incredibly fortunate I was to marry her.”

Shelton leaked the note to the New York Post, ABC News and the Daily Mail.

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Via Think Progress:

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The defendants, including a man who served in the U.S. Air Force, were arrested for plotting to bomb military bases and government facilities, and for planning to engage in "violent jihad," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said in a release.

A federal complaint unsealed Monday says 34-year-old Sohiel Omar Kabir of Pomona introduced two of the other men to the radical Islamist doctrine of Anwar al-Awlaki, a deceased al-Qaida leader. Kabir served in the Air Force from 2000 to 2001.

The other two - 23-year-old Ralph Deleon of Ontario and 21-year-old Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales of Upland - converted to Islam in 2010 and began engaging with Kabir and others online in discussions about jihad, including posting radical content to Facebook and expressing extremist views in comments.

They later recruited 21-year-old Arifeen David Gojali of Riverside.

Authorities allege that in Skype calls from Afghanistan, Kabir told the trio he would arrange their meetings with terrorists. Kabir added the would-be jihadists could sleep in mosques or the homes of fellow jihadists once they arrived in Afghanistan.

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The dismissive attitude is best exemplified by The Petraeus Affair tumblr, a site that attempts to mock our tabloid media's misplaced priorities by posting Petraeus headlines beneath photos documenting the devastating wrought by Hurricane Sandy. This is cheap, unhelpful trolling. (And, you know, New York got it pretty rough, Tumblr person, but Haiti got it much worse. Plus there's a war on in Gaza! WHY ARE YOU CARING ABOUT NEW YORK WHEN THERE'S A WAR ON?)

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Update (Nov. 19, 10:36 a.m.): The Associated Press reports on the FBI 's uncovering of the Petraeus scandal, and how it is the "exception, not the rule" for how the agency would respond to cyberstalking cases. But because the emails involved top officials, the Kelley case was different. From the AP:

The bureau probably would have ignored Kelley's complaint had it not been for information in the e-mails — which the FBI ultimately traced to Paula Broadwell, an Army reservist and Petraeus's biographer — that indicated the sender was aware of the travel schedules of Petraeus and Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

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Kelley was identified as the Tampa, Fla., woman to whom Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' biographer, sent harassing emails, which sparked the FBI investigation that uncovered the affair.

But the FBI agent who initiated the probe is now under investigation himself by the Office of Professional Responsibility for reportedly becoming too personally involved in the case, the Wall Street Journal reports.

And how did he become too personally involved? He "allegedly sent shirtless photos of himself to a woman involved in the case prior to the investigation," according to the Journal. The woman was Kelley, who was a personal friend of the agent.

From the Journal:

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The FBI reportedly learned of Petraeus' affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, in late summer, but only told top officials at the FBI and Department of Justice at the time. The White House and Congress only learned of the affair last week, shortly before Petraeus resigned as CIA Director.

The FBI learned of the affair in the course of an investigation into harassing emails sent by Broadwell to Jill Kelley, a Florida woman who served as an "unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base, site of the military’s Central Command and Special Operations Command," according to the AP.

Bloomberg reports:

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she hasn’t been told the second woman had an affair with Petraeus. 'She was frightened and went to the FBI,' said Feinstein, a Democrat, appearing yesterday on 'Fox News Sunday.'

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The New York Times reports:

High-level officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department were notified in the late summer that F.B.I. agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, government officials said Sunday.

But law enforcement officials did not notify anyone outside the F.B.I. or the Justice Department until last week because the investigation was incomplete and initial concerns about possible security breaches, which would demand more immediate action, did not appear to be justified, the officials said.

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The official says 37-year-old Jill Kelley in Tampa, Fla., received the emails from Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell that triggered an FBI investigation.

The official was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Another person who knows Kelley and Petraeus confirmed their friendship and said she saw him often.

Petraeus quit as CIA director last week after acknowledging an extramarital relationship with a woman — later identified as Broadwell.

The FBI probe began several months ago with a complaint against Broadwell. That investigation led to Broadwell's email account, which uncovered the relationship with Petraeus.

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From the Chicago Sun-Times:

"As part of the deal being negotiated by former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, Jackson would resign his post citing health reasons, plead guilty to misusing campaign funds, repay the campaign funds used illegally and he would possibly serve time in prison, according to the report."

Jackson is accused of allegedly using those funds to redecorate his home, and reportedly to buy a $40,000 Rolex for a female friend.

“No one has pled guilty, but plea discussions are ongoing,” a source told the Sun-Times' Michael Sneed.

Jackson, who won reelection to his House seat on Tuesday, has recently spent time in the Mayo Clinic to be treated for depression bipolar disorder.

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The New York Times reports that the FBI came across information about the affair after the woman, who knows Petraeus and Broadwell, complained:

"When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed that they were having an affair, said several officials who spoke of the investigation on the condition of anonymity. They also discovered that Ms. Broadwell possessed certain classified information, one official said, but apparently concluded that it was probably not Mr. Petraeus who had given it to her and that there had been no major breach of security. No leak charges are expected to be filed as a result of the investigation."

A Congressional official who was briefed on the affair told the Times that the FBI said the investigation  “started with two women," but “it didn't start with Petraeus, but in the course of the investigation they stumbled across him."

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This January, as the Iowa Caucuses were underway, Menards began encouraging employees to take an at-home online "civics" course that characterizes the economic policies of President Barack Obama as a threat to the success of businesses such as Menards, and by extension, to the employees' own well-being.

FBI Investigation

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