As were, it turns out, groups that labeled themselves "open source software."

Geek alert! Why would the IRS care that software programming organizations producing code free for all to share or modify as they see fit might want to seek nonprofit, tax exempt status? What part of "free" doesn't the tax man understand? Other branches of the U.S. government actually contribute to open source projects.

In the 2010 internal IRS document listing keywords for examiners to watch out for, the explanation is simple. Open source isn't always what it seems:

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As Privacy SOS noted, the controversial security expert who gave a talk titled "Privacy Is Dead" -- advocating that we "get over it" -- said:

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In Turkey, what started as a small group of protesters attempting to stop the bulldozing of some trees in a public park developed with startling speed into a huge mass demonstration -- all in the absence of any meaningful coverage from traditional media outlets. Tufekci took some time out from her crazy morning to share her insights into the specifics of Turkey's situation, as well as explore the larger question of how social-media protests fit into the political process.

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Now Koch -- my longtime friend, Jerry -- faces up to a year and a half in jail himself. He is the latest anarchist in the U.S. to have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury. He will not cooperate and his silence could land him months in federal custody, without charge or conviction for a crime. I have written at some length in recent months about the federal grand jury system, which I describe as one of the blackest boxes in the judicial arsenal. I noted, for example, how four anarchists in the Pacific Northwest were jailed for resisting cooperation with a Seattle grand jury, believed to be investigating property damage wrought against the city on May Day 2012.

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Police Commissioner Edward Davis said that though some of his officers worked with the F.B.I. on a joint terrorism task force, they did not know about the Russian tip or the bureau’s subsequent inquiry, which involved an interview with Mr. Tsarnaev and his parents.

Had his department learned about the Russian tip, “we would certainly look at the individual,” Commissioner Davis told the House Homeland Security Committee.

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The heavily redacted 252 pages of documents add to findings already made by the PCJF about coordination and intelligence monitoring by the DHS, the FBI, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies and the private sector of Occupy and related protests.

"Taken together, the two sets of documents paint a disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations. The federal agencies’ actions were not because Occupy represented a 'terrorist threat' or a 'criminal threat' but rather because it posed a significant grassroots political challenge to the status quo,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF.

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In a Wednesday press release, Par:AnoIA stated that the data "shows that Bank of America and others are contracting other companies to spy and collect information on private citizens." The release also notes, however, that the "overall quality of the research is poor and potentially false."

The data was not obtained through any hack, but was "stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs."

Leaked documents reveal that TEKSystems assembled  reports on both Occupy  Wall Street online activity and hackers throughout 2012. But  the hackers group called such "intelligence" "sloppy, random and valueless":

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A new study from CUNY's Joseph A. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, based largely on a sample of protesters interviewed during a mass May Day rally last year, found that the majority of participants were white and well-educated (76 percent of respondents had a four-year degree). Two-thirds of Occupy protesters had professional jobs, the sociology study found, with nearly a third living in households with incomes of $100,000 or more. Meanwhile, nearly a third of the protesters had been laid off or lost a job and a similar number said they had more than $1,000 in credit card or student loan debt. A significant number of respondents were precariously or underemployed and 10 percent of respondents were unemployed and seeking work.

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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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"Black Friday," wrote Eidelson, "workers have pledged -- barring concessions from the company -- will bring their biggest disruptions yet." Walmart employees across the country have a host of grievances including unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, sexual harassment, excessive hours, forced labor and low pay. Ned Resnikoff at MSNBC flagged a leaked internal document (first obtained by HuffPo) that revealed that base pay  at Walmart's Sam's Place stores can be as low as $8 an hour (or $16,000 per year), with wage increases in increments as low as 20 or 40 cents per hour. To put this in context, Gawker recently highlighted a Demos study that says that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1 percent price increase for customers.

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It's not incongruent.

The Rolling Jubilee -- borne of Occupy offshoot group Strike Debt -- is best considered one among many Occupy tactics that aim to challenge or disrupt our current socio-political economic conditions. And as far as tactics go, this one is pretty clever. The idea is this: Occupy plans to buy up distressed debt -- debt which is in default -- and then forgive it (or, "abolish" it, as the ever-dramatic Occupy parlance puts it). Banks sell on distressed debts at pennies on the dollar (since the debts are in default, they're not making money off them and prefer to get rid of them). There are a number of websites where anyone can go and then buy this discharged, cheap debt. So, you or I or Occupy could buy $16,000 worth of debt for just $500 and then either make a profit by recovering the difference or just cancel it. Occupy and Strike Debt plan to do the latter on a large scale.

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Just days before the Chicago NATO summit last May, Senakiewicz drunkenly told undercover agents that he had two homemade explosives hidden in his Chicago residence in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. A search of his home found the bombs to be as fictitious as the boy wizard -- there weren't even any Harry Potter books at the address. But the 24-year-old anarchist, who Tuesday pleaded guilty to one felony count of falsely making a terrorist threat, could face deportation.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

At a hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Judge Nicholas Ford imposed the 4-year prison term and recommended that Senakiewicz be admitted into a prison boot camp. If he successfully completes the program he could be released in as little as 6 months, but prosecutors said the Polish native would be subject to deportation on completing his sentence.

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Since the setup of the "Occupy Sandy Relief NYC" Facebook page (which has accrued over 2,000 "likes") and the proliferation of the Twitter hashtag #SandyAid to spread information, on-the-ground work has begun. OWS has teamed up with environmental group 350.org (responsible for the Times Square "end climate silence" demo on Sunday) and disaster relief platform Recovers.org to coordinate efforts. They have established drop-off points throughout Brooklyn to collect items including clothes, candles, flashlights, batteries, water and food. The volunteers started in Manhattan's blacked-out Lower East side and have been moving through New York's five boroughs.

As Allison Kilkenny noted on her Nation blog:

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“This will be a large, costly relief response and we need help now,” said Charley Shimanski, senior vice president of Disaster Services for the Red Cross, in a release. Shimanksi urged that people donate funds to the relief efforts. More information about giving money and donating blood to the Red Cross can be found here. According to the organization, "nearly 100 Red Cross blood drives have already been canceled due to the storm, and there could be more as the week goes on. This means a loss of as many as 3,200 blood and platelet products." The charity noted, "If anyone is eligible, especially in places not affected by the storm, they are asked to please schedule a blood donation now." The New York Blood Center is also asking for blood donations to prevent shortages.

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The students were staging a sit-in protest at the bank headquarters, "demanding full disclosure of the bank’s anonymous political expenditures," reported an announcement from 99Rise, the anti-corruption group of which the three young people are members. "The students, who delivered a petition to the bank over three weeks ago articulating their demand, refused to leave the bank’s premises until the requested information was handed over to the public.  The bank instead chose to shut down the entire 60 floor building have them arrested," the release read. A live Twitter feed from the group reporting on the  small sit-in noted that police set up barricades around the building, closing entrances to the public.

99 Rise describes itself as "a new anti-corruption movement to get Big Money out of American politics." The three students have reportedly been taken to a police station in the Bronx.

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Plante's support network announced Friday that she was released from federal prison a couple of days ago after spending a week in solitary confinement. The announcement says that information is scarce and that Plante, having believed she would face 18 months behind bars, is too traumatized to speak to the media. For unknown reasons, the announcement notes, Plante was classified as "different" from the two other Seattle grand jury resistors also taken in to federal custody in recent months. Matt Duran and Kteeo Olejnik remain incarcerated. Little is known about Duran's prison conditions, but it is believed he has been kept largely in solitary confinement. The statement from Plante's support network Friday noted that the freed grand jury resistor "urges people to step up support for Matt and Kteeo on all fronts."

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According to a report from The Daily, Occubaby, real name Tegan Kathleen Grodt, was born to Robert Grodt and Kaylee Dedrick on Sept. 28. Even in its first days, the littlest Occupier can represent -- The Daily noted that a onesie bearing the letters "Occupy Wall Street" was sent to the couple by the OWS Screen Guild.

Watch the infamous pepper spraying incident below, an unexpected start to love and a new little life:

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In one incident ruled improper, over 200 antiwar and anti-capitalist demonstrators were kettled by police in lower Manhattan and mass arrested. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday's ruling relating to the police response:

City attorneys argued that officers had "group probable cause" to make the arrests, meaning the crowd was acting as one. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Sullivan in Manhattan rejected the city's theory and ruled the arrests on Fulton Street illegal.

"Based on the undisputed facts, and particularly the video of the Fulton Street march and arrests, the court finds that there was not even arguable probable cause to make those arrests," the judge ruled.

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Images of "pepper-spray cop," campus police officer John Pike, blasting sitting demonstrators with orange pepper spray garnered viral attention. The district attorney determined Pike's behavior "not objectively reasonable," but did not seek criminal charges.

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Thousands of protesters clashed with riot police in Spain's capital Tuesday in a showdown on the doorstep of the parliament building in Madrid.

Tuesday's march aimed to manifest rage against a new round of harsh austerity measures the government will announce in the 2013 budget on Thursday.

A manifesto for the day stated that "the current situation has exceeded all tolerable limits" and demanded a reconstitution of the entire Spanish government, including electoral and tax reform, and a moratorium on Spain paying national debts in the service of "private interests."

The Indignados, as the Spanish anti-austerity, anti-capitalist demonstrators are known, strongly influenced Occupy organizing models and tactics last year, including repurposing city squares for encampments and assemblies.

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