Support Spied Upon, a vital expose film telling the story of activists targeted by secret police

Dear Earth First!ers,

 

Due to its effec­tive use of cre­ative direct action tac­tics in recent decades, Earth First! has con­sis­tent­ly been a tar­get of state repres­sion and exces­sive police tac­tics. Now we are mak­ing a film with oth­er envi­ron­men­tal activists who have been tar­get­ed by under­cov­er police, with the goal of expos­ing these abu­sive repres­sion tac­tics.

 

“Spied Upon” is an inter­na­tion­al­ly made full-length doc­u­men­tary that uses the out­ing of for­mer UK under­cov­er cop Mark Kennedy as it’s start­ing point. Kennedy had begun his inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tion by tar­get­ing Earth First! in the UK in 2003, and had worked across Europe as well as for the FBI for sev­en-years before being out­ed by his unknow­ing activist girl­friend and her cir­cle of Not­ting­ham friends in 2010. Now this woman and a num­ber of oth­er women are suing police boss­es in the UK for what has been exposed as a reg­u­lar under­cov­er police tac­tic of dup­ing activist women into long-term rela­tion­ships. Spied Upon is work­ing with some of these women to sup­port them and help them have their sto­ry told.

 

Mark Kennedy turned pri­vate in 2010 and start­ed his own secu­ri­ty firm as well as say­ing that he was work­ing for Glob­al Open, a pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm known to tar­get ani­mal rights activists on behalf of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny clients. It appears as though that is exact­ly what Kennedy was doing when he went to Italy to spy on an ani­mal lib­er­a­tion gath­er­ing in the sum­mer of 2010. He even tried to strength­en his cred­i­bil­i­ty by say­ing he was an impor­tant Earth First! activist, see the video clip here we shot with Ital­ian activists who tell about when they were unknow­ing tar­gets of Kennedy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx38iZ14nc

 

State repres­sion has long fea­tured the use of under­cov­er police, but a less­er known use of under­cov­er tac­tics has been those used by pri­vate secu­ri­ty firms on behalf of pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions. These prac­tices con­strue an intense inva­sion of pri­va­cy that is not even allowed for state under­cov­er police, and this scan­dal needs to be exposed! We have also uncov­ered ille­gal col­lu­sion between pri­vate and state secu­ri­ty forces. This col­lu­sion is a key focus of the film Spied Upon, which we are also mak­ing as a tool that activists can use to high­light the cur­rent prob­lems envi­ron­men­tal groups face today.

 

We plan to release Spied Upon inter­na­tion­al­ly in 2014. How­ev­er, to do this, we need your sup­port to make this film hap­pen. Our film crew comes from grass­roots activism, and we are turn­ing to the grass­roots, mean­ing you, to seek fund­ing. Please take a look at our crowd­fund­ing web-site and teas­er video at Indiegogo, and take action to help us please by mak­ing a dona­tion if you sup­port our work: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/spied-upon

 

In sol­i­dar­i­ty,
The crew at Spied Upon

 

PS. Lots more info at: www.spiedupon.com