Politics: Your Constitutional Rights

Raw Story tells us today that companies like Taco Bell and Mall-Wart hired a private security firm of ex-Secret Service officers to spy on American citizens throughout the 1990s and the year 2000. Among other things, these people were responsible for stealing documents and collecting phone records of members of environmental organizations, in which they also tried to plant undercover agents. Say what?

James Ridgeway, a reporter for Mother Jones, reveals the contractor (Beckett Brown International) collected confidential internal records -- donor lists, financial statements -- even Social Security numbers, for public relations outfits and "corporations involved in environmental controversies."

The company's client list includes:

• the Carlyle Group, the controversial DC-based investment company;
  
• the National Rifle Association;
  
• Gallo wine company
  
• Pirelli.
  
• Halliburton
  
• Monsanto

Among their victims:

• Greenpeace;
  
• the National Environmental Trust;
  
• the Center for Food Safety;
  
• Environmental Media Services;
  
• the Environmental Working Group;
  
• the U.S. Public Interest Research Group
  
• Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an organization run by Lois Gibbs, famous for exposing the toxic dangers of New York's Love Canal.

What was Taco Hell worried about? That people were going to protest their use of genetically-engineered corn not approved for human consumption.

Taco Bell is owned by Kraft. You might want to let their corporate marketing schlubs know how you feel about their fucking with your food and your heads. The only contact information we can find is:

If you have any questions concerning Investor Relations, you may call and leave a message at 1-847-646-5494 or send us an e-mail.
You may also write to us at:

Investor Relations
Kraft Foods Inc.
Three Lakes Drive,
Northfield, IL 60093

Note that Taco Bell are the same assholes who fought workers for three years before finally agreeing to pay an extra penny for each pound of tomatoes it buys from farm workers. So, was Beckett Brown giving Taco Bell free service? Because, yaknow, they coulda just paid the farmworkers that lousy extra penny by not spending the money on spying on people who might not want bioengineered corn not rated safe for human consumption in their food! Buncha fucknuts.

A pertinent excerpt from the article:

"As for BBI's principals," Ridgeway writes, "they are still operating. Tim Ward now runs a security firm called Chesapeake Strategies, which bills itself as 'a multinational security and investigative firm comprised of professionals with extensive security experience.' Jay Bly works there. Its website boasts that it maintains affiliated offices in Paris, Beijng, Tokyo, Qatar, and Kuwait and that 'many team members continue to hold Secret and Top Secret government security clearances.'

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