Creative direct action ideas

[Moorlock]

A database program called "Crime Tracker" eventually ate up the computer records of the unlucky police departments that purchased it (the hacker has since vanished).

The Quadro QRS 250G, a fancy sounding electromagnetic detective that some police departments paid as much as $8,000 for turned out to be pretty much a plastic box with an antenna.

David Bowman, a "budget analyst" for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, analyzed U.S. $6 million out of the budget and into his pockets between 1990 and 1997. David Bowman, synchronistically, is the name of the commander in 2001: A Space Odyssey who has to crawl into the very guts of the out-of-control machinery that controls his life in order to shut it down.

http://sniggle.net/quadro.php
http://sniggle.net/bowman.php

[Moorlock]

A 16-year-old boy impersonated a probation officer  after breaking in to the probation department offices and stealing a badge, handcuffs, car keys and other paraphernalia. Then he took a dozen young probationers on a trip to an amusement park in two stolen government cars.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/01/MN147381.DTL

[Moorlock]

The Black Panthers used an interesting tactic to redirect the police to less authoritarian pursuits. The intersection of 55th and Market in Oakland, California was dangerous, and people were getting killed by the traffic there. Alas, they weren't white people, so the white-dominated government was in no hurry to put up a traffic light. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale of the Panthers came up with a creative traffic calming plan: They would go out with their guns drawn to direct traffic. When the police showed up, responding to complaints of armed negroes in the streets, Newton and Seale would retreat, whereupon the police would take over as traffic-cops.

The U.S. government's response to the Black Panthers could be equally creative. The Federal Bureau of Investigation covertly distributed what was purportedly a Black Panther Coloring Book for children full of illustrations of angry black men and children offing the pigs. This book was then sent to liberal supporters of the Panthers' programs in an attempt to horrify them.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010624103923/http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/courses/102au98/blpan.html

[Moorlock]

Upset at the way extrajudicial state killings were being covered up in Canada, some Kingston residents made wanted posters for some of the death squad members — and were dragged into court by the government and charged with libel!

http://sniggle.net/wanted.php

[Moorlock]

Nobody wold be so ballsy as to waltz into a police station and bullshit the cops into paying a fraction of their overdue cellphone payments in return for an amnesty on their unpaid bills — would they?  Well that's what the cops thought. Which probably made them ideal marks, when you think about it.

http://72.166.46.24//boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/00634143.htm

[Moorlock]

A letter, printed on city letterhead and distributed around town, started by saying "The Huntington Beach Police Department is again demanding your compliance on the Fourth of July 1998. To deter traditional holiday behavior on our nation's birthday, we will again be forced to suspend certain inalienable rights..." None too subtle, you say? Well, former Huntington Beach mayor Wes Bannister read all the way to paragraph three before getting the joke.

http://sniggle.net/cops.php

[Moorlock]

Paul Mavrides reports:

    In the late sixties when I lived in Akron, Ohio, there was a billboard of a white policeman, with tears running down his face, giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a small black boy. The caption underneath read: "Some Call Him Pig." We drove by this for weeks until finally we couldn't stand it anymore. A friend of mine climbed up and added two vampire teeth to the policeman's mouth, and painted blood dripping down the little boy's cheek.

http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/articles/X0037_Mavrides_Pranks_Inte.html

[Moorlock]

Sometimes, turnabout is the best play. The police in Portland, Oregon were discovered to have been rummaging through people's trash cans to find evidence — without a search warrant. When city politicians and law enforcement officials defended this invasion of privacy as completely legal and appropriate, a local newsweekly turned the tables on 'em. They raided the trash cans of the mayor, the district attorney and the police chief, and then published a detailed analysis of their findings.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030108193601/http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3485.lasso

[Moorlock]

A caped crusader calling himself Angle-Grinder Man  eagerly destroys the wheel clamps that have been locked onto cars by London's parking enforcement authorities.

http://sniggle.net/cops.php

[Moorlock]

Four young Texans spent most of 2002 impersonating federal law enforcement officers — pulling over drivers and then brazenly calling for backup using their real names. Their motive was hard to discern. Despite the fact that the posse did not assault or threaten anyone, but merely engaged in the sort of low-level power-mad harassment that bona fide members of law enforcement participate in when they're in a good mood, FBI Special Agent Noel Johns wasted no time in saying that "their actions were characteristic of domestic terrorism."

In San Francisco, California, a man by the name of Brian Anthony Young impersonated a state fish and game warden for three months, checking licenses, issuing citations and confiscating fish. He said that "boredom and drugs" led him to perform the inspections on more than 200 anglers, boats, restaurants and stores.

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/89q3/clippings.541.html

[Moorlock]

A gold star for valor in the face of legislature goes to Representative Tom Moore, Jr., of Waco, Texas who introduced a resolution into the Texas House of Representatives honoring Albert de Salvo. "Above all," the resolution read, "this compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout our nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. His sincerity, diligence and coöperation has earned him warm admiration and affection of his fellow practitioners." After the resolution was approved unanimously by the House, Moore revealed that Albert de Salvo was none other than the Boston Strangler.

http://www.snopes.com/legal/desalvo.asp

[Moorlock]

During the U.S. Civil War, a pamphlet came out that advocated "miscegenation"  – a word that the pamphleteers had coined to describe the interbreeding of "the races." Many abolitionists saw nothing wrong with this idea, but at the time the concept was, as they say, "not politically viable." Many responded to the authors with qualified (and, they hoped, discreet) praise.

The pamphleteers, however, were racist Democrats who were trying to sabotage the Republicans and abolitionists by tacking them to this unpopular issue. The embarassingly unbigoted letters from abolitionists and Republicans were leaked to the press and the opposition. Sneaky bastages.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/miscegenation.html

[Moorlock]

Another group that toys with the ubiquity of surveillance cameras is using sousveillance cameras to turn the tables and start ShootingBack:

    "In ShootingBack, I confront representatives of the 'Surveillance Superhighway' (establishments such as department stores where video surveillance is used extensively, yet photography by customers is strictly prohibited). I begin with my camcorder held down at my side, pointing away from a representative of the SS. Then, I ask the representative 'What are those mysterious ceiling domes — those dark hemispheres...' or 'Is that a video camera? Why are you taking pictures of me without my permission?' After the representative tells me that I am paranoid and that only criminals are concerned about cameras, I raise the camcorder up to my eye... At this point, the representative of the SS often shows great concern about my camcorder, and thus, in a 180 degree reversal, is self-incriminating."

http://www.eyetap.org/wearcam/shootingback/
http://sniggle.net/perfart.php

[Moorlock]

Andrew Epstein of Amhurst College in Massachusetts created a commentary  on the U.S. War on Drugs by taking it to its logical conclusion. He posted signs that read "In order to curb the use of caffeine at Amherst College, the sale and distribution of coffee are no longer permitted on campus. Effective Immediately." Then he shut down and cloaked the old coffee machines and sent out confederates to peddle coffee beans out on the sidewalk black market.

The best part of this is that it was all done above-board with the approval of the campus administration under the guise of an art project. "I suspect if he had come to the administration as an activist, there would have been much stronger resistance," said Epstein's faculty advisor. "It shows us how art has this kind of peculiar permission."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/national/09COFF.html?ex=1183608000&en=21b05f9d6e3cfca4&ei=5070

[Moorlock]

A 17-year-old girl stopped Governor George Wallace from speaking at the Georgia State House by applauding him!

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article11313.html