One of the more annoying things about Suzie Dawson is that people don’t seem to question her more and she appears to be very good at deflecting any questions there are. Even fellow activists have commented on it,

Interestingly, Suzie Dawson responded, and what followed was a conversation on Twitter that appeared to me increasingly misframed and misdirected by Suzie Dawson, which I sought to correct, to no avail, as a series of censuring and increasingly repressive tweets were sent my way.

The EveryDay Concerned Citizen

So I thought I should go through one of her videos and subject it to some critique. Fortunately Dawson has transcribed her Diary of a Person of Interest video so I don’t have to struggle through watching it.

Diary Of A Person Of Interest

So let’s start……

“Hi guys. My name is Suzie Dawson. I’m a journalist and an activist from Auckland, New Zealand. I’m a member of the Occupy Auckland and Occupy New Zealand media teams, and I am possibly one of the 88 New Zealanders that was targeted by our domestic and international spy agencies and passed on to the NSA for further targeting.”

• Actually her name is Suzette Dawson
• According to New Zealand law she could be classed a journalist although so might I for writing this.
• She could be called an activist.
• She appears to have been part of the Occupy Auckland media team.
• She is possibly part of the 88 New Zealanders spied on but in the same way I am, or in other words, more likely not. The time of the 88 people who were spied on was between 1 April 2003 and 26th September 2012, assuming a fairly constant rate of people being spied upon she places herself in the top ten people for the government spy agency within a year of being an activist.

[Title Screen & Music]

“I’m going to give a little talk now, it’s called ‘Diary of a Person of Interest’. It’s based on a talk that I gave last year in Germany at the Chaos Communications Camp.”

• She talked at a Self Organized Session in 2015. What a self organized session is is described here. It is worth noting that she was not invited to speak but instead signed herself up. It is possible there was not even an audience.

Part One: OCCUPY

In 2011 I barely knew what an activist was, but when the Occupy movement started, I couldn’t help but get on board. I could see that people around the world had actually found a way to take a stand for themselves and for their communities and I got on board. My understanding of activism in New Zealand was based on what we were told by human rights lawyers at the very first march on October 15th, 2011. We were told that New Zealanders have the right to dissent, that we have the right to freedom of assembly, to freedom of association, the right to seek redress from out government and that we could not be discriminated against on the basis of political opinion. I naively took all of that at face value. I thought that would protect me and I thought that would protect the other members of my media team. We believed and had been told our whole lives – we had been propagandised – that New Zealand was the safest, most peaceful country in the world. Never in a million years did it occur to us that what would happen to us, would happen. We found out the hard way that everything I just told you about New Zealand is not true. Our entire media team and then later an ever-broadening section of society became aggressively targeted by domestic and international intelligence agencies.

• Why did she get on board with the Occupy movement? She wasn’t at all stressed monetarily and had shown no interest in the past in the less fortunate.
• When she says “she got on board”, activist Penny Bright apparently said Dawson came out of nowhere, tried to control the message, and to spread disinformation.
• Freedom of assembly, etc….The eviction by Auckland Council was later overturned. Turns out you do have rights in New Zealand. To quote RNZ, “A High Court ruling has paved the way for protestors to continue legal action against the Auckland Council for evicting them from a public park.” She even says so herself in 2013. I have not seen evidence that Dawson was there.
• ….other members of my media team. Her media team? Who were these people and why were they hers? In another article she complains that she was not in charge of the media team.
• everything I just told you about New Zealand is not true…..see above. That is false, and since the talk was given in 2015 and the judgement that the protests could continue in 2013 she knows that.
• There is no evidence I have seen that Suzette Dawson was targeted by the local or international intelligence agencies. When I pointed out her story was full of holes she tried bar me from writing about her and to have the comments removed.

Our Purpose

“When we started the media team, we had a primary goal of amplifying the voices of everybody in our movement; to cover all of the issues related to Occupy, not just to cherry-pick which ones we personally supported, but to support all of the issues in a non-biased fashion, no matter what they were. All of the issues that were named and discussed, actually, in the first declaration, the founding declaration of Occupy Wall Street.”

• We started the media team? Before it was hers.
• She has now moved from representing Occupy NZ media to Occupy world. It seems strange that she and others presumably decided that before being activists or starting the media team.
• In regards to not cherry-picking, Penny Bright states, “I note that Suzette Maree Dawson and her private website ‘occupy savvy’ did NOT attend the hearing of the Occupy Auckland vs Auckland Council Appeal, and did not publish any of my legal documents, which arguably played a role in helping achieve this significant victory for Occupy Auckland, both locally, nationally and internationally?”
• On a side note, this sounds curiously like her takeover of Internet Party New Zealand.
• Very few of the first Occupy Wall Street declarations apply to Suzette. In fact, she has more in common with what they were protesting about than being a victim of it.

“Our secondary aim was to bear witness to events that were happening on the ground in Auckland and to share news of that as far and wide as we could with the rest of the movement and the rest of the world. Additionally we contributed our own voices, based on our own experiences of what was going on. We really were eye-witnesses on the ground. For my personal safety I and many other members of my media team remained anonymous to the outside world. Our occupation knew who we were, our fellow media team members and occupiers knew who we were, unfortunately the police agencies and security agencies knew who we were, but we operated under pseudonyms online. That served us well to a certain extent but as the targeting of us became more and more pervasive it became dangerous to remain masked to the world and ultimately in late 2014 I came forward and told everybody ‘hey, this is who I am and this is what is happening to me.’ What drove us, other than commitment to the movement and to representing people on the ground who really needed advocacy and really needed our voices was – our motto was, ‘if not us, then who?’ If we aren’t going to tell the truth, who is going to do it? If we aren’t going to make change, who is going to do it? If we aren’t going to push back against our corrupt media and our corrupt government, who is going to do it? If not us, then who?

• Our? Again, who are these our? Does she mean the media team?
• If her “understanding of activism in New Zealand was based on what we were told by human rights lawyers at the very first march on October 15th, 2011” why did they choose to remain anonymous? She has her motives backwards where she decides to protect herself before she has any supposed reason too.
• She says,”Our occupation knew who we were” and as it is estimated there were only 350 people at the peak of Occupy Auckland in Aotea Square they probably would. Was she actually occupying the square or just driving in from home?
• Why are the occupiers different from the occupation? That seems rather strange.
• Police agencies would have known who they were as they were protesting. Whether they knew them personally is another matter.
• There appears to be no evidence of the security services being involved although there is evidence of private investigation firm Thompson and Clark being involved.
• What targeting? By who? Why was it dangerous?
• Why does she think the government is corrupt in 2011?
• If you read the Wikipedia page of the Occupy Auckland movement you get a very different picture to the one she paints. Why?

Part Two: WHY YOU?

“So, when I’ve had to tell people – hey look, I’m being targeted by these security agencies – the first thing that they ask me is ‘Why? Why you? Why would they care about you?’ Unfortunately I can’t give one easy answer to that because I didn’t just do one thing. There are a lot of reasons ‘why’. There is… Occupy.

• Actually, it is more likely she can’t give them a reason because there isn’t one. Occupy isn’t a reason to be targeted for assassination by the security agencies. I have seen no evidence that Suzie was ever targeted by the security agencies. Humorously, I have more evidence that she is part of them than targeted by them.

Occupy

“Everyone knows now, finally, that the FBI, the DHS were involved in the suppression of Occupy. That through the PERF committee, the mayors across the entire United States were colluding for the destruction of the Occupy movement. What few people realise is that the fusion centres that were bringing all those agencies together were also operating with international agencies and in countries outside of America and unfortunately that’s precisely what happened to us.”

• Suzie claims she was targeted by America with no proof again?
• Is Suzie claiming she was targeted by the FBI and DHS?
• Here are a couple in pieces about PERF, a video from Democracy Now and a piece from Occupy Peace giving a rather different version than Suzie.
• Why did the FBI, DHS, and PERF want to target a protest in a park in Auckland? Where is the proof of this?
• It seems strange that while Suzie says there was high level co-ordination targeting protesters the Police in New Zealand refused to evict protesters a month after it started.

Anonymous

“Another reason I’ve been targeted is because during the Occupy movement we were supported by the Anonymous movement. They did a lot to try to help us and to try to protect us.”

• How were you supported by Anonymous?
• What did they do to support you?
• How do you know it was them?
• Why would they do this as an organisation?
• Who were they protecting her against?

[CLIP: CABINCREW/ANONYMOUS VIDEO FROM YOUTUBE ABOUT ASSAULTS ON AND HOSPITALISATIONS OF OCCUPIERS]

Kim Dotcom

“Additionally, us Occupiers, because of the close proximity in time between the FBI raid of Kim Dotcom’s mansion, which I believe was January 20th 2012, and the raids on Occupy Auckland of January 23rd and January 26th, which was just the other end of the weekend after the Kim Dotcom raid, we realised that some really fishy stuff was going on. That we weren’t just facing local police in Auckland, that the FBI were actually operating on the ground in New Zealand which they had no right to do whatsoever.”

• So, because of the dates of the Kim Dotcom raid and the Occupy raids she realises that the people raiding Occupy were American? Wouldn’t their accent have given it away?
• I’m not sure the FBI were ever acting on the ground in NZ in numbers (Although, according to this OIA request there were a small number in liaison capacity on the Dotcom raid).
• Where is the proof that we (occupy/media team/Dawson) were facing the FBI?
• The FBI did have a right to be in NZ actually.

[CLIP: OCCUPY AUCKLAND MEDIA TEAM FOOTAGE OF MULTIPLE POLICE WEARING COUNTERFEIT BADGES PRESENT AT THE RAIDS ON OCCUPY AUCKLAND.]

• All the police (3) wearing same badges were disciplined by 2013 and were New Zealanders, not FBI.

“So we supported Kim Dotcom and we support justice for him and we are very much against FBI overreach into our country and we are very much against our government’s collusion with the FBI in targeting and suppressing dissent in New Zealand.”

• Actually, there is no mention of Kim Dotcom on the Occupy Savvy website in January or February 2012……perhaps she is talking about a different we?

Internet Party

“When Kim Dotcom started The Internet Party we threw our full weight behind that as well, for the same reason. We need alternative political voices in our country. Both the two conventional, so-called, you know, the New Zealand versions of the Republicans and the Democrats, drastically let us down and we needed change. Internet Party was our best shot at that so we did everything we could to promote it. Unfortunately, as with every other movement, many of those people involved with Internet Party also were targeted.”

• Looks like they didn’t throw their full weight behind it until April 18th 2014 actually, almost a month after, and that was a blog post liked by 2 people….possible because it starts off with a lengthy comparison of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
• According to a search of her website there are 7 articles with Internet Party in them over the course of three years.
• Who was targeted from the Internet Party? If you do a quick search of the Internet the only person who says that is Suzie Dawson.

GCSB

“The GCSB movement is the movement that we started in 2012-2013 to try to combat the GCSB – they were supposed to target foreign countries but instead they had targeted New Zealand citizens. This led to huge protests all over the country in New Zealand, absolutely massive protests and widespread public support for our movement. Unfortunately the government just passed legislation – retroactive legislation – to make what they had done to us illegally, legal. They just legalised it after the fact.”

• Suzie Dawson claims to have started the GCSB movement?
• A curious thing about the GCSB protests in NZ was the lack of size.

FVEY

“I, in the course of my journalism, have written about not just FBI and CIA and agencies like this, and DHS and whatnot, I’ve written pretty extensively too about the ‘Five Eyes’.”

[CLIP: PROTEST FOOTAGE OF A SIGN CALLING FOR NEW ZEALAND TO WITHDRAW FROM THE
FIVE EYES INTELLIGENCE NETWORK.]

“I shared some information about the Waihopai spy base with one of my friends who happens to be the drummer of the best rock band in the history of my country. Next thing we know they released a #1 album called ‘FVEY’ which had young people all over New Zealand walking around singing lyrics about Waihopai spy base.”

[CLIP: LIVE FOOTAGE OF SHIHAD CONCERT – THE BAND SINGS THE ACRONYM “G-C-S-B”.]

• Suzie Dawson claims she inspired the FVEY album by Shihad?
• Where is the proof?

Moment Of Truth

“Also I was a very early supporter of Edward Snowden and also my favourite journalist in the world is Glenn Greenwald. I’ve written about both of them pretty extensively as well. Yet another reason that I was targeted. Of course in 2014 we had Glenn Greenwald come to New Zealand for an event with Kim Dotcom and Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. The event was called ‘Moment of Truth’ – #MoT. Yet another reason that I was targeted – I was voraciously targeted in the lead-up to that event and also in the election that followed.”

[CLIP: EXCERPT OF 9PR AUSTRALIA RADIO INTERVIEW OF SUZIE PROMOTING THE EVENT]

[CLIP: SUZIE’S FOOTAGE FROM THE MOMENT OF TRUTH PRESS CONFERENCE WHERE KIM DOTCOM RIPS INTO NEW ZEALAND MEDIA FOR THEIR BIASED COVERAGE, THEN SUZIE INTERVIEWING HON. LAILA HARRE, INTERNET PARTY LEADER]

• Suzie Dawson was targeted for writing about Edward Snowden?
• Suzie Dawson was targeted for writing about Glen Greenwald?
• More use of the ‘we’ to include her in things that she had nothing to do with…..”we had Glenn Greenwald” could mean that Suzie was part of bringing Glen Greenwald or it could mean we as a country.
• Suzie Dawson claims she was targeted because of the Moment of Truth. Why? She might have written about it but then so did most of NZ. What made her so special?
• Suzie Dawson claims to have been targeted in the lead up to the election? Is she implying that the target-ers were worried she would change the outcome?
• How was she voraciously targeted?

NSA

“We know thanks to The Intercept and Nicky Hager – a WikiLeaks correspondent and an amazing, awesome investigative journalist in New Zealand – that the 88 people targeted by the GCSB were referred by the GCSB to the NSA. What this means is that New Zealand citizens have had their own spy agency not only spy on them, but outsource the spying on them to a foreign government. Not only were they never supposed to spy on us in the first place but they have passed information on their own citizens to a foreign power. That should be treason.”

• Actually, they were allowed to spy on us if we were an agent of a foreign power.
• It isn’t treason, perhaps she means treachery?

#TPPANOWAY

“I was also instrumental along with my media team in creating the hashtag #TPPANoWay. This is the New Zealand movement against the TPP. Dr. Jane Kelsey is the spearhead of that movement – she worked on it for years and years and years and years and together a whole bunch of us turned it into something really amazing.

[CLIP: OCCUPY NEW ZEALAND MEDIA TEAM LIVE FOOTAGE OF MASS #TPPANOWAY ACTION]

“If you get on You Tube and look up ‘OccupyNZMedia’ you can watch many videos of the movements that I’m talking about, you can see live footage and action coverage from my media team of these events.”

• SD claims she was instrumental in creating #TPPANoWay.
• Contrary to Suzie Dawson’s claims that she was targeted because of her media activities the OccupyNZMedia page has 94 subscribers.

#NZ4GAZA

“I was, along with some of my other media team members, really instrumental in trying to stop the war in Palestine. We started the hashtag #NZ4Gaza – which became #US4Gaza, #NY4Gaza, #DC4Gaza – all around the world that spread and we got some pretty amazing footage.”

[CLIP: FOOTAGE OF SUZIE ANNOUNCING THAT PALESTINIAN FLAG HAS BEEN RAISED ABOVE U.S. EMBASSY]

• Creating a hashtag is instrumental in stopping a war in Palestine?
• Suzie Dawson claims to have started #NZ4Gaza.
• Again, where is the proof?

#SAVEGI

“SaveGI was the Glen Innes Housing moving where amazing everyday members of the public, ordinary citizens, were trying to prevent the closure of state houses and were getting beaten by police on the street. Covering that – along with other members of my media team – yet another reason why I was targeted. I could sit here and go on all day.”

• Ordinary people and seasoned activists.
• There appears to be little evidence of people being beaten on the street that exists now.
• The whole mainstream media of New Zealand covered it…it is not a reason to be targeted.

Exile

“The targeting of me led me to have to leave my country after there was attempts on my life in 2014. It went from me being spied on, to me being entrapped, to them actually trying to physically harm me. In January 2015 I relocated to Berlin in Germany.”

[CLIP: SUZIE’S FOOTAGE OF 250,000 PEOPLE MARCHING AGAINST THE TTIP, IN BERLIN]

• What were the attempts on her life in 2014?
• How was she was spied on?
• How was she was entrapped.
• Who tried to physically harm her?
• Claims that because of the targeting she had to relocate to Germany in 2015.
• Where is the proof?

WikiLeaks

“So the elephant in the room, which I have not named, in my very long list of reasons why I have been targeted, is WikiLeaks. Even before I went to Occupy and before I knew what an activist was, I supported WikiLeaks ideologically. I shared their work, I told people how awesome I thought they were. All of the supporters of WikiLeaks are surveilled or monitored in some way, shape or form. Those who are actually active in advocating for the organisation, obviously more so than just viewers and really at this point don’t get scared about viewing their website either because the ‘Collect It All’ of these governments means that they are spying on you one way or another, whether or not you go look at WikiLeaks! WikiLeaks is an unbelievably valuable resource. It is a historic resource. WikiLeaks is our information vanguard and we must protect it.”

• Why was she was targeted because she supported Wikileaks?
• Is there proof she supported Wikileaks before Occupy?
• Is there proof she shared their work?
• Is there proof she told people how awesome they were?
• Is there proof all the supporters of Wikileaks are surveilled and monitored?

Part Three: WHO DOES IT?

“That’s always the next question. First is, ‘Why? Why are they targeting you?’ The next question is ‘Who exactly is targeting you?’ There is the state agencies and there is the private agencies. So, the state agencies – we’ve got the police, the New Zealand police, the local community police. Within the police there is the ‘Threat Assessment Unit’, there is the ‘Special Investigations Group’. These are specific teams that are set up. They’re supposed to target violent offenders. They’re supposed to target people who are a real, demonstrable risk to society. They’re not actually supposed to target – white chick from the suburbs who becomes an activist! But unfortunately that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. Then we have the spies which is the Security Intelligence Services, known as the SIS. This is like New Zealand’s FBI. Then we have the GCSB which is the Government Communications Security Bureau. They’re supposed to be spying on foreign diplomats, not like, me and my kids going to a General Assembly. Then you have the Americans, right. One of the first times that I really realised I might be in some pretty serious trouble was when an outfit called the NCTC (National Center for Terrorism Control) followed my Twitter account from their official Twitter account. They’re a counterterrorism agency based in America and they were following me on Twitter. I blocked them. Because what do you do when a terrorism agency follows your Twitter account? There’s not much you can do so really out of spite I just blocked them. Not that obviously it would do me any good in terms of preventing them from accessing my information but I just figured if they’re going to outright try to intimidate me by following me from their main account – I’d block them. Then there is the good old Department of Homeland Security and they’re all involved in the fusion centres. Fusion centres are these places that are putting all of these agencies in contact with each other and allowing them to share information in ways that historically they were never meant to be able to do. They’re supposed to perform individual functions – very specific functions – but all their data is being merged and all of their operational purposes are being merged and the end result is that you have this grand mass-scale tyranny across all of the agencies and they can actually set the whole of government against you if they decide that you’re on their target list. And of course you have the CIA – who are really awesome people who drone people with flying killer robots in half a dozen countries around the world. Then you have the private agencies.

• Claims she is being targeted by the NZ Police ‘Threat Assessment Unit’ and ‘Special Investigations Group’.
• Claims these groups are set up to target violent offenders.
• Claims these groups target white, female activists.
• Claims she is targeted by the Security Intelligence Services.
• Claims she is targeted by the GCSB.
• Claims she was spied on by the GCSB when going to General Assembly with her kids.
• Claims one of the first times she thought she might be in serious trouble was when the NCTC twiiter followed her twitter.
• Claims the NTCT followed her account to intimidate her.
• Claims she is targeted by the NTCT.
• Claims she was targeted by Homeland Security.
• Claims she was targeted by the CIA.

Spying = $$$

At the very low level we have private investigators. Like, in New Zealand we have Thompson Clark Investigations Limited. This is a notorious company that has done all kinds of things like GPS tagging activist’s cars and even being caught sleeping with and having relationships with activists in New Zealand over protracted periods of time, which is about as sleazy as you can get to be honest. We have SSI Pacific which is a ‘lawful intercept’ company which basically means they can do everything, well a lot, of what the GCSB or the NSA can do. They can intercept all of your digital communications, they can bug you in a hundred different ways and they consider it to be lawful because they do it to people who are already being targeted by these other agencies and of course because they are a private company they are doing it for money. They are billing, they’re invoicing, they are having shareholders and boards and generating profit. Then we have Cubic Defence, which does asset tracking. If you follow Barrett Brown’s work, or anybody like that, or ProjectPM then you’ll know quite a bit about these companies. Asset tracking should be like ‘There’s a million dollar necklace going to this fashion show and we want to make sure that it gets back on time, or in one piece’. Unfortunately asset tracking has become putting a GPS tracker on an activist’s car and then watching the little blip on the screen as they drop their kid at school in the morning. Their assets are not just material anymore, they have made people the assets that they track and there is a lot of people so if they want to make a lot profit they just have to track more people and of course bill it back to the state so all of this is happening on public money. Then there’s Palantir – Peter Thiel’s Palantir. Palantir are involved in financial systems in the banks. They are involved in creating predictive software but also in flagging financial transactions.. it’s all embedded in the so-called money laundering legislation that has been instituted around the world but which is also being used against activists and against journalists, who are on the target lists.

• I’m not sure what she is claiming here.

Part Four: THE TARGETS

“Who do they target? Well, back in the good old days they just targeted radicals. So-called radicals. If you want the world to be a better place and you realise that you have to do something about that in order for it to happen, congratulations you’re a radical. If you think that corporations should not dominate all of the markets and resources on the planet, congratulations you’re a radical. If you think that governments should not bomb civilians in multiple countries for money, congratulations you’re a radical. You’ll probably be targeted if you try to do anything whatsoever about organising to make change for the sake of our planet. They also of course target hacktivists, anybody who supports any kind of hacktivists in any way, you get targeted. They also target NGO’s and the people who work for them. So these are the people who are in legitimate organisations, some of them quite historic organisations, just by working for those organisations can be targeted. There are so many examples of this that I’m not even going to get into it. Obviously Greenpeace, obviously many of the NGO’s operating in… even the children’s funds! The Christian children’s funds… all targeted. Then there’s the issue-based dissenters. People who are climate change activists, or people who are anti-GMO’s. Because the thing about the privatisation of spying is that profit requires growth and growth in this industry means more targets. So it was never going to be a finite thing. It was never going to be ‘we will just target the activists’. Because if you just target the activists – first of all, they try to diminish the total number of activists and that would mean less profit. So in order to have more profit they have to constantly expand the sectors of society that they spy on. So we’ve seen this in New Zealand. Surveillance cameras used to be for safety in a dark, dingy area – now they are absolutely everywhere at all times. They have to have ever-increasing saturation of spying in order to make money from it.”

• Claims radicals are targeted.
• Doesn’t make any claims about herself in this paragraph.

Sorry it is taking me so long to get through this. It will need to be gone over again and again and the results will be updated. Working out what Suzie has actually said does take time. 🙂