In 2004, the FBI designated the animal rights and environmental movements the number one domestic terrorism threat in the country. This is despite the fact that neither of these movements has ever once physically injured a single person in this country. As PoTP co-founder and President Ryan Shapiro argues in his MIT doctoral work, the FBI’s campaigns against the animal rights and environmental movements are part of a broader, longstanding government, law enforcement, and industry effort to mobilize the rhetoric and apparatus of national security to marginalize animal and Earth protectionists as threats to the state.
Property of the People works aggressively to obtain documents about the ongoing “Green Scare” and related repression of pro-animal and environmental advocacy. The FBI has even argued in federal court that PoTP’s FOIA research methodologies to obtain these documents are themselves a threat to national security.
POTP’s Animal Rights & Green Scare project produces powerful results. It’s exposed FBI efforts to secure federal terrorism charges against animal rights activists who expose horrific conditions on factory farms, as well as the FBI’s unprecedented use of classified remote installation malware to spy on animal rights activists.
And because contrived national security and “terrorism” concerns aren’t the only way vested interests seek to harm those protecting animals and the Earth, Property of the People also targets records detailing collusion between industry and government to this end.
This work exposed unlawful collusion between the USDA’s American Egg Board and a major agricultural lobby seeking to hobble Hampton Creek, a plant-based California food startup company. The exposé of this collusion sparked a federal investigation, resulted in the disgraced resignation of the president of the American Egg Board, and inspired the introduction of bipartisan legislation to curb future similar abuses by government and industry.
Property of the People has thousands of active FOIA requests relating to Animal Rights and the Green Scare, as well as related FOIA lawsuits, against the FBI, DOJ, ATF, USDA, FDA and other agencies.
POTP routinely expand our Animal Rights & Green Scare project to include new topics and agencies.
