Oh, the banks definitely have skin in this game. And, many of the big banks have quite likely many reasons to dislike OWS. I personally was not trying to attribute any nobleness to the organizations as a whole. Legal compliance is rarely a noble quality in large organizations. It's usually enforced by internal legal departments who are paranoid about the potential of lawsuits or fines. I deal with such internal legal paranoia quite often in my role, it can be quite stifling and lead to actions that can seem quite irrational. It usually boils down to a company trying to do what they think their job is.

As for cracking down on the protests can you really blame anyone working in management at these banks for wanting to? You have an angry group of people who will not so much as give a cohesive list of demands that could sensibly bring an end to the protest. All you have is a large group of people with no defined leadership, which makes them impossible to even negotiate with, and a list of ideas/concepts/whatever that they are protesting for or against that's so general and broad that there is literally no way possible that any of the targets of their protest could reasonably assuage them.

Peaceful protests? Sure, parts of the protests have been peaceful. Parts have been less so. Blocking traffic, causing such a disruption that small employers like the local restaurants and coffee shops were unable to do business, beating drums at all hours of the night so the local residents cannot sleep in their own homes. (Yes, there are people living in those neighborhoods too.) These don't strike me as particularly peaceful. The folks living there can in no way effect the operations of the businesses so beating drums in the middle of the night when there aren't any office workers there is pretty much just a nuisance activity. Destroying the business of the folks who may very well have their entire livelihoods tied up in those local businesses that were unable to operate because of the disruption is also not in line with peaceful protests. Based on the tenor of your comment I'm going to guess that you'll probably justify all those actions in some manner though.

As for your question I'm not going to answer it. You define only two possible answers and assume that my reasoning must fall into one those and therefore try to constrain me to fit within the categories which you define. If I answer in any way other than you would accept you're just going to assume that I ultimately fall back into one of those two categories. By defining naivete and dishonesty as the only two possible answers you show that your mind is already closed.

In my opinion that's too many things to try and effect change on at one time. People who are not directly invested into those causes are for the most part very easily distracted and if you bombard them with too many inputs at once they naturally start to drown out some or all of those inputs. Have you ever been in a meeting where you had a dozen things on the agenda and everyone wanted to talk about their own particular agenda item and were unwilling to yield to other other agenda items? I have. Nothing got done. In those circumstances someone has to clearly steer the conversation to give time to each point and address them. By directing the conversation the meeting suddenly becomes more effective, and while they end result is that some things get deferred you will stand a much better chance of accomplishing something.

I've also been in situations where people simply complained about something and said "fix it." My question to them always is "how do you want it fixed?" If there is no direct answer then I can't fix it. OWS suffers from this same exact problem. Simply complaining about something is not enough. Giving a stated list of suggestions on how to fix something is effective. You may not get your ideal solution, but you may get something instead of just getting ignored.

Because OWS eschews formal organizational structures and leadership and tries to lead everything by committee their message is lost, diffuse, and ultimately ignored.

Some corporations definitely do hold too much sway in politics. As I would argue many special interest groups and even unions do. I would love to see all these groups have their influence dialed back. But, I would argue without term limits and campaign finance reform you won't see any of them lose their sway. Politicians who "serve" indefinitely are in my opinion the real problem. It invites a class of individuals whose only true goal is to continue to be re-elected. They then cater to some mix of these groups and accept their money happily to fund their campaigns. If politicians were limited in the length of time they could serve in federal elected offices and prohibited from then moving into appointed positions you would likely see a return of the citizen legislator that once (very early in our republic) dominated. And, perhaps a bit of a return to sanity and common sense. Or at least so I hope.

Thank you for your comments. You hit the point exactly.

Most "loose protest" groups have not tried to utilize banking the way that I have heard OWS did. I recall a number of stories talking about how committees had been formed to handle their cash flow. Some of the groups had a bit more formalized arrangement than others. But, with the amount of money they had coming and going to pay for food, kitchens, fuel for generators, generators, etc... there was probably a higher amount of cash moving through OWS than most "loose protest" groups. And, the fact that the news had also reported on several occasions that OWS had set up bank accounts that also puts them into a different category.

I know the majority of the articles I read about Tea Party groups and how they were organized they had done so as non-profits. In fact there was some hullabaloo this past year where some federal agency was going back and requesting more documentation from various Tea Party groups and questioning their incorporation. So, yes, the government has been giving them grief too. The main difference from what I can see though is that they followed the process of incorporating themselves and appointing leaders who were specifically responsible for accounting and tax filings whereas OWS never has.

Those are really the only two protest groups that I know enough about how they are structured to comment on. There may very well be others that you could cite that either have gone through the process of incorporating themselves and others that haven't. But, I would guess that most other groups if they have tried to set up a bank account have filed some modicum of paperwork.

When those organizations officially form themselves I believe it is still called incorporation. There's just different levels of paperwork and tax reporting that have to occur. The verb to incorporate actually covers a great many types of entities.

Oh the FBI has definitely been misused in the past. Under J. Edgar Hoover he used the organization as his own personal tool to attack anyone or anything he didn't like. Like any organization it has people who are truly dedicated to doing a good and honest job, and it will also have people who actively try and use it for their own self centered goals. While I know the latter exist I choose to believe the vast majority of the people working at the FBI are there to try and do good.

To the best of my limited knowledge on the subject there are only two federal law enforcement agencies that are charged with enforcement of banking regulations. The Secret Service gets involved if there is suspected counterfeiting involved. And, I believe the majority of the other types of incidents fall under the purview of the FBI. Anything that crosses state lines falls under federal law whereas things that remain within a single state typically fall under state law enforcement's purview.

So by that reasoning the FBI would definitely become involved in any action that looks to be enforcing federal banking or money laundering laws.

Now, as to building dossiers on people within the organization and the organization as a whole. Well some of that is understandable and some is not. I'm not going to sit here and try and justify those actions because frankly I don't know enough to argue one way or another on the subject.

I would like to point out that the FBI does do a lot of good. Good that you may not typically think of. The FBI is primarily responsible for bringing down most of the major mafia families and their criminal enterprises. They are the ones who handle all child kidnappings in the US. They provide assistance to local law enforcement whenever there is a suspected serial murderer and take over the case when the crimes extend across state borders. You might want to consider that when you make your blanket assertion that you'll never cooperate with them.

Thank you for that laugh. No, I do not work for any government agency or shadowy secret organization. I'm simply a rational thinking cubicle dwelling software engineer. I just don't happen to see conspiracies everywhere I look, rather I look for the logical explanation behind things. More often than not I usually find a reasonable explanation.

Oh, I readily admit that I personally dislike OWS. However I am in no way bending reality to fit my dislike. Rather I'm trying to point out the reality of the situation and how OWS is simply running afoul of that reality. I think some of the folks who are in it have some very valid points that they are protesting. The overall problem with this group is that it is too loosely organized and completely lacking in any direction. When you look historically at groups that have successfully protested for change there is a pattern to their success. Women's suffrage had a very clear goal, gain the right to vote for women. The Civil Rights Movement wanted the abolition of various segregationist policies and discriminatory hiring practices. Their goals were clear, there was a defined end state to which they were working and therefore their success could be measured. OWS on the other hand has not stated end state to which they would like things moved. They simply protest everything, and therefore will never obtain concrete action on anything.

As for following banking regulations. Yes, I do truthfully believe it has everything to do with that. I have multiple friends who work in varying levels of several fairly large regional banks. Every single one of them has told me about the training they've had to go to regardless of how high or low their position is to learn about fraud, how to detect it, and what they have to report. It was pretty interesting to hear from them some of the things that they were instructed to be aware of. The laws are there to stop money laundering, trafficking money to terrorist or criminal organizations, tax evasion, ponzi schemes, etc... There are more ways than you can possibly imagine that people have used and abused financial systems. While we may not always appreciate why many of them exist, usually they were crafted to stop or control a certain practice. Some of them may definitely seem stupid to us as individuals. But, they do exist.

The Mall of America was designed with the foreknowledge that people moving through it would generate heat. When I was working a volunteer event there a number of years ago the community relations contact we had was cheerfully explaining that they typically don't heat the mall. She cited a figure of 100 people generates about the same thermal output as an average household furnace. Which puts into context why a party in a house gets so warm... Most office towers in northern latitudes tend to heat primarily around the edges of the building where heat bleeds out of the tower through the windows. Otherwise you may find that the interior of the build could actually be receiving cool air to dissipate the body heat of the office workers.

So, while I applaud the re-use of body heat for something useful, it's definitely not a new concept. Architects and engineers have been accounting for it and sometimes harnessing it for years.

I mean seriously this reeks of paranoia. There's a very valid reason for banks cracking down on OWS. In the USA there are really only two ways to legally create a bank account. One is as an individual the other is through an incorporation. Individuals can obviously have multiple co-signers such as in a family. And, incorporated entities can be businesses, non-profits, cities, etc... OWS organized itself as the antithesis of any incorporated entity. There were no official leaders, no board or leadership who was legally responsible for filing taxes, nothing. Their use of banks to collect donations, organize and pool funds, and then disperse them therefore broke pretty much all the laws that were put in place to stop groups like organized crime and terrorists from utilizing banks in the same way. The folks who work at banks can lose their jobs and face criminal prosecution if they don't report activity that looks exactly like what OWS was doing with the bank accounts they were opening. So please, use your brain and think things through before you post an article like this that simply reeks of paranoia. You may not like the system or the laws, but they exist, and the banks and FBI are simply following them.

My employer has a sick leave policy called Reasonable Time Off. None of us has sick days. There's no pool of time that you have to worry about. If you're sick, you can (supposedly) simply take the day off and stay home. People do actually use it. A lot of us will continue to do work from home, but log off for stretches of time to nap/rest/whatever. But, it does help having this policy. We can even use it for simple things such as medical checkups and dental procedures/cleanings.

Since almost all of our meetings now have conference bridges attached to them it's quite easy for folks to check in from home and still attend meetings they feel they absolutely need to attend. Couple that with our secure remote access tools and people can still be productive when they stay home if they choose. This is especially helpful when a parent stays home with a sick child.

Personally I know that I typically tend to get miserably sick for a day or two and need to rest. Then I'm usually feeling a little better, but not great, for a day or two. So being able to stay home as needed and work from home when I feel up to it helps me not feel pressured into coming into the office and getting others sick too. Plus the couple times I've had to have surgery I did not feel bad in the slightest that I actually took the time off of work to recuperate that I needed.

Managers around here seem to trust employees for the most part. But, if it looks like someone is abusing the policy they may raise questions. Most people I work with are pretty responsible about it though because they know how good of a benefit this really is. And, none of us wants to be forced into a PTO type system.

To give you an idea of the scale of this benefit, we employ nearly twenty thousand people in our HQ facilities around the metro area. With a single floor of one of our office towers easily holding in the neighborhood of a hundred people. Our downtown towers are all interconnected by a skyway system that includes many other buildings as well. So one person coming into the office sick has the potential to affect hundreds or thousands of other people. If we can reduce that even a bit it helps everyone out.

But, I just pulled out my original Koss satellite speakers from my first 286 and hooked them up to my computer at work. Forgot I had them, but they still work after all these years.

Unfortunately I think too many managers seem to agree with your sarcastic comment. Around here our managers are automatically one paygrade higher than than their employees, and more often than not the managers have little to no technical background. And, the further up the management food chain you go the less tech experience or knowledge you find. To the point where our current CIO sounds like the gal in "The IT Crowd" talking about the internet...

Most laptops these days have a recovery image on a separate partition of the hard drive. It would not be beyond belief that the spyware the agent used injected itself into the recovery partition so it would re-install itself. My guess is that this particular agent was not a technical expert himself and probably just asked a coworker who was technical what he could use to monitor his child's use of the computer. When he handed the machine off to someone to restore it he may not have told them exactly what he put on it, and if they then used the recovery partition, well... you have this scenario.

You've never had a coworker ask you for help with something they can't figure out? It happens all the time around here, had many a non-techie bring in a laptop that needs a little TLC and someone will do it over their lunch or bring it home and do it. In the case of the FBI folks doing this they could even have been using it as a training opportunity for a rookie tech.