Ukraine government sends text to protesters: "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance"

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“Citizen, please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply. You now have 15 seconds to comply. You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9. You have 5 seconds to comply. 4. 3. 2. 1. I am now authorized to use physical force.”

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Dear subscriber: you are on our list. You can wait until we get around to giving you the knock in the middle of the night, or, you can unite with everyone else who got this message andf fight together.

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Any evidence of:

a) The message being the work of the government
b) Million-plus number of recipients

Thanks Cory!

There is no need to use a Stingray device when the operators logs the location metadata based on cell tower registration. In fact, if it was indeed sent to a “million” people, this would be a much easier, more scalable approach to detecting who was in a specific part of town at a specific time and day. It is also obviously a very, very rough approach to surveillance that can easily hoover up the subscriber and mobile phone IDs (IMSI and IMEI) of passerbys, local residents, police officers, medical personnel, and so on.

It is terrible tactics, similar to the Egyptian government decision to shut down the Internet. The latter was the best thing the government could do to build the protests. Once the Internet went out, the only way to find out what was going on was to shut off the computer and go out into the street. It was also seen as proof positive that the Government was weak and on the brink of collapse.

The government is widely considered to be illegitimate, having stolen the 2010 Presidential election with a rules change during the election designed to make fraud easier. The former Prime Minister is currently in jail on trumped up charges. Such a government can only rule by intimidation. The last parliamentary election was in 2007 and it is unclear if there will be another.

But the key to intimidation is to pick off a few people at a time, make an example of them and go on to the next batch. Telling everyone that they have been registered as a dissident and should report to the gulags for incarceration and murder gives the game away too soon. The government has just told the opposition that they have nothing to lose.

There will also be a lot of children of politicians caught up in those sweeps. And that could well prove decisive. Ukraine has a parliamentary system (for now) and a revolt by MPs can bring down the government.

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This is the same reason why you see water cannons spray paint. It makes it easy to round up the trouble makers later.

I’m sure it was just the work of “hackers” and that there were only a couple hundred people who got the text (probably rabble-rousers themselves).
Because a government that just banned: driving in columns of more than 5 cars, participation in a gathering while wearing a helmet or uniform clothing, setting up of tents/stages/sound systems without police permission, disrespect of a court, failing to obey a request to limit internet access, failing to obey the state security apparatus, defamation, blocking access to a house, distribution of ‘extremist’ materials, group violations of public orders, ‘mass disruptions’, collecting information on police officers or court officials, threatening a cop, NGO/church activity in ‘extremist activities’, punishment of cops who commit any crime against protesters, among other things would never do something as horrible as surveilling the local populace in order to send them a spooky/Orwellian text message, amirite?

Thanks Penny!

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The main problem in the Ukraine is that country is operated by president tightly linked with the criminal. People is can’t tolerate lawlessness from government and policy. People can’t tolerate to the weird things that police special forces ( Berkut ) is doing with people : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXe-aSfRIxI&feature=youtu.be
There is many known incidents of the of the bullying, kidnapping and murdering which is performed by policy forces.

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Nice to see American corporations affixing “freedom” to other lands so effectively.

Friends, I’m sorry but you inform lopsided, I myself live in the Ukrainian and tired of misrepresentation in your media. We at Berkut only hope. We do not need the Nazis in power. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZz9jT6fusc

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