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The science fiction writer H G Wells, in his socialist blueprint A Modern Utopia (1905), envisaged the construction of a new world by a cadre of chosen volunteers collaborating in mans struggle with the elements a thousand men at a thousand glowing desks. Encouraged by the development of technical science over the previous decade, Wells whose other principal interests were Fabianism and philandering prophesised the creation of a fair and great and fruitful global state in which women are to be as free as men. It would be universalist in outlook with a great number of common public services, including energy and transport, in citizens hands.

In the 1922 and 1923 elections, Wells stood as the Labour candidate for the London University constituency, coming last on each occasion. He had to wait until the end of his life, with the United Nations Charter and the nationalisations of Clement Attlees post-war Labour government, to witness the first signs of his dream becoming reality.

Two descendants of Wells utopian tradition are Paul Mason and Aaron Bastani, whose respective books Clear Bright Future and Fully Automated Luxury Communism explore their wish to socialise technological advances as the basis of a flourishing society.

Both hold radical credentials: Mason, once a journalist at Computer Weekly and best known as the former economics editor for the BBCs Newsnight, agitated in Trotskyist groupuscule Workers Power during the 1980s a time when his future employers at the BBC were meticulously vetting Marxist sympathisers at the behest of MI5.

Bastani cut his teeth in the student protest movement around University College London in 2010, which was sparked by austerity policies implemented under the newly-elected Conservative-led government. The following year, he co-founded the insurgent comment and broadcast platform Novara Media, beginning on community radio before cultivating a devoted audience online.

Two of the most pugnacious public voices on the left, Mason and Bastani found themselves in high demand following Jeremy Corbyns election as Labour leader in 2015. British broadcasting, having spent years interrogating ever more triangulated, milquetoast political tendencies (Blue Labourism, Red Toryism), had missed the groundswell of support for socialist alternatives to yet more of the same. Casting aside a youthful disdain for staid parliamentarism, both figures became active in south London constituency Labour parties, their informal advice sought by Labour shadow ministers.

As commentators, they advocate the revolutionary potential of technology, championing the digital sphere as a possible agent of political change Bastanis Novara was sufficiently established by 2018 to offer Mason a continuation of his column after his contract with the Guardian newspaper was abruptly terminated. Aware that constant, dizzying advances in artificial intelligence can cause societal instability and existential malaise, they argue for citizens to check the rise of the machines and urgently take back control.

Mason believes that humanity may be hopeful for a hi-tech, automation-driven, green future but technological euphoria is tempered by geopolitical despair governments and corporations hold all the power, exerting control over us via algorithms. Though he thinks that somehow democratising information technology makes Utopian Socialism possible, currently our behavioural and intellectual defences are weak. This makes us easy prey for a nefarious (and rather broad) coalition incorporating ethnic nationalists and woman-haters, not to mention the Nietzscheans of Silicon Valley, Vladimir Putins online troll army and the Chinese Communist Party. Their single project: technologically empowered anti-humanism which Mason claims has been theorised in advance must be ideologically defeated for us to ever reach a clear bright future (the book title derives from Leon Trotsky).

Short on practical examples of how the reader should go about this, Mason promotes the creation of clear safety codes around AI and tiny acts of rebellion such as refusing to use automated checkout machines thereby forcing supermarkets to employ humans.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism goes one step further, mapping out Bastanis alternative post-scarcity eventuality for a finite world fast approaching its limits. The author believes that mankind, having enjoyed the bounteous benefits gifted by agriculture and industry, is now in the opening decades of the Third Disruption, marked by an ever-greater abundance of information with machines performing cognitive as well as physical tasks.

He proposes the popular embrace of exclusive, datadriven technologies that have appeared in recent years from synthetic meat to devices mapping the human genome. As capitalism is about to end, FALC will sweep to the rescue, harnessing the mining potential of near Earth asteroids, renewable energy and bioengineering to counter the civilisational threats of climate change, resource shortages and an ageing population. Chastising us for an absence of collective imagination, Bastani conceives a world where work is eliminated, scarcity replaced by abundance and labour and leisure blend into one.

Though evidently future-focused, Mason and Bastani argue for revisiting the 19th-century theories of Karl Marx. Indeed Marxs spectre haunts both titles, with the authors mounting a spirited defence of his philosophy and its centrality to todays challenges. Unsurprisingly given their subject matter, they are stimulated most by The Fragment on Machines from the Grundrisse (Bastani adding, irritatingly, youve likely never heard of either before). Mason, mangling a mechanical metaphor, makes the case that Marx cannot be uninstalled from western thinking, his outlook boiled down to having believed that, There is nobody coding the great computer of the world nobody to press the start button.

For British authors, writing with a global audience in mind produces mixed results. Masons scrutiny of Donald Trumps election, though briefly acknowledging the complacency of Hillary Clintons campaign, mostly emphasises the role played by tech giants. He implicates Google, Facebook and Twitter as forging an alliance with a mob denigrated as whey-faced Christian fundamentalists living in deadbeat towns, or porn-addicted right-wing bigots spending time leering at the waitresses in the Hooters fast-food chain.

Extended passages on the influence of virtual communities composed of technoliterate fascists the Gamergate fringe and the digital realm of Kekistan populated by alt-right shitposters and Pepe the Frog avatars suggest he has been spending too long in his own online bubbles. Both he and Bastani blunder on Europe, the latter claiming UKIP and Frances Front National made big gains in the continent-wide elections of 2009, when in fact they lost support on their previous showings in pre-crash 2004.

Mason insists that hard right-led administrations in Hungary and Italy are copycat projects inspired by Trump, ignoring the fact that both Fidesz and Legas presence in government pre-date Trumps win by a number of years, as does that of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), which first entered a government coalition two decades ago hardly, as the author believes, occurring overnight. Brexit, the most pressing and paralysing issue their country has faced for a generation, is considered fleetingly and only then coupled with Trumps victory as, in Masons words, tsunamis to hit the liberal political centre.

At least Bastani acknowledges initiatives in the global south, including meanderings around East Asian rice production and mobile phone schemes in Africa. Masons inordinate focus on wealthy countries reduces analysis of developing nations to imagining what life might be like in a Rio favela : Once you had bought your gun, looked after your family and paid for sex, what else was there to spend your money on but branded sports shoes and cheap jewellery?

Attempts to bring together disparate events under a unifying historical narrative invariably fall flat. Era-defining moments offered up by our authors Fukuyamas end of history, the fashionable nonsense of postmodernism, Moores Law on the exponential growth rate of microprocessing capacity, the advent of the Anthropocene geological era are well worn and pedestrian, more elegantly executed elsewhere. Clichs abound as they fail to agree whether the dawning of a new technological age was announced when a computer beat the world champion at chess in 1997 (Bastani) or an entirely different board game, Go, in 2016 (Mason).

Fleshing out their arguments, Bastani favours a pop-anthropologist style (during this period the human animal asserted its mastery above all others, he says of neolithic times), while Mason makes do with bland film theory. A pound-shop Zizek, he declares that almost all the ethical questions raised by the philosophy of post-humanism were explored in Blade Runner and at one point informs us of the existence of a 2010 Japanese movie called Big Tits Zombie.

Inspirational figures cited in Fully Automated Luxury Communism tend to be, surprisingly, CEOs of private companies or scientists, although in its closing chapter Bastani tries aligning himself with 14th-century English theologian John Wycliffe, whose bible translations were widely distributed a century before Martin Luther was born. (The author believes certain visionaries have such powers of foresight that their ideas arent consonant with the times in which they live.) Mason, too, concerns himself with the theories of long-dead thinkers, putting on trial everyone from Hannah Arendt (the patron saint of liberal angst) to Louis Althusser.

Though Clear Bright Future is pitched as a radical defence of the human being, only a handful of living humans are quoted. Figurative individuals abound the transgender activist in London, the female factory worker in Guangdong, the Kanak teenager fighting for independence on New Caledonia though none is offered a direct voice. The reader is left unaware whether the author has encountered them in real life.

Utopian tracts invariably see the present moment as a turning point or fork in the road. Bastani informs us, however, that fully automated luxury communism will require decades to play out. Rousing in its expression (You can only live your best life under FALC and nothing else, so fight for it), his manifestos promise of a luxurious, technophoric future is tempered by its championing of the think tank-tested policy of universal basic services. This has been seriously considered by Labours shadow chancellor John McDonnell. He may not agree with Bastani, however, that UBS begins the work of communism in the present.

For Mason, we cannot afford to wait for a radical administration to take the reins our digital overlords in Moscow, Beijing or California are already preparing software that will ultimately allow them to exercise mind control. To resist the looming threats, we are told to begin at the level of the self, not waste time building grassroots alternatives to a world in crisis.

Whereas a global mass of downtrodden workers, exploited for hundreds of years, emerged as a political force to spearhead moves towards decolonisation, universal rights and benefits, Mason thinks their successors will be a scattered, social media-wielding precariat of networked individuals very much a millennial revolutionary subject. I want to defend human beings against algorithms that predict and dictate our shopping choices, our voting patterns and our sexual preferences, he assures us, dignifying a popular platform whose time has yet to arrive.

Paul Masons Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being is published by Penguin; Aaron Bastanis Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto by Verso.

K. Biswas is a member of the Red Pepper Editorial Collective.

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Book review essay: 'Clear Bright Future' and 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism' - Red Pepper

Whilethe EU celebrates the 10thanniversary of the Lisbon Treaty and the EU Charter of FundamentalRights, the people not only have no reason to celebrate but theydraw valuable conclusions for the anti-people EU one-way street thathas been built at their expense. The discussions regarding the 10thanniversary of these reactionary treaties do not focus in the pastbut mainly towards an even more reactionary future that they areplanning for the people.

Theexperience of the people in the last 10 years totally vindicates thepredictions and the substantiated critique of the KKE, which pointedout in time that the Lisbon Treaty would strengthen even further theanti-people and reactionary nature of the EU against them. The CommomDefense Policy, the enhanced military co-operation (PESCO), the newintervention funds strengthened the militarization of the EU and theaggression of european monopolies in their fierce confrontation withthe other imperialist centers and powers. This is evidenced by the EUimperialist interventions, all these years, for the interests of theEU business groups, in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Mali, in CentralAfrical Republic, in the broader region of SE Mediterranean andNorthern Africa.

Thepolicy of the EU and its economic military relations with Turkeyreinforce Turkish aggression, as it is expressed by the dangeroussituation that has been formed for the people in the Aegean and EastMediterranean, with the repeated violations and provocations in theAegean, the transgression of the Cypriot EEZ and the maintenance ofoccupation in Cyprus.

Atthe same time, the Treaty of Lisbon equipped the EU and thegovernments with new, more barbaric means and mechanisms of promotionof the anti-people policy: State budget control, the EU Semester andlong-term memorandums, reforms support programme, enhancedsurveillance and mandatory cutters of social spending for theslashing of wages and pensions. It enlarged the existing ones andcreated new mechanisms of repression (Europolice, European Border andCoastal Guard, EU prosecutor, etc), made even more stifling therestriction of people's freedoms and rights by multiplying of bodiesand tools of electronic profiling, strengthening of anti-communismand persecutions against Communist Parties. It transformed theMediterranean into a watery grave for thousands of displaced refugeesand immigrants and its member-states, especially Greece, intocontentration camps and mass entrapment of inhumane conditions.

Inall its member-states, the EU and the governments demolish workers'rights, public Social Security and Welfare, every social right suchas free public Education and Health. Basic social goods and services(Energy, Transporation, Communications) are converted into expensivecommodities and handed over to monopolies.

Theeuro-treaties are nothing but shackles, with which the EU and thegovernments chain the working people to the chariot of the capital'sinterests. The growing mistrust towards the EU [] can strengthen,deepen and target its very nature as a union of capital that cannotbe improved and become pro-people.

Whenthe people decide, they have the power to free themselves from thetyranny of the monopolies, with disengagement from the alliances,such as EU and NATO, taking the power and the economy in their ownhands, in order to buld another Europe of peace, friendship, for themutually beneficial cooperation of the people, a Europe of people'sprogress and prosperity, of socialism.

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KKE on Lisbon Treaty's 10th anniversary: "The people of Europe have no reason to celebrate" - In Defense of Communism

Retired Adm. Michael Rogers,former director of the National Security Agency, has been cooperating with the Justice Departments probe into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump presidential campaigns alleged ties to Russia, according to four people familiar with Rogerss participation.

Rogers has met the prosecutor leading the probe, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, on multiple occasions, according to two people familiar with Rogerss cooperation. While the substance of those meetings is not clear, Rogers has cooperated voluntarily, several people with knowledge of the matter said.

Rogers, who retired in May 2018, did not respond to requests for comment.

The inquiry has been a pillar of Attorney General William Barrs tenure. He appointed Durham to lead the inquiry last spring, directing him to determine whether the FBI was justified in opening a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and alleged links between Russia and the Trump campaign, among other matters. What began as a broad review has turned into a criminal investigation, according to the New York Times. Barr has described the use of undercover FBI agents to investigate members of the campaign as spying.

Last week, a separate, nonpartisan review of the investigation by the Justice Department inspector general concluded that while the FBI and Justice Department committed serious errors in their applications to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, the investigation was opened properly and without political bias. Barr and Durham took the unusual step of publicly disagreeing with some of the inspector generals conclusions, with Barr describing the FBIs justification for the inquiry as very flimsy.

Rogerss voluntary participation, which has not been previously reported, makes him the first former intelligence director known to have been interviewed for the probe.

Hes been very cooperative, one former intelligence officer who has knowledge of Rogerss meetings with the Justice Department said.

Politico and NBC News have previously reported that Durham intends to interview both former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. It is unclear if that has happened. Brennan and the Justice Department declined to comment. Clapper could not be reached for comment.

The Times reported on Thursday that Durham is examining Brennans congressional testimony and communications with a focus on whatthe former CIA directormay have told other officials about his views on the so-called Steele dossier, a set of unverified allegations about links between Russia, Trump, and his campaign compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

Rogers is no stranger to the controversy surrounding the 2016 election. Shortly after Trump won the presidency, Rogers traveled to Trump Tower in New York, where he provided an unsolicited briefing to the then president-elect. Rogers informed Trump that the NSA knew that the Russians interfered in the election, according to three people familiar with the briefing. Despite delivering what Rogers told a confidant was bad news, Trump would keep Rogers on as NSA director while dismissing Brennan and Clapper.

In January 2017 just before Trump took office, the intelligence community released an unclassified assessment concluding that Russia interfered in the election. The assessment was based on a combination of intelligence collected and reviewed by the NSA, CIA, and FBI.

Russias initial purpose, the assessment found, was to undermine confidence in American democracy, but the effort ultimately focused on damaging Hillary Clintons campaign in an effort to help elect Trump. While all three intelligence agencies agreed on that aspect of the assessment, the CIA and FBI expressedhigh confidence that the Russian government sought to help Trump win by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him, while Rogerss NSA had only moderate confidence in that finding.

Trump entered his presidency deeply suspicious of the U.S. intelligence community and skeptical of the assessment. He has spent much of his administration claiming that he is the victim of a deep-state coup, beginning with the counterintelligence investigation into his presidential campaign. He has downplayed the intelligence communitys conclusions about Russias responsibility for hacking the Democratic National Committee computer system and providing internal emails to WikiLeaks, which published them beginning in July 2016, instead affirming conspiracy theories that blame Ukraine for stealing the emails.

A year into the Trump administration, in February 2018, Rogers testified at a Senate hearing that the White House had given the NSA no orders or instructions for countering further Russian election meddling.

President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that theres little price to pay and that therefore I can continue this activity, Rogers said. Clearly, what we have done is not enough.

Four months later in Helsinki, Trump said that he confronted the Russian president about meddling in the election. But Vladimir Putin denied that his government was involved, and Trump said he believed him, directly contradicting Rogers and the other U.S. intelligence directors.

Rogers was concerned that his testimony before Congress drew the presidents ire, according to a former Trump White House official who spoke with Rogers earlier this year.

He asked if the president was mad at him, the former official said. I told him, No way, the president has always liked you.

The White House declined to comment.

Durhams inquiry into the origins of the Russia probe has perpetuated the bitter partisan conflict fueled earlier by special counsel Robert Muellers investigation. Among Muellers key findings was that Russias military intelligence unit, the GRU, stole Clinton campaign manager John Podestas emails, along with emails from the DNC, and delivered them to WikiLeaks. The Mueller investigation led to federal indictments or guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies, but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with coordinating with the Russian government.

Yet the Mueller probe, the recent inspector generals report, and now the Durham investigation have done little to bridge the yawning political divide between Trump and his supporters, who continue to see him as the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt, and career intelligence and national security officials, who view the Durham investigation as an effort to punish those who led U.S. efforts to investigate Russias election meddling. In May, Trump gave Barr the unprecedented authority to review and declassify intelligence related to the Russia investigation, further inflaming national security veterans.

Durhams investigation has also sought information from foreign governments. This summer, Barr and Durham traveled to Italy to request information from Italian intelligence officials about Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who first told a Trump campaign adviser that the Russians had dirt on Clinton in the form of stolen emails. That claim played a central role in the FBIs decision to open an investigation into the Trump campaign. But in the conservative press and the right-wing social media ecosystem, Mifsud was portrayed as part of an Obama administration plot to entrap and frame Trump. The inspector generals report concluded that there is no evidence that Mifsud had any affiliation with the FBI.

Barrs visit to Italy coincided with Trumps offer to trade congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine for that countrys help in pursuing the unsupported allegations that Ukraine hacked the DNC and framed Russia. Trumps efforts to solicit a favor from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Zelensky publicly announce an investigation into purported Ukrainian-backed hacking and look into alleged corruption by Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joseph Biden on behalf of Bidens son Hunter led to Trumps impeachment in the House of Representatives this week.

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Former NSA Director Cooperating With Probe of Trump-Russia Investigation - The Intercept

Federal judge rules US government is entitled to seize proceeds from Edward Snowdens book sales and speaking fees By Kevin Reed 20 December 2019

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the US government can legally seize proceeds from whistleblower Edward Snowdens memoir Permanent Record and his paid public speeches because he is in breach of his obligations for not submitting these materials to the CIA and NSA for prepublication review.

In a 14-page decision, Judge Liam OGrady of the US Eastern District of Virginia ruled against the defendants Edward Snowden and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC and granted the US governments motion for summary judgement. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by the US Justice Department against Snowden and his publisher on the same day that the former NSA contractors book was released last September.

In Permanent Record, Snowden tells the story of his life, how he became an intelligence officer and contractor and how it is that he came to realize that the CIA and NSA were engaged in a global electronic surveillance operation that was in violation of the constitutionally protected democratic rights of the public.

Snowden also explains in his book how he smuggled a massive trove of top-secret intelligence documents out of a secure facility in Hawaii and then handed them over to journalists from theGuardian in Hong Kong in May 2013. The whistleblower also recounts how he ended up gaining asylum in Moscowwhere he remains to this dayafter he was charged with violation of the Espionage Act and his passport was terminated by the US government.

The DOJ lawsuit and court ruling are predicated upon a series of six Secrecy Agreements that Edward Snowden signed between November 2005 and March 2013 while he was an employee or contractor with the CIA and NSA. According the to the ruling, these documents required Snowden to obtain prepublication review of any preparation, in any form, containing any mention of intelligence data or activities, or any other information or material which is or might be based on information that is marked classified, known to be classified, or known to be in a classification determination process.

The court ruling states, The terms of the CIA Secrecy Agreements further provide that Snowden forfeits any proceeds from disclosures that breach the Agreements. These terms continue to apply to Snowden. Although the ruling grants the government claim to Snowdens publishing earnings and speaking fees, it does not specify how or when the collection will be carried out.

As Snowden explained very clearly in Permanent Record, he acknowledges having signed the intelligence Secrecy Agreements. However, he also notes that he signed another agreement called an appointment affidavitsimilar to the Oath of Office for public officialsin which he swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and this oath supersedes any obligations contained in the intelligence agreements.

Along with the publication of his book, the ruling makes specific reference to several public speeches Snowden madeincluding at a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference and an Internet security trade fairwhere he displayed and discussed, among other things, at least one slide which was marked classified at the Top Secret level, and other intelligence-related activities of the CIA and NSA.

Judge OGradys decision in favor of the governments lawsuit rejected all three arguments put forward by Snowdens lawyers: (1) that the government had itself breached its own agreement by stating ahead of time that it would refuse to review the book or speeches in good faith or within a reasonable time; (2) that the DOJ lawsuit was based on animus toward Snowden and his views and that the government selectively enforced its Secrecy Agreements; and (3) there is no basis within the Secrecy Agreements for the governments claim to seize proceeds from his book and speeches.

Brett Max Kaufman, an attorney for Snowden from the ACLUs Center for Democracy, said that the legal team disagrees with the courts decision and will review our options. Kaufman also said, Its farfetched to believe that the government would have reviewed Mr. Snowdens book or anything else he submitted in good faith. For that reason, Mr. Snowden preferred to risk his future royalties than to subject his experiences to improper government censorship.

Snowdens revelations in 2013 contributed enormously to the awareness of the public both within the US and internationally that the surveillance operations of the CIA and NSAwith the cooperation of the telecommunications corporationsare collecting data on every phone call, e-mail and text message of everyone in the world. Sparking the so-called Snowden Effect, the revelations have encouraged the widespread use of end-to-end encryption that hampers or prevents government surveillance of electronic communications.

Although the US government claims to have officially ended its secret surveillance programs with the passage of the USA Freedom Act of 2015 under the Obama administration, numerous media reports, leaks and data beaches have since have revealed that similar if not the exact same programs are ongoing.

The vendetta against Snowden by the US government and its military-intelligence establishment for revealing these truths to the public will never be forgotten or forgiven. Although the state has been unableup to this pointto rendition Snowden back to the US, the recent lawsuit and federal court ruling show that every effort is being made to silence and intimidate him and set an example for anyone else who might be thinking about exposing the criminal activities of the government.

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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Federal judge rules US government is entitled to seize proceeds from Edward Snowden's book sales and speaking fees - World Socialist Web Site

NSA Ajit Doval

Roughly twelve hours before people started gathering outside Red Fort, the capitals North Block witnessed a meeting called by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, with Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik, Special CPs (law and order), JCPs of two ranges and DCPs of six districts in attendance, it is learnt.

On the agenda was a strategy to maintain law and order the following day. Intelligence agencies had received inputs that some people from Haryanas Mewat would be coming to Delhi in large numbers and could create trouble on the law and order front, a senior officer from Delhi Polices intelligence wing told The Indian Express. And so, barricades were put up on Gurgaon-Delhi border, and cars started being checked.

Speaking about last nights meeting, a police source said: He (Doval) discussed the situation with senior officers and asked for their viewpoints. The police chief suggested that a protest march could be allowed, but the NSA referred to a tweet by one of the DCPs which had earlier mentioned that no permission had been granted for the march. So it was decided that only a designated place like Jantar Mantar can be chosen for the protest.

He is also learnt to have taken a stern view of the failure of local intelligence during the first three days of the protest at Jamia, and for allowing local politicians and anti-social elements to hijack the students protest.

An officer who attended the meeting, which lasted 90 minutes, said it was decided to call all personnel from specialised units, Crime Branch and EOW, and deploy them at sensitive spots with anti-riot gear. Paramilitary force personnel were also called in with advanced gear. It was also decided to coordinate with police counterparts in neighbouring states, following which border with Haryana was sealed, the officer said. Following the meeting, DCP (Special Cell) Pramod Singh Kushwah wrote a letter dated December 18 to nodal officers of four telecom service providers, asking them to stop mobile internet, voice and SMS services in certain areas.

Sources said after the meeting with the NSA, senior officers held a meeting among themselves at the New Delhi DCPs office at Parliament Street. This meeting, addressed by Patnaik, ended around 1.15 am. It was decided that they will allow protesters to gather at Jantar Mantar, but those assembling elsewhere will be detained under CrPC Section 144. It was also decided to approach DMRC to shut some Metro stations, an officer said.

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Delhi CAA protests: How late-night meeting with NSA and top cops set the strategy for Thursday - Yahoo India News