Tag Archives: BLM

Apr 27 2015

DEA Activity at Burning Man? Sorry, That’s Classified

PNN-190-Burning-Man-Police-State-600x400

VICE reports that a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to the DEA’s activities at Burning Man between 2011-2015 returned 43 pages of results. However, the report was heavily redacted.

From motherboard.vice.com:

A Freedom of Information Act request asking the Drug Enforcement Administration for “investigative files concerning the Burning Man Festival 2011-2015” is a great idea—after all, any neo-hippie-desert shantytown gathering is going to have as much drug use as it has nudity, and Burning Man is known for epic portions of both.

The results were rather disappointing, however. The FOIA-requesting/distribution site Government Attic just posted the response to​ the request this morning, and you’re welcome to check them out if you’re the type of weirdo who is really into blank pages of redacted information.

The request was sent down to the Las Vegas Field Office, where it brought up a hefty 43 pages alluding to the DEA’s work at the festival. Most of the material was redacted to protect the privacy of individuals involved and to obscure the exact techniques used by law enforcement.

“On August 29, 2013, Detectives of the Department of Public Safety, the Bureau of Land Management and other local law enforcement agencies worked as a narcotics task force at the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert, Pershing, Nevada,” the first page opens tantalizingly.

But instead of account after account of people trading mushrooms for beads outside the Slut Olympics—source material for a surefire comedic hit starring Will Ferrell as the uptight Agent Johnson—what follows is blank page after blank page.

Specifically, the exemptions are in the name of protecting against invasions of personal priv​acy; protecting information “which would reveal techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions or that would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions;” and protecting “law enforcement information which could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.”

The documents reveal that the DEA conducted investigations in 2012 and in 2013. The agents from DEA and their collaborating agencies were on the playa just after midnight in August of 2012, and “working in an undercover capacity.”

One investigation led to a heavily redacted case that was “prosecuted at the state level” in 2012. “DEA retains no evidence or arrest responsibility for this investigation,” the DEA investigation report says. “The case is administratively closed.” However, there are no details on what the case was about.

Still, the few details provided may open the door to other FOIA requests, which hopefully will have more fruitful results. It also gives a place for the imagination to run wild. [Source: Vice]

We’ve all seen plenty of TV shows and movies about the DEA and what they do to gather evidence on suspects. Wiretaps, drones, infrared vision that can see through walls, undercover stings, hidden cameras, sniffer dogs. So what techniques could be so secret that they have to be classified?

This art car was revealed to us in 2013 by a whistleblower, as full of undercover cops.

In 2013 a whistleblower revealed that this art car was used by undercover cops at Burning Man.

marge burning manMeanwhile, even childrens cartoon shows like The Simpsons depict rampant drug use at Burning Man, while political figures like Grover Norquist and celebrity commentators like John Oliver and Jon Stewart make jokes about it to their mainstream audiences. This seems to be a double standard. “Oh we’re trying to keep drugs out of Burning Man”…really? You sure the whole thing wasn’t actually created specifically for the LSD/magic mushroom/DMT crowd? Anyway, where did that stuff originate from in the first place?

It seems like FOIA requests are about the only way we can get information out of the new, improved, “clean well-lighted suite of rooms” of transparency that is BMOrg 2.0. Things that used to be released publicly every year like crime statistics, are now kept quiet. Good luck trying to get them, either from BMOrg, Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, or BLM officials.

Here’s a previous FOIA request that shows that the FBI are also active at Burning Man, running intelligence operations. It also contains many redactions and page deletions. One thing that is mentioned is a company that who were contracted to provide a security threat assessment in 2010 – wonder if there was any specific concerns that led to that? Perhaps ISIS will have an art car this year – hopefully one without too many flamethrowers.

Screenshot 2015-04-27 12.52.08

Screenshot 2015-04-27 12.55.57

The lucky agents even get paid overtime for attending Burning Man. I’m guessing they’re not waiting in the STEP or Will Crawl lines for tickets, either…

Screenshot 2015-04-27 14.02.52

 

marge iron wrinkles

 

Reminds me of this old saying we have, back in Australia…

 

 

Dec 19 2014

Licensed to Sell

I just got off the phone with David Freiberg at the BLM’s Black Rock Field Office, who said he’s a fan of this site. He is going to track down the 2014 list of vendors who were granted a Special Recreation Permit to sell on the Playa this year, we will update this story when we get it. The number of vendors has increased from 45 in 2013, to more than 80 this year.

He said that BLM were looking into the Plug-n-Play camps, which are required to have a permit and pay a 3% share of their revenues to the BLM. He wasn’t aware of any such camps that did get a permit, but it seems like most of them should have.

Some of the triggers for if a permit is required:

  • advertising to the general public, or only to friends
  • camp dues as cost-sharing, versus funding a commercial enterprise
  • it doesn’t matter if you’re a bad businessman, if you lose money, that’s your problem; if you’re selling spots and paying staff, that’s probably commercial activity not casual recreation

It appears that Caravancicle had a commercial deal with The Lost Hotel to build their camp, commercially engaged sherpas and managers who were paid to work there, and produced promotional materials that were advertised to the public.

In JT’s recent “apology“, he claimed that his web site was “meant to be password protected”. It certainly wasn’t when we first wrote about caravancicle.com (now blacked out).

caravancicle room outside

Space Cubes at Caravancicle. Image: Philippe Glade

JT says that even though he “gifted money” to the camp, it was not meant to make a profit:

I can assure you our camp generated no money and was not, in any way, a money making venture

This conflicts with Danger Ranger’s version of events, in which he claimed JT “lost money” only because the camp’s un-named producer embezzled “took the money and ran”. Allegedly. It also conflicts with Sherpagirl’s inside information, that campers paid $17,000 for a hotel room space cube. If you’re selling 68 rooms for $17k a pop , your camp is generating money. Discounting or even comping some of the rooms doesn’t alter that fact.

In their marketing materials, Caravancicle quite clearly state that this is based on the “mind-blowing” hotel they built last year at Camp Olympus. There’s no indication that this page on their web site was made by anyone but Caravancicle.

I printed their caravancicle.com/about page to a PDF on September 5 – no password was required, and there was never any indication that this was “camp-only” private information.

2014 Caravancicle – About Camp

Here’s their very commercial-looking Participant Agreement:

2014 Participant Agreement, R… and Assumption of Risk

It specifically mentions the following individuals and corporations in their risk waiver:

  • Back To Earth, Inc dba “dovetail events”
  • Ari Derfel
  • Jim Tananbaum
  • Space Cubes LLC
  • Brad Peik/Peik Construction Inc/Peik Investments LLC
  • Black Rock City LLC
Image: Phillippe Glade

Image: Philippe Glade

JT said:

Our camp breakdown was also compromised because the group responsible for providing the infrastructure was also responsible for part of the breakdown. In the end, our camp manager and some other members of the camp, plus breakdown staff, cleaned up our camp by Saturday after the event

Staff, responsibilities, infrastructure providers, managers – it sounds pretty commercial to me.

We hired a team to produce the camp…but Caravancicle did not participate in any advertising. The ‘promotional materials’ and website were sent to guests who were invited to join the camp. We did not actively promote the camp. No one in Caravancicle made money off of the camp

We’ve provided a link to some of their advertising and promotional materials, the About page at caravancicle.com. Creating a website and putting your commercial-looking brochure up on it surely counts as “participating in advertising”. There is no question that people who worked in Caravancicle were paid, so JT is not telling the truth here.

we used wristbands

some of our campers were “plug and play” participants

Seems pretty clear to me.

2014 lost hotel bathroom

From Interior Design:

Inside a Space Cube

Inside a Space Cube

Scott Mahoney created the camp “The Lost Hotel,” using his modular tent system called Space Cube that can stack up to three stories high. Mahoney used Adobe Illustrator to design the entire project from the stairs to the bed frames, and constructed everything within 10 weeks. Mahoney’s inspiration was “constrained only by ease of setup and breakdown,” he says. Also collaborating on the project was Joey Rubin of Adar Partners. Rubin’s process was one of “resourcefulness and adaptability,” he says, especially when designing two theme camps at the same time, since Mahoney’s team also assembled 68 Space Cube tents for Caravancicle, a camp produced by Ari Derfel…

Caravancicle Camp offered an all-inclusive experience to affluent deciders and Powerball winners who enjoyed a level of sophistication never seen before at BRC.
It took the teams of The Lost Hotel and of LMNOP 5 people working for 7 days 18h/day to complete this pushing the envelope of refinement camp

Here is how the Federal Government defines commercial use, in relation to their requirement for a Special Recreation Permit (SRP):

Subpart 2932—Special Recreation Permits for Commercial Use, Competitive Events, Organized Groups, and Recreation Use in Special Areas

§2932.5   Definitions.

Actual expenses means money spent directly on the permitted activity. These may include costs of such items as food, rentals of group equipment, transportation, and permit or use fees. Actual expenses do not include the rental or purchase of personal equipment, amortization of equipment, salaries or other payments to participants, bonding costs, or profit.

Commercial use means recreational use of the public lands and related waters for business or financial gain.

(1) The activity, service, or use is commercial if—

(i) Any person, group, or organization makes or attempts to make a profit, receive money, amortize equipment, or obtain goods or services, as compensation from participants in recreational activities occurring on public lands led, sponsored, or organized by that person, group, or organization;

(ii) Anyone collects a fee or receives other compensation that is not strictly a sharing of actual expenses, or exceeds actual expenses, incurred for the purposes of the activity, service, or use;

(iii) There is paid public advertising to seek participants; or

(iv) Participants pay for a duty of care or an expectation of safety.

(2) Profit-making organizations and organizations seeking to make a profit are automatically classified as commercial, even if that part of their activity covered by the permit is not profit-making or the business as a whole is not profitable.

From Burning Man’s FAQ (old site):

http://burningman.com/themecamps/delivery_faq.html

Q: Does my delivery driver need a BLM Special Recreation Permit (SRP)?

A:The Burning Man Event occurs on public land administered by the BLM. Commercial activities (services rendered with the intent of making a profit or financial gain, or delivery of goods and services onto public lands for a fee) are prohibited within the Burning Man Closure area unless specifically contracted by Black Rock City, LLC, and permitted by the BLM through a Special Recreation Permit (SRP).

In 2012, Minister of Propaganda Will Chase said:

we would like to address a few key areas of confusion, so everybody’s on the same page:

  1. “Adventure” outfits (defined as purely commercial businesses offering a full service camp experience that have no connection to our culture and community) providing “a Burning Man Experience” are not considered to be Turnkey camps, and as of this year they will no longer be allowed at the event. Before we had a formalized process for making deliveries to Black Rock City (introduced in 2011 as a “vendor pass” then renamed to Outside Services in 2012 to better reflect the variety of deliveries we facilitate which help build the city) we had no way of identifying these enterprises. Now that we do, we will actively prohibit adventure businesses that are not part of our community and merely capitalizing on our event. It will not be a completely clean process the first year; there are innocent people involved who need to be considered and, as always, a spectrum of outfits that could fit into this category or may be of benefit to the community. They will need to be evaluated and treated fairly, but rest assured, we will not allow our city to become a revenue stream for these sorts of businesses any longer. We are calling on the community to help us with this effort by identifying operations and reporting them to us by emailing outsideservices@burningman.com.
  2. There has been confusion on an issue referred to as taxation for Turnkey camps. These are the facts: The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently informed us that they will require any business in operation at our event to obtain a permit and pay 3% of gross revenues to the BLM, just as Black Rock City LLC is required to do. This has always been their right. They began enforcement with commercial air charters at our airport in 2011 and this year they will require RV and trailer providers to pay as well. This will not apply to small “mom and pop” style operations or one-time deliveries. The BLM is not interested in capitalizing on every opportunity, but they do have federal permit regulations they are required to uphold, and this allows them to hold larger commercial operations accountable with regard to our event stipulations and their commitment to environmental stewardship.

Although Caravancicle is the most public of the Commodification Camps, and particularly egregious because it was backed by someone on the Board of Directors, it’s by no means the only such enterprise. Answergirl said they placed 25 of these camps on October 29, this was watered down to 12 by December 3 when “Burning Man” gave us their official response. If these camps are running commercial activities on the Playa, without a Special Recreation Permit from the Bureau of Land Management, they jeopardize the permit for the whole event – and thus are an existential threat to Burning Man itself, as well as a threat to our culture.

From burningman.org:

Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

References:

BLM 2014 Burning Man Operating Plan

BLM 2013 list of permitted vendors

 

 

image: Philippe Glade

image: Philippe Glade

image: Philippe Glade

image: Philippe Glade

DJ Booth above the bar, Caravancicle. Image: Philippe Glade

DJ Booth above the bar, Caravancicle. Image: Philippe Glade

Sep 24 2014

Exploring the Other: 2014 Edition

Burning Man requires its Regional Events to have transparent financials, donate to their charities, and obtain a license to use their trademarks. For themselves, the requirements are not so strict. Sure, they have to disclose the activities of their non-profits to the IRS. And they share numbers with us in their Afterburn reports. The Afterburn numbers are not audited as far as we can tell, and are not a complete financial statement. Significantly, Revenues are left out. Also significantly, very general category headings are used for expense items. We know that Decommodification, LLC, a private, for-profit company, owns all the rights to the trademarks, images, videos, soundtracks, fine art, and other intellectual property of the event. We believe that Black Rock City, LLC pays royalties to Decommodification, LLC, to call their event in the Nevada desert “Burning Man”. But there is no line item for this payment. How much are those royalties? That’s a secret.

cartoon_accounting_2In order to estimate it, some forensic accounting is required. It may not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing. And Burners.Me is the only site on the Internet that is even trying.

Last month, right before the event, Burning Man added a page to their site explaining “where does my ticket money go”. The page appears to be an “orphan”, which means it is not linked to by any other page there. The Reno Gazette-Journal somehow found this page, describing it as an “announcement”, and used it as a reference for their story “Where does your ticket money go?”. The Journal said:

Burning Man announced today where ticket sales money goes to shed light on why tickets cost what they do

We looked for the announcement on their web site, their press page, their blog, and in their JackRabbit speaks newsletter – couldn’t find it. Some claimed they posted it to Facebook, but it doesn’t appear in their official feed. The page seems like it was added to the site for the purpose of the RGJ story. It is filed under “What is Burning Man?”, but that page has no link to it.

Water please, he's got mud on his advertising!Was it really an announcement, designed to shed light? Or was it a ruse, designed to muddy the waters and confuse the language, figures, and facts used in public discussions of the event?

The story raised an issue with us here. Both Burning Man, and the RGJ, were claiming that “BLM fees were $4.5 million”. The entry in the Afterburn accounts says “BLM and Other”. So what is the Other? And how much are the payments to them?

We have speculated that “Other” is Decommodification, LLC. Payments to them may be lumped together in this figure, and may also be included in “Taxes and Other Licensing Fees”. We said:

the reason that the word “other” is significant in the original report is that in 2013, this category jumped from $1.8m to $4.5m – with no explanation given for the gigantic leap ($2,654,919 gain). “Taxes and Licenses” jumped from $154,994 to $1,021,851, also without explanation ($866,857 gain). At the same time, “Decommodification LLC owns the rights to everything” (or words to that effect) is now on all the tickets. Coincidence? Well the fact that BMOrg is trying to gloss over it by using increasingly vague language makes that seem even less likely.

…What is interesting here is the subtle use of language to mask truth. The carefully chosen words “BLM and Other Usage Fees” are repeated and slightly distorted, through a technique sometimes called “Chinese whispers”, to become “BLM manages the event…2013 fees”.

The distorted information has been picked up and repeated by many other sites: Las Vegas Sun, High Country News, Reddit, Ron’s Log, Yahoo Finance, the Black Rock Beacon.

So who is correct? Burning Man themselves? Mainstream media newspapers? Or little ‘ole us, puny and pesky “social media bloggers”?

It’s us, of course. RGJ is wrong, and BMOrg are either misleading us (accidentally or deliberately), outright lying, or (to be charitable) are merely ignorant and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

How do we know? Because we went to the source. The Federal Bureau of Land Management.

Here’s what BMOrg said:

The Black Rock Desert is public land, but we don’t get to use it for free. It also takes a lot of equipment and hours of labor to put things together out there. The following are just a few highlights of costs we incurred in 2013:

  • The space we use is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and our 2013 fees to them totaled $4,522,952.

Here’s what the RGJ said:

The following are some of the costs Burning Man said it incurred in 2013:

• Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the land the event is held on: 2013 fees totaled $4,522,952;

Here’s what Gene Seidlitz, chief of the Winnemucca-based Black Rock Field Office of the BLM, and the guy responsible for the Burning Man permit, said in response to our enquiries:

Burning Man is required to pay fees and costs to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as part of a Special Recreation Permit (SRP) issued by BLM to Burning Man each year.  Fees are set by Congress and are currently 3% of revenue related to the SRP.  For Burning Man this includes 3% of ticket sales, ice & coffee sales and other miscellaneous revenue.  The funds go toward BLM’s overall program management within the Winnemucca District with a priority in the Black Rock Field Office.

Burning Man also reimburses (cost recovery) BLM for all reasonable and justifiable costs related to BLM’s administration of the SRP.   Processing includes, but not be limited to, the following: coordination, administration and approval of any necessary NEPA compliance; consultation with appropriate Federal, State, Tribal, and local officials; preparation of the administrative record and resolving any protests, appeals and litigation that might result from the proposal, preparation of all decisions and authorizations resulting from those decisions, monitoring the construction, operation and termination of any resultant authorization; and other necessary processing actions consistent with a final decision.

It seems that those costs jumped, big time, between 2012 and 2013:

In 2012 BLM did a comprehensive analysis of the 2011 operations after the event and determined the BLM needed and would enhance the BLM planning and implementation in 2013 to ensure public health and safety for an event of 70,000 participants in a remote environment was adequately addressed.  As a result BLM’s costs increased from $1.2 million to $2.8 million that year. This was the largest jump in BLM’s costs in the history of Burning Man. Before and since the cost increases have been more incremental and were the result to inflation, growth of the event, etc.

So did the BLM charge Burning Man $4.5 million in 2013, or less?

BLM charged BRC approximately $2.8 M  for costs and approximately $685,000 were the 3% revenue for 2013

Did the BLM do anything to enforce the Vehicle Pass restrictions, or was this something Burning Man came up with?

BRC instituted the vehicle pass program.  This was not something that BLM enforced.

We wondered if the 35,000 vehicle passes were counted in any way by the authorities. It appears not, so it was up to BMOrg to issue them and regulate itself. If they sold more than the stated limit of 35,000, their punishment would be to have more profit forced upon them. If enterprising BMOrg insiders wanted to make some cash on the side, all they needed to do was sell a few vehicle passes on the black secondary market. From the moment they were released, they were for sale for 4-5x face value on Stubhub, and remained at a premium right up until the week of the event. We’ve heard no stories of people being rejected at the Gayte for not having vehicle passes, so I think we can safely assume that they sold more there to whoever required them. Whether or not the new vehicle tax did anything about the environmental footprint of the event (which we were told was the reason for the initiative) is unknown; it definitely was a nice $1.4m+ cash drop to the bottom line for BMOrg (which we speculated was the reason for the initiative).

2014 vehicle pass pricesComing back to the BLM figures, we have:

Costs: $2,800,000

Revenue share: $685,000

At 3%, this means the event revenues were $22,833,000.

We said:

According to the official numbers, in 2013 there were 61,000 tickets sold ($23.23 million). This includes a last minute release of 3000 “OMG” tickets, when the BLM approved a population cap increase. Also according to the official numbers, 69,613 attended the event. What gives? Did anyone at BMOrg make money from the unexpected 8,613 extra people (ticket value: $3.3 million)? Or were these tickets handed out for free to volunteers, who sold them on Stubhub or STEP for personal gain? How much was made from gate sales?

At the time, we were pooh-poohed, “there are no gate sales”. Of course there are, and it has now come out from independent sources that they are called Exception tickets.

In theory, the BLM revenue share should also include sales from ice, coffee, gasoline, propane, Plug-n-Play camps, and any of the other things for sale on the Playa – in 2013, there were 44 licensed vendor permits issued for Burning Man. We have estimated ice and coffee sales as above $1 million annually.

Either BMOrg gave out 1000+ free tickets that they were supposed to sell, in addition to the 8,613 free tickets from the population cap…or there is some discrepancy in the revenues being reported to the BLM.

Could the discrepancy come from the 3000 “Holiday tickets” ($650 – this year, sold at the end of January), and 4000 Low Income tickets ($190)? Back in the day, there was a suggestion that Burners paying the enhanced price were subsidizing the low income Burners. If you count the $650 tickets as $380 (the difference being a donation off-Playa to BMP, perhaps), and keep the Low Income at $190, you get $22,420,000 – which allows for a further $413,000 of additional on-Playa revenues. It seems like ice and coffee alone would be more, and the BLM is supposed to get a share of gross revenues, not net.

In a speech in Tokyo earlier this year, BMOrg CEO Marian Goodell said their revenues were $30 million a year. If she was referring to 2013 – and why wouldn’t she be, since 2014 hadn’t happened yet – then there is $8,167,000 that BMOrg makes off-Playa, in addition to the annual Black Rock desert event. Where does this money come from? It’s hard to imagine it’s from donations, since according to the Burning Man Project’s IRS Form 990, their funding for 2012 was $591,672.

The true figure for “BLM fees” in 2013 is $3,485,000.

Which means “other” is $1,037,952.

Where does this money go?

We have no direct proof that it is to Decommodification, LLC, but I can’t think of any other candidates. The State of Nevada imposes a 5% “live entertainment tax”, but Burning Man and EDC are exempt as outdoor festivals. There are separate line items for taxes, anyway. “Taxes and Licenses” also made a massive, unexplained leap: from $154,994 (2012) to $1,021,851 (2013) – an $866,857 gain. Possibly, some or all of this increase could be going to license the trademark in addition to the Mysterious Other. We know now that Decommodification, LLC permits them to call their 30-year old party “Burning Man”, by licensing “their” intellectual property back to Black Rock City LLC. It seems strange that BMOrg would mis-state their own figures by 23%, and the way the Where Does My Ticket Money Go “announcement” was made is suspicious.

To put the Mysterious Other in context, it is more than the payments for art ($830,280) and donations to local charities ($199,329) combined.

As always, if anyone has any further information, explanation, or details, please share.