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Mardi 22 juillet 2008
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Par Nick Madigan | Les dirigeants de police d'état du Maryland de capot interne à plusieurs reprises ont remarqué sur des activistes de paix et des groupes de pénalité de l'anti-mort ces dernières années et ont écrit les noms de certains dans une base de données de loi-application des personnes pensées pour être des terroristes ou les trafiquants de drogue, les documents nouvellement libérés montrent.

Les dossiers, faits jeudi public par l'union américaine de libertés civiles du Maryland, dépeignent un modèle de l'infiltration organismes d'activistes des' en 2005 et 2006. Les activistes affirment que les autorités essayaient de déterminer si elles ont constitué une menace de sécurité aux Etats-Unis. Mais aucune des 43 pages des résumés et des journaux machine - certains noms avec agents les' et les paragraphes entiers ont noirci dehors - ne mentionne le criminel ou même les actes potentiellement criminels, la norme juridique pour lancer une telle surveillance.

Les fonctionnaires de police d'état ont déclaré qu'ils libertés n'ont pas raccourci protestataires des'.

Remarquer, détaillé dans les notations au moins de 288 heures de surveillance sur une période de 14 mois, rappelle l'infiltration semblable par des agents de FBI des droits civiques et des groupes pacifistes il y a des décennies, en particulier sous l'administration du Président Richard M. Nixon.

David Rocah, un mandataire de personnel pour l'ACLU à Baltimore, dit à une conférence jeudi de nouvelles qu'il l'a trouvée « étourdir » que plus de 30 ans après, le gouvernement vise toujours les personnes qui ne font rien dissidence plus qu'exprès.

« Tout remarquable dans ces notations est une activité de l'amendement légal et premier, » Rocah dit. « Pour que les dirigeants de police de capot interne passent des centaines d'heures écrivant des informations sur des activités politiques légales de protestation dans une base de données criminelle sont un gaspillage injuste de dollars de contribuable et ne font rien à nous rendre plus sûrs à partir des terroristes ou des trafiquants de drogue réels. »

L'ACLU a obtenu les documents de l'Office de l'Attorney General d'état par un procès public de Loi de l'information du Maryland.

Colonne Terrence B. Sheridan, surveillant de la police d'état du Maryland, a dit dans un rapport jeudi que le département « ne raccourcit pas peu convenablement l'expression ou la démonstration des libertés civiles des protestataires ou des organismes agissant légalement. »

« Aucune mesure illégale par la police d'état n'a été jamais prise contre aucuns citoyens ou groupe qui ont exercé leur droite de libérer le discours et l'assemblée d'une façon légale, » Sheridan dit. “Only when information regarding criminal activity is alleged will police continue to investigate leads to ensure the public safety.”

Nothing in the documents indicates criminal activity or intent on the part of the protesters, ACLU officials said.

Nonetheless, the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division sent covert agents to infiltrate the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, a peace group; the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty; and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a death row inmate.

Using a fake e-mail address and an alias, an undercover agent joined the e-mail list of the death penalty group, the documents say.

Agents also monitored the group’s organizational meetings, public forums and events in churches, as well as rallies on Lawyers Mall in Annapolis and in Baltimore outside the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, known as “SuperMax.”

Most of the spies’ reports were innocuous. After an Aug. 24, 2005, gathering of the Evans group, an undercover officer wrote in a log: “The meeting concluded with members talking about trying to get the man running for Baltimore County State’s Attorney to commit to his plans regarding the death penalty in the county.”

Baltimore County was responsible for more capital punishment cases than any other Maryland jurisdiction at the time.

Another entry about the Evans group revealed that agents had spent 50 hours of “investigative time” shadowing its members in March, April and May 2005. The entry mentioned that a May 25, 2005, meeting of the group was attended by Max Obuszewski, a former Peace Corps member and longtime activist who moved to Baltimore in 1983, and Terry Fitzgerald, who heads the anti-death penalty coalition and established the Evans group.

Both attended Thursday’s news conference.

State police appeared to have been specifically tracking Obuszewski’s activities. His name, the documents show, was entered into the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, even though there was “not a scintilla of evidence” that he deserved to be listed, said Rocah, the ACLU attorney.

“Mr. Obuszewski has devoted his entire life to peace,” Rocah said. “If there is anyone in the world who is further from a terrorist, it is hard for me to imagine.”

Obuszewski agreed. “You cannot get more insulting than to call me a terrorist,” he said. Besides, he went on, the groups he belongs to hold open meetings and publicize their schedules. “Why would someone come to those meetings and pretend to be someone else? Why are government agencies targeting pacifists?”

One reason, he theorized, is that local police agencies need funds from the federal government, and surveillance of supposed “terrorists” might be a good way to keep getting the money. No matter the reason, the news that the Bush administration keeps about 1 million names on a terrorist watch-list is disheartening, Obuszewski said, since so many people cannot possibly warrant inclusion.

In February 2006, the national ACLU and its affiliates filed multiple federal Freedom of Information requests seeking records of Pentagon surveillance of anti-war groups around the country. Using information from a secret Pentagon database, NBC News reported that a unit of the Department of Defense had been accumulating intelligence about domestic organizations and their protest activities as part of a mission to track “potential terrorist threats.”

“It serves no security purpose to infiltrate peaceful groups,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent who specialized in counter-terrorism and who joined the ACLU two years ago as policy counsel in its Washington legislative office. “It completely misuses law enforcement resources.”

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, German said, the government has “actively encouraged” local police agencies to become intelligence gatherers and to compile information that does not necessarily have a connection to criminal activity.

Despite the fact that the Maryland infiltrators’ reports consistently said the activists acted lawfully, agents continued to recommend that the spying continue. Reports of the surveillance were sent to at least seven federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, including the National Security Agency, the police departments of Baltimore, Baltimore County, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, and the state General Services police.

The documents released Thursday show the kind of information they were trading. Among other things, Obuszewski and fellow activists arranged a meeting with then-Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin in 2005 in which they asked him to support a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Susan Goering, executive director of the ACLU of Maryland, said she feared that the documents released so far “may be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.”

In a letter sent Thursday to Gov. Martin O’Malley, Goering wrote that the state police had “recorded extensive information about specific individuals and groups, including describing their political outlook, whether they were articulate, what political activities they are engaged in, and attended private planning meetings in a covert capacity.”

The only potentially unlawful activity mentioned anywhere in the documents, she said, were two instances of nonviolent civil disobedience. In one, activists refused to leave a guard station during a protest at the National Security Agency after bringing cookies and drinks for the guards, and in the other, they hatched a plan to place photographs of soldiers who died in Iraq on the fence surrounding the White House.

“Maryland residents should feel free to join a peaceful protest without fear that their names will wind up in police files,” Goering wrote. “They should feel free to engage in nonviolent dissent without fear of being branded as ‘terrorists’ or ’security threat groups’ in shared law-enforcement databases.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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