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Martedì 22 luglio 2008
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Da Scalfittura Madigan | La copertura inferiore Maryland dichiara gli ufficiali di polizia spiati ripetutamente sugli attivisti di pace e sui gruppi di pena di anti-morte negli ultimi anni ed ha introdotto i nomi di alcuno in una base di dati di legge-applicazione della gente pensata per essere terroristi o i traffickers della droga, documenti recentemente liberati mostrano.

Le lime, fatte giovedì pubblico dall'unione americana di libertà civili di Maryland, descrivono un modello di infiltrazione delle organizzazioni degli attivisti in 2005 e in 2006. Gli attivisti si contendono che le autorità stavano provando a determinare se abbiano proposto una minaccia di sicurezza negli Stati Uniti. Ma nessun delle 43 pagine dei sommari e dei ceppi di calcolatore - alcuni con nomi degli agenti' e paragrafi interi anneriti fuori - accennano il criminale o persino gli atti potenzialmente criminali, la norma giuridica per l'inizio della tale sorveglianza.

Dichiari la polizia i funzionari hanno detto che non hanno accorciato i freedoms dei dimostranti.

Spiare, dettagliato in ceppi almeno di 288 ore di sorveglianza su un periodo di 14 mesi, ricorda l'infiltrazione simile dagli agenti di FBI dei diritti civili e dei gruppi pacifisti le decadi fa, specialmente sotto la gestione del presidente Richard M. Nixon.

David Rocah, un avvocato del personale per il ACLU a Baltimora, ad esempio ad un congresso giovedì di notizie che ha scoperto che “stupefying„ che più di 30 anni successivamente, il governo ancora sta designando la gente come bersaglio che nient'altro che esprime il dissenso.

“Tutto celebre in questi ceppi è un'attività di correzione legale e prima,„ Rocah detto. “Affinchè gli ufficiali di polizia della copertura inferiore spenda le centinaia delle ore che forniscono le informazioni sulle attività politiche legali di protesta in una base di dati criminale è uno spreco unconscionable di dollari del contribuente e non fa niente renderli più sicuri dai terroristi o dai commercianti di droga reali.„

Il ACLU ha ottenuto i documenti dall'ufficio del Attorney General di dichiarare con una causa pubblica di Legge delle informazioni del Maryland.

Colonna Terrence B. Sheridan, soprintendente del Maryland dichiara la polizia, ad esempio in una dichiarazione giovedì che il reparto “non accorcia inadeguato l'espressione o la dimostrazione delle libertà civili dei dimostranti o delle organizzazioni che si comportano legittimamente.„

“Nessun'azione illegale vicino dichiara la polizia mai è stata presa contro tutti i cittadini o gruppi che hanno esercitato la loro destra liberare il discorso ed il complessivo in un modo legale,„ Sheridan detto. “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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