ACLU: Pentagon Monitoring of Antiwar Activists More Intensive Than Previously Thought

^{Category: Free Speech | War on Terror}

Image courtesy of the White House.

Documents released last week by the Pentagon show widespread monitoring of antiwar groups and events, including events organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the social justice arm of the Society of Friends/Quakers. The surveillance was conducted under the auspices of the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) antiterrorism database program:

The TALON database was intended to track groups or individuals with links to terrorism, but the documents released today show that the Pentagon gathered information on anti-war protesters using sources from the Department of Homeland Security, local police departments and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces ...

One document, which is labeled "potential terrorist activity," lists events such as a "Stop the War NOW!" rally in Akron, Ohio on March 19, 2005. The source noted that the rally "will have a March and Reading of Names of War Dead" and that marchers would pass a military recruitment station and the local FBI office along the way.

Also included in the documents is information on a series of protests mistakenly identified as taking place in Springfield, Illinois (the protests actually occurred in Springfield, Massachusetts). According to the document, "Source received an e-mail from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), e-mail address: [REDACTED] that stated that on March 18-20, a series of protest actions were planned in the Springfield, IL area… to focus on actions at military recruitment offices with the goals to include: raising awareness, education, visibility in community, visibility to recruiters as part of a national day of action."

Nobody should be stunned by this given previous abuses of the TALON program, but this all goes to show why citizens should not simply trust the government to run a fair antiterrorism program in other respects. If the Pentagon is using antiterrorism initiatives to spy on antiwar activists and other political critics with no history of terrorism, then it's unrealistic to expect the NSA wiretapping program, for example, to be limited to suspected terrorists, or to trust the administration to permanently limit the military detention program to suspected terrorists. Now is the time for vigilance and protest, not for acquiescence to a government whose policies quite often fail to respect the most basic principles of liberal democracy.

Background:

• Big Brother 101
• The 2006 Jefferson Muzzle Awards

Prior Coverage:

• ACLU Report: U.S. Government Investigating Even More Political Protesters (see item #4)
• ACLU: FBI Spied on Thomas Merton Center
• Blogger Forced to Change Antiwar T-Shirt Before Boarding Plane