Top Maryland cops ordered nonviolent peace activists' names added to anti-terror, drug trafficking databases
Stunned senators pressed Sheridan to apologize to the activists for the spying, assailed in an independent review last week as "overreaching" by law enforcement officials who were oblivious to their violation of the activists' rights of free expression and association. The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, does not apologize but admits that the state police have "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime" by those classified as terrorists.Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists (via /.)Hutchins told the committee it was not accurate to describe the program as spying. "I doubt anyone who has used that term has ever met a spy," he told the committee.
"What John Walker did is spying," Hutchins said, referring to John Walker Jr., a communications specialist for the U.S. Navy convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Hutchins said the intelligence agents, whose logs were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland as part of a lawsuit, were monitoring "open public meetings." His officers sought a "situational awareness" of the potential for disruption as death penalty opponents prepared to protest the executions of two men on death row, Hutchins said.
"I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government," he said. Hutchins said he did not notify Ehrlich about the surveillance. Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the governor had no comment.
the latest
latest episodes
just so you know where you stand.
Welcome to the United Fascist States of America. This kind of stuff reads like a Cold War behind-the-Iron-Curtain novel where we westerners pity the poor average socialist comrade who gets their ID checked everywhere they go and who have very few civil liberties.
The shoe is now on the other foot, but we westerners are told that it's all to protect our freedom. We don't have many freedoms left, it seems.
Funny how the First Amendment was written by men who wanted to "disrupt the government".
Department of Homeland Security personnel monitored and photographed PETA protestors at a Honey Baked Ham store here in Georgia. Scary vegans:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/20154prs20050922.html
I love that police nonsense babble: "if you want to change something then you are a TERRORIST!"
I love not to live in the "Land of Freedom".
Funny how the First Amendment was written by men who wanted to "disrupt the government".
More than that!
They actually said it was our duty as citizens!
We are the last front against tyranny.
Yes, but the government is all nice now, doesn't do anything wrong with such information and never EVER will, scouts honour. Anytime the government has ever done so in the past have been punished with a slap on the wrist which we agree with the government and feel is sufficient for them to never do such things ever again.
I'm not sure which is scarier: a)that I'm finally ready to stop waving two thirds of this stuff away with the 'but it's not like I've got anything to hide...' response, or b) that I'm afraid to delete my Facebook page.
One can only hope in the fullness of time that people like Hutchins stand trial for treason.
What happened to the idea of dissenters as patriots?
Thomas Paine
All of the founding fathers
Boston Tea Party
Abolitionists
etc
These were the heroes I grew up reading about in American history. In the modern revision they are terroristic traitors. Is there any hope?
oh those wacky maryland boys! just cant stop violating those citizens' rights. i wonder how deep this goes. i know in my heart that it is going on down here in fla, but no one in charge will admit it. i have seen with my own eyes, local cops taking pics and video of participants at war protests and marches in town. personal enjoyment? i'm doubting it.
when martial law is declared whose side will the police and the military take?
Luckily for us, they just figured out that data mining does doodly-squat for terrorism finding. Once they have everyone's name on "the list" it becomes useless. I'd fire the man for diluting a valuable resource with useless data.
I wonder how many ex-wives or daughter's ex boyfriends are on these lists just because a cop didn't like them.
d-69, i think i know of one son-in-law in alaska...
when martial law is declared whose side will the police and the military take?
Blackwater's.
Since when did vigils outside the jail on execution night count as "disruption"
And yes the founding fathers felt- and acted on this feeling that if you don't like your government it's your duty to change it however you may.
meanwhile
"Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc. (AIG), the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.
The tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees at the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy"
"I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government," he said. Hutchins said he did not notify Ehrlich about the surveillance. Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the governor had no comment.
Our government was designed by brilliant men so it could be run by idiots they just didn't count on the people electing the caliber of idiots we have now days perfect case in point GW and his cronies the man can't even speak english correctly. My great grandpa is probably turning in his grave having fought in two world wars to protect our way of life and to see what is happening today. Fight the system it is there for us by us lets fix it for our children no more pork barrel politics and laws written in english not legalese no more rich powerful morons in our highest office no more buying elections no more bailing out wall street no more paid lobbyists fix it now we the people demand it
sorry for the lack of punctuation but passion is first punctuation second
When you complain about people not speaking English, it's more persuasive when you speak the language yourself.
Making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who's....
On the one hand my first impulse is to say that police should have as part of their advancement through the ranks a very thorough test on the Bill of Rights that gets increasingly challenging as you advance.
On the other hand I think that that would just be a band-aid on the big problem, which is that the government no longer sees itself as a servant of the people, but rather the ruler of the people. If this trend continues, at some point the people will rebel, and if the police have these same attitudes it is going to be ugly enough that the 60's will seem tame by comparison.
4 years ago a friend of mine (a US citizen) went to a lot of trouble to establish residency in New Zealand to make sure he would have a place to retreat to when things got bad here. I used to think he was a conspiracy theorist and a little out there. No longer.
Amen to #18 & 21 - I honestly think that most people (here in Britain as well) are in this mindset of The Rulers and The Ruled. It isn't true. We rule ourselves, that's the point of a democracy, and the government should make decisions based on the collective wishes of the people it *represents*. When the majority of the public don't want something, what right on does the government have in introducing it?
The only real recent time I'm aware that we - in this country - have actually expressed this in action was the Poll Tax riots under the Thatcher government. Anyone not familiar, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Charge for a little beacon of hope that, somewhere, there is actually a point where people will rebel against unfair government.
I wonder if we'll ever reach that point again or if we'll truly end up with 'V for Vendetta'. (Interestingly, 'V' was written (the graphic novel) in the Thatcher era. Read the book, there's more there than the modern film could include.)
damn, Hutchins is an idiot. Of course it's spying, doesn't matter if it's against Marylanders or the government. This has become a giant poostorm in my region.
To put it in perspective, this happened because the federal goverment was trusting the state government and their corrupt intelligence. If peace activists are being put on an AT/AD list, MD police obviously have no idea what sedition really is. If DHS is investigating a peaceful group, they were probably given bad intel by some local yokel. If anything, this should show the federal government just how open to abuse by state and local government they are. I trust the feds a lot more than I trust my local cops, and they should take the same attitude.
heh heh , ahhh...
"AIG, Castigated for Resort Event, Plans Another One (Update2)
By Erik Holm and Hugh Son
Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., castigated by the White House, Congress and Barack Obama for hosting a $440,000 conference days after an $85 billion federal bailout, plans to hold another gathering for brokers next week.
The event, at the Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay, aims to ``motivate and educate'' about 150 independent agents who sell AIG coverage to high-end clients, said spokesman Nicholas Ashooh. "
sorry, not even a sidebar, couldn't resist.
Isn't "intelligence agents" just another euphemism for spies? and "monitoring" spying?
#17 - where's the sauce on that?
remember this? Only a year ago. I suppose everyone has forgotten what happened during the Red Scare and the Cold War when they used paid informants - paid by the name yet.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/fbi-proposes-bu.html
best way to make a "terrorist" is to simply name them as such... then it's "us" vs "them"...
This is the line being drawn in the sand... it's coming...
We, the people, should create our own Terrorist Watchlist and put these people on it! I feel that we should really be keeping track of people like Thomas E. Hutchins and making sure that we won't forget what they do and say.
I know that the government is stealing our civil liberties and I know that we are slowly trading our freedoms away for safety but as someone who lives in Baltimore, I would be happy to give up some things for some safety. You really don't understand how bad Baltimore is unless you live here. We fight with Detroit for the top spots for highest murder per capita every year, there are more KNOWN heroin addicts than republicans, we have the highest transmission rates of aids and stds in the US, AND the only reason our violent crime stats have gone down is because a few years ago the mayor decided that rape wasn't a violent crime anymore. While I am a first amendment activist and think what the police have done is reprehensible and the officers that did it should be fired, I can, however, understand (not condone) how the police in Maryland can do crazy things like this. It's purely out of fear. I don't know many people who aren't terrified to live here. If I could afford to move I would. I live in the nice part of town, where you cannot buy a house (no matter how small or in bad repair) for under $400,000 and there are break ins constantly. at the seven-eleven just up from our house the clerk had acid thrown in his face last year during a hold up. We have a high school around here that is colloquially known as Heroin High, because there are more people on heroin than off (and no I'm not talking about an inner city school, I'm talking about a school that is one of the "best" in the area), but not to forget inner city schools, there are riots in them at least four times a year. Downtown there are drug dealers on every corner and the drug trade is intense. at least once a month the police pull a car over that is packed with drugs. While I am not condoning their actions they are understandable if you think about the bigger picture.
bigger picture?
http://www.slate.com/id/2201622/
Lady Cthulhu - 'crazy' is the operative word here. Cops in Baltimore are about as burdened as they get. That's still no excuse for spying on anti-war groups and putting them on a terrorism watchlist out of what... spite?
There's not much for the cops to fear from a bunch of peaceniks.
And why are they wasting their time??? There's surveillance and then there's witch hunts. I'm ok with being seen by flashing blue light cameras (even if they are kinda useless). But I do not want to have to clear up some misunderstanding because I was having friendly conversation with the wrong hothead at Red Emmas.
Granted, I occasionally hear some less-than-rational activists say some stupid, misinformed BS that could be interpreted the wrong way, but words are just words, and cops know that. There haven't been any violent protests in Baltimore in a long time...
Which means the feds should have been taking anything BPD handed over with a smile and a nod, then tossing it in the shredder.
Bet you they will now!
"disrupt the government" is such a broad term that can serve as a catch-all for any type of behavior Mr. Hutchins likes. Piggy cops love those kinds of terms that allow them to put all the things that bother them under a nice fascist heading. as someone who was on the list, I have wondered if people were abusing their powers. tee-hee, I hate them libs, I'm gonna put em on because there's no recourse against me ... of course, to try and be fair (something which they prolly wouldn't accord me), in our no-risk! society -- what if ONE protester, among the many benign protesters at this event -- goes off and does do a "terrorist" act. Then we all scream about the incompetent cops who clearly saw this person at a "radical" rally and didn't notate. The take no-risk part of our society says throw that net wide, why chance it? It's just a name on a list, not like we arrested them or anything ... [see how it starts? we all know how it finishes]
Lady Cthulhu - $400K??
Seriously, move just outside the city. Friends of mine just bought a nice house literally a quarter mile north of the city line, and paid well under $300K for it. FWIW, Their neighborhood is as decent as mine, and I'm a whole county away.
L C: three posts in favour of authoritarian oppression, two repeats? Who are you?
someone who has lived enough to form her own opinions, instead of sitting around trolling on Boing Boing.
Y'r th kd wh trs t b pplr by syng wht y thnk vryn wnts t hr.
a cubie sock puppet? really?
'ullo cubie! You shall be my new friend!
takuan - sock puppet? come now, do you think I need sock puppets?
Do some quick comparison of our writing styles. Unless I have multiple personalities, I don't think we're the same person.
ah,but are you even one person?
Cube, implement goat retention procedures. Takuan, stop nipping Cube's ankles. Lady Cthulhu's just panicky. I don't get any sense that she's fond of authority for its own sake.
Lady Cthulhu, you have my sympathies, but putting nonviolent peace activists' names into the drug and terrorism databases does absolutely nothing to make your city safer. In fact, it makes us all less safe by making those lists meaningless.
Mbelrose @19, Crash1105 @18 speaks English just fine, as you'll discover if you read the comment out loud. All it needs is punctuation.
Atrios's Law: It's all about pissing off liberals.
That seems to be an important motivation behind otherwise inexplicable behavior by conservative types.
Like this thing. Or most of what the Bush Administration did and tried to do. Or choosing Sarah Palin as your VP candidate.
as you wish, milady. And my strength to you in your friend's time of illness.
Thanks, Takuan. Today his partner was singing to him, and he sang a descending octave back at her! We are grateful beyond words.
...
Let me know if I get too irritable, okay?
We sustain you.
Theresa - Thank you, and did you know your profile page is now one of the top Google results for "Goat Retention Procedures"?
I know 'an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind' but if Thomas Hutchins thinks it's ok to spy on those who would disrupt our form of government...
WCC, a word to the wise...no aitch in 'Teresa'.
Yeah, I know. I saw I misspelled 'Teresa' as soon as I hit post. Firefox thinks either is correct, so no help there.