Police Listed Gay Rights Group Among Terrorists

[cali]

Equality Maryland, the state's largest gay rights group, was among the peaceful protest groups to be classified as terrorists in a Maryland State Police database.

The group was designated a "security threat" by the Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, which also kept dossiers on dozens of activists and at least a dozen groups. Police kept files on Equality Maryland's plans to hold rallies outside the State House in Annapolis to press for legislation reversing the state's ban on same-sex marriage. They plan to purge the files.

<snip>


The files were revealed yesterday at a press conference, where a dozen Democratic lawmakers announced plans to introduce legislation to prevent future surveillance of non-violent groups.

Police would need "reasonable articulated suspicion of actual criminal activity," before they can conduct surveillance, said the legislation's sponsors. Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) also plans to call for a similar bill.

<snip>

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/annapolis/2009/01/equality_md_6pdf_equality_mary.html

[biopowertoday]

1. I have noticed a very

different attitude in our own local law enforcement. They have many new 'toys' from Homeland Security funding and are much more aggressive now. Macho types all over the place. And TV and the new Homeland security show only reinforces that attitude.

[cali]

2. kick

[chill_wind]

3. "They plan to purge the files"-- and then just move them to another outsource

if the past is any indication.

June 29, 2006
Pentagon Spying on Gay, Antiwar Groups More Widespread than Previously Acknowledged
Spying_6_26_6

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network released documents earlier this week showing that the Pentagon conducted surveillance on a more extensive level than first reported late last year. We speak with the executive director of SLDN and a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who recently filed a federal lawsuit to force the agency to turn over additional records.

(...)

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/6/29/pentagon_spying_on_gay_antiwar_groups


Secretive Pentagon Spy Unit: Closed or Outsourced?

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, April 4, 2008
Antifascist Calling.



The New York Times reported Wednesday that the Pentagon is "expected to shut a controversial intelligence office that has drawn fire from lawmakers and civil liberties groups who charge that it was part of an effort by the Defense Department to expand into domestic spying."

The Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld after the September 11 attacks, illegally conducted broad domestic operations that targeted antiwar and other dissident domestic groups.

Mark Mazzetti writes,

The move, government officials say, is part of a broad effort under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to review, overhaul and, in some cases, dismantle an intelligence architecture built by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld. ...

The Pentagon's senior intelligence official, James R. Clapper, has recommended to Mr. Gates that the counterintelligence field office be dismantled and that some of its operations be placed under the authority of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the government officials said. (Mark Mazzetti, "Pentagon is expected to close intelligence unit," The New York Times, April 2, 2008)

(...)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8550

TIA Lives On

By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm