Say hello to Big Brother, right here in good old Brevard County. By now, you've probably heard about the Melbourne police surveillance of 36 demonstrators who turned out at City Hall to peacefully protest the start of President Bush's second term.
How the cops videotaped them, took close-ups of their faces and at least one license plate, and placed the tape "in evidence." And how officers shadowed a protester as she walked home and where, upon her arrival, she found a police car parked nearby.
The protesters included moms with kids in strollers, senior citizens, young people, middle-class working folks and a woman in a wheelchair, all doing the most constitutionally protected of things:
Giving their government a piece of their mind.
The police's infringement on the Bill of Rights left me angry and concerned. But my dismay has grown worse since I did some legwork and learned that what went down in Melbourne has been happening around the nation.
Since Sept. 11, the Justice Department has been using the cover of "fighting terrorism" to spy on anti-war groups, environmental groups, religious groups, labor-rights groups and other law-abiding organizations that have policy differences with the White House.
And it's using the FBI and local law-enforcement agencies to do it.
The situation is so widespread that the American Civil Liberties Union -- which came to the defense of the Melbourne protesters -- has filed Freedom of Information requests in 10 states and the District of Columbia to find out the details.
They want to learn how the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are working with local police to engage in what the evidence shows has absolutely nothing to do with fighting terrorists, but everything to do with illegal political surveillance.
"This is a very important issue of public concern," says Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney in its New York City office. "We want to know what the policies and procedures are. And we want to know what they've found.
"Police shouldn't be doing these kinds of fishing expeditions. They should be investigating crimes, not investigating ideas. Things have really gone way too far."
The ACLU has extensive documentation of the abuses, and has posted the information online at www.aclu.org/spyfiles.
Take a look yourself, and you will be as aghast as I am:
Pacifist Quakers labeled "criminal extremists;" a former Catholic priest turned peace activist falsely called a "member of a terrorist organization;" student groups infiltrated and their parents tracked down; undercover agents sent to National Lawyers Guild meetings.
There's page after page of it, including the same things that happened in Melbourne -- local police departments being alerted about protests, and then eagerly doing their part to trample on citizens' right to peacefully assemble and say what they want.
And do it without fear of winding up in a secret database with God knows what kind of Orwellian enemy-of-the-state label attached to their heads.
America has been down this witch-hunt road before, most recently during the Vietnam War when Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon gladly let J. Edgar Hoover's FBI run wild and compile illegal dossiers on thousands of Americans who didn't agree with their government.
Now, with an administration famous for its intolerance of dissent using the fear of terrorism as an excuse, history is repeating itself.
To those who say it can't happen here, I say this: It is.
Contact Glisch at 242-3968 or jglisch@brevard.gannett.com
.
No comments:
Post a Comment