[Peace-discuss] Police spying

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Anyone who thinks that the police -- federal, state, or local
-- would not concern themselves with AWARE because "we're not
a threat" should consider what came to light in a lawsuit
about another group that was clearly not a threat.  I
particularly like that the NSA deployed their "Weapons of
Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team" on a peace
demonstration...  --CGE]

   National Security Agency mounted massive spy op 
   on Baltimore peace group, documents show
   Kevin Zeese
   Published: January 10, 2006

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore
anti-war group, according to documents released during
litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of
protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to
detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.

According to the documents, the Pledge of
Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been
monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence
Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department.
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The documents came as a result of litigation in the August
2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA
security official provided the defendants with a redacted
Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task
Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance
activities.

The NSA, established in 1952 by President Truman, is the
largest and most secret of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Headquartered between Baltimore and Washington, DC, the agency
has two principal functions: to protect U.S. government
communications and intercept foreign transmissions. However,
the NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18
strictly prohibits the interception or collection of
information about "U.S. persons, entities, corporations or
organizations" without explicit written permission from the
Attorney General.

The revelation that a Baltimore peace group was spied upon
comes in the wake of a news reports that the agency has also
been eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and
raises new questions about the legality of NSA activities. The
agency did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is part of the national
Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which works with the Baltimore
Emergency Response Network and the American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC) -- part of a national group committed to
nonviolent civil resistance to stop the war in Iraq. The
Pledge lobbies Maryland congressmembers via letters, phone
calls, faxes, emails and face-to-face meetings; members of the
group are periodically arrested for peaceable protests.

Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group was
closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports
approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the
day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane
Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland.

According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency
collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of
people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in
a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also
logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping
as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to
search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the
demonstration - nothing was found.

NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for
the demonstration and the content of their signs.

An entry made at 1300 hours on July 4. reads, "The Soc. was
advised the protestors were proceeding to the airplane
memorial with three helium balloons attached to a banner that
stated, 'Those Who Exchange Freedom for Security Deserve
Neither, Will Ultimately Lose Both.'"

On the day of the demonstration three protesters were cited
for "disturbances on government property" and released. A
federal judge eventually dismissed the case before trial.

Two of those demonstrators, Max Obuszewiski and Ellen
Barfield, are still scheduled for trial in Baltimore federal
court Jan. 25. The defendants have filed a motion for
discovery and included the letter from the NSA acknowledging
spying on the Pledge. The prosecutor has refused to release
this information as part of discovery. The defendants plan to
argue that the information is necessary for their defense.

"The NSA confirmed, because of a FOIA request I filed, that
indeed it has files on peace and justice groups," Obuszewiski
said. "However, the Agency is refusing to release the
information unless I pay $1,915. What might be in these files?"

A second NSA document on the letterhead of the National
Security Agency Police and authored by NSA Police Major
Michael E. Talbert is dated Oct. 3, 2004. It is an action plan
for the "threat of a demonstration hosted by a group known as
Pledge of Resistance - Baltimore." They note the demonstration
is part of the "Keep Space for Peace Week." The NSA action
plan includes plans for four days, but six activities being
planned by the NSA before the day of the demonstration have
been redacted.

Extensive plans are described for the day of the Oct. 4, 2004
demonstration. The letter shows that the NSA planned to have
their Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team on site,
an officer with a shotgun, an increase in the number of
officers, mobile units monitoring the highway and parking lot,
roving patrols on bicycles in various areas, four K9 handlers,
agents to provide counter-surveillance, aerial observations by
the Anne Arundel, Maryland police and photography/video
surveillance of the activities.

"The NSA Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team will
have a limited staffing on hand to support the event,"
Talbert's memo reads. "...Anne Arundel County Police will be
requested to provide aerial observations."

"Shocking appalling and unnecessary," is how the Chair of the
DC Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild Demonstration
Support Committee Mark Goldstone describes the NSA actions.
Goldstone, who often represents activists who engage in
non-violent civil disobedience, is not counsel in this
litigation. "This surveillance is completely unrelated to even
an expansive definition of 'national security.'"

Maria Allwine, a protester arrested Oct. 4, 2004, recently
described the events in an interview on Democracy Rising.

"The NSA must be spying on us from the federal post office
right across a small street from the AFSC," Allwine said.
"It's the only place that gives them enough of a view to see
our cars/license plate numbers."

Allwine also discussed how the Pledge has been infiltrated.
She described a March 20, 2003 demonstration in downtown
Baltimore where "a provocateur (whom we had identified at our
planning meeting the previous night) joined us. We'd never
seen him before. . . during the die-in at the federal
courthouse, he was taunting the police in a violent manner. We
had to quiet him down, he then disappeared and we never saw
him again - and, of course, he wasn't arrested with the other
49 of us."

The monitoring is ongoing. Allwine says that at demonstrations
the police "have had cookies and drinks set up for us (we
don't partake!) and tell us they knew we were coming."

Goldstone says the impact of NSA surveillance is worrisome.

"People should not be afraid to speak out, and unfortunately
evidence of domestic spying tends to chill people's interest
in speaking out- thus chilling and limiting our precious First
Amendment rights," he told RAW STORY. "Nothing that the Pledge
does, either by their public advocacy against the war or their
non-violent civil disobedience/resistance to war can be
plausibly seen as a threat to United States national security,
as the group is pledged to non-violence and non-property
destruction guidelines."

David Rocah, a staff attorney with the Maryland ACLU, adds,
"There is obviously a well-founded concern of law enforcement
monitoring of First Amendment activities. The ACLU and others
have exposed such activities all over the country resulting in
law suits."

Goldstone says Congress must rein in the NSA.

"Congress must investigate this, and get a handle on the issue
of domestic spying by the NSA and other agencies against
people exercising political speech," he said.
#

Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising and a candidate
for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/National_Security_Agency_spied_on_Baltimore_0110.html