Tuesday, November 18, 2008

déjà vu

New Zealand police were pulling this same crap. A number of people in the activist community (non-violent types who worked to promote peace, sustainability, anti-imperialism, and other good things like equality and liberty) I was a part of in Wellington ended up in jail with charges of terrorism stacked against them from these kinds of ridiculous policies. From the Washington Post:

Many Groups Spied Upon In Md. Were Nonviolent

By Lisa Rein and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 19, 2008; B01

Maryland State Police labeled members of a Montgomery County environmental group as terrorists and extremists days after they held a nonviolent protest at an appearance by then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. at a Bethesda high school.

Police files released to the activists reveal that the governor's security detail alerted the state police's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division to what troopers guarding Ehrlich described as "aggressive protesting" by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in 2005.

A review by The Washington Post of those and other files given in recent days to many of the 53 Maryland activists who were wrongly labeled as terrorists in state and federal databases shows an intelligence operation eager to collect information on the protest plans of a broad swath of nonviolent groups from 2005 to at least early 2007.

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