Domestic spying on rise: Police infiltrate peace rallies

[G_j]

http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1080575175181550.xml>

Police infiltrate peace rallies

Monday, March 29, 2004
By Ted Roelofs
CHRONICLE NEWS SERVICE

When opposition to the war in Iraq began to mount last year, Grand Rapids Police sent undercover officers to anti-war meetings and rallies, collecting intelligence about the aims of activists, the department's chief confirmed

We are living in a different time now. It's a different day," said Grand Rapids Police Chief Harry Dolan.

War opponents say their surveillance came closer to tyranny than protection from terror. In one case, they say, police threatened the job of a protester and said they would arrest her if she identified undercover officers she knew from her work as a Spanish interpreter at the Kent County Courthouse.

Calvin College graduate Abby Puls, 24, said that happened in March 2003, as she was leaving a protest near the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building in Grand Rapids.
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<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/22/domestic_spying_on_rise

Domestic spying on rise?
By Murray Polner, 3/22/2004

WITH THE FIRST anniversary of the invasion of Iraq last week and the nationwide demonstrations, not to mention the coming presidential convention, there is growing apprehension among civil libertarians and ordinary Americans that the FBI is once again dredging up its infamous J. Edgar Hoover legacy of spying on political dissenters who are exercising their constitutional rights.

Last October the FBI notified local police agencies to keep close tabs on people and groups opposed to the war and occupation of Iraq. Since it is obvious that the Bush administration loves playing the 9/11 card for political purposes, it is no surprise that efforts are being made to squelch as much domestic dissension as it can.

We've been through this wave of repression before in the 20th century with calamitous results, when government snoopers developed a vast spying apparatus during the '20s, McCarthyite '50s, and the '60s, '70s, and '80s against nonviolent dissenters who dared challenge the wisdom of US foreign policies. And although the FBI (and others in the government) deny they are hindering free speech or assembly -- declaring that they are only concerned with deterring potential criminals and terrorists -- their October memorandum nevertheless asked some 17,000 local and state police agencies to keep a very close eye on antiwar demonstrations and report allegedly suspicious activity to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The risk now is that the "war against terrorism" has given policing agents on all levels greater latitude to play ideological sentry. In Chicago, for example, the Sun-Times reported in February that undercover cops have been spying on different groups, including the American Friends Service Committee. Political espionage has occurred in Denver, Colorado Springs, Colo., Austin, Texas, Fresno, Calif., Atlanta, and probably many other places.

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[JaySherman]

1. kick

:kick:

[G_j]

2. kick

[peace4all]

3. & fostering mistrust among activists

is part of the game.

[bobbieinok]

4. both SF and LA police depts had group 'watching' antiwar groups in the 60s

[Walt Starr]

5. "We are living in a different time now. It's a different day"

Yes we are, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The police pulled this crap in the sixties and seventies, too.

Same shit, different day.