Surveillance State Update: The FBI Spies On PETA

Washington Post:

The FBI improperly opened and extended investigations of some U.S. activist groups and put members of an environmental advocacy organization on a terrorist watch list, even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience, the Justice Department said Monday.

A report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine absolved the FBI of the most serious allegation against it: that agents targeted domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights. Civil liberties groups and congressional Democrats had suggested that the FBI employed such tactics during the George W. Bush administration, which triggered Fine's review.

But the report cited what it called other "troubling" FBI practices in its monitoring of domestic groups in the years between the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and 2006. In some cases, Fine said, agents began investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons.

In others, the report said, the FBI extended probes "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. Among the groups monitored were the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; and Greenpeace USA. Activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, the report said.

Any folks on the right who want to dismiss the seriousness of the surveillance because it's aimed at lefty fringe groups might want to pause and think about how, say, Tea Party activities might be viewed by the FBI. The surveillance state doesn't tend to be that discriminating.

Homeland Security, Gay Terrorists and the Tragedy of Gov. Ed Rendell

Big Brother

A couple of days ago I wrote that "the surveillance state always claims to be acting in the interest of our safety and security. Sometimes, it's even true." I was writing then about a 40-year-old incident involving the civil rights movement; luckily, the State of Pennsylvania has decided to offer us a fresh example:

HARRISBURG – Gov. Rendell said Tuesday that he was "appalled" and "embarrassed" that his administration's Office of Homeland Security has been tracking and circulating information about legitimate protests by activist groups that do not pose a threat to public safety.

Rendell said he did not know that the state Office of Homeland Security had been paying an outside company to track a long list of activists, including groups that oppose drilling in the Marcellus Shale, animal-rights advocates, and peace activists.

The office then passed that information on to large groups of people, including law enforcement and members of the private sector.

"Let me make this as clear as I can make it," the governor said at news conference Tuesday night, pounding his fist on the podium. "Protesting against an idea, a principle, a process, is not a real threat against infrastructure. Protesting is a God-given American right, a right that is in our Constitution, a right that is fundamental to all we believe in as Americans."

Nice words. Except for this:

Rendell said that he will not fire or discipline anyone in the Office of Homeland Security, headed by director James F. Powers Jr., for the lapse. But he said he ordered the office to terminate its contract with Philadelphia-based Institute of Terrorism and Research Response, which he said has been paid $125,000 in the last year to gather data about possible security threats.

That, my friends, is scapegoating. An outside contractor loses a nice little paycheck and that's supposed to be accountability. But "security" officials who received the information -- and published them in a thrice-weekly intelligence bulletin? They get to keep their jobs, even though they should've known better. They didn't know better -- which suggests that Gov. Rendell wasn't really setting a "protect the civil rights of Pennsylvanians" vibe in office.

Say, who were the "threats" anyway?

The bulletin included information about a PrideFest by gays and lesbians; a rally that supported his administration's education policy; and an anti-BP candlelight vigil.

The controversy over the Homeland Security Office's intelligence bulletins came to light after one became public last week. The August bulletin included a list of forthcoming - and mostly public - hearings involving Marcellus Shale natural-gas drilling, and noted that they would be attended by anti-drilling activists. It also listed a planned screening of the controversial movie Gasland in Philadelphia.

It's laughable, really. And our lame-duck governor gets to say a lot of nice words about rights without holding anybody in government responsible for infringing on those rights. So I don't believe Ed Rendell. The surveillance of peaceful protest groups happens too often -- here and elsewhere -- for a reasonable person to believe it's anything but business as usual. The problem, for government officials, is getting caught.