ACLU Report Shows Widespread Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists

Pentagon Tracked at Least 186 Anti-Military Protests in 13 States – including California
For Immediate Release: January 17, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO - The national American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report revealing that the Pentagon monitored at least 186 anti-military protests in the United States, several of them in northern California, and collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in an anti-terrorist threat database.

The Sacramento chapter of Veterans for Peace, Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, and UC Santa Cruz Students Against War were all included in the secret Pentagon database. The UC students first learned their activities where being monitored in December 2005 when NBC News reported on the secret Pentagon database.  Last March the ACLU-NC and the San Francisco Bay Guardian filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking expedited processing for the information.

“We now know about protest activities included in the Pentagon’s database, but we also have learned that other agencies were involved or consulted including the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Department of Homeland Security. Many questions still remain as to how and why this information was collected in the first place,” said Mark Schlosberg, Police Practices Policy Director of the ACLU-NC.

“It cannot be an accident or coincidence that nearly 200 anti-war protests ended up in a Pentagon threat database,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the national ACLU. “This unchecked surveillance is part of a broad pattern of the Bush administration using ‘national security’ as an excuse to run roughshod over the privacy and free speech rights of Americans.”

In response to the ACLU’s FOIA requests filed on February 1, 2006, the Defense Department has released dozens of Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) reports that were compiled on Americans. Many of the reports focus on anti-military recruitment events and protests, including activities organized by the Quaker organization American Friends Service Committee, United for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, and Catholic Worker. The TALON reports tracked events in 13 states and the District of Columbia: Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas.

The latest document obtained by the ACLU, and released today, is an undated 2006 memo reviewing the Defense Department’s database, which was found to list several peaceful protesters as potential threats to the military. According to the memo, as of February 10, 2006, the Defense Department had deleted 186 TALON reports that involved “anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S.” In addition, the Defense Department identified 2,821 TALON reports remaining in the database that contain what the Department describes as “U.S. person information,” but it is unclear whether those reports pertain to protest activities.

The memo also states that “personnel from 28 organizations were authorized to use TALON” and 3,589 users have been authorized to submit TALON reports or access the database. Because of such wide access to the database, even deleted reports may still appear in the files of other government agencies, the ACLU said.

The ACLU said the Pentagon’s misuse of the TALON database is just one example of increased government surveillance of innocent Americans. With the help of phone companies, the National Security Agency has been tapping U.S. phones and reading the e-mails of Americans without warrants. The FBI has gathered information about peace activists and recruited confidential informants inside lawful advocacy organizations like Greenpeace and PETA. Less than a month ago, President Bush signed a statement declaring that he is authorized to open the domestic mail of American citizens without a warrant. This weekend, The New York Times revealed that the Pentagon has been using “National Security Letters” to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans.

“Congress needs to get serious about its oversight role and investigate how these abuses were allowed to occur in the first place,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Americans must once again be confident that they may exercise their constitutionally protected right to protest without becoming the subject of a secret government file.”

The ACLU report, No Real Threat: The Pentagon’s Secret Database on Peaceful Protest, is available online at www.aclu.org