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Monday, January 16, 2006

The Pacifist `Threat'

Excerpts from the Hartford Courant (Connecticut) Monday, January 16, 2006

Disclosure Of Recent Government Surveillance Of Quaker Activities Doesn't Surprise Members

by Francis Grandy Taylor

A group of Quakers who were protesting military recruitment efforts at a Florida high school recently learned their meeting was included on a secret Pentagon database of "suspicious incidents." When that news broke last month, it had a familiar ring for many American Quakers. "With the restriction of civil liberties goes surveillance," says Don Weinholtz, a Quaker who lives in Windsor. "It just seems to be a very unfortunate natural course of events."

Quaker groups and members have come under government surveillance and infiltration at various times in history, from the McCarthy era to Vietnam. The pacifist church was in the forefront of protest in the run-up to the Iraq war and since then has worked to counter military recruitment efforts in high schools. "There are points in time where it is just a bedrock matter of faith that Quakers feel they must step forward," says Weinholtz, a member of the Hartford Quaker Meeting.

Last month, NBC News broke the story that the meeting of Quakers in Lake Worth, Fla., was one of about 1,500 allegedly suspicious incidents included in the Defense Department's secret TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice) reporting system. Recent reports have said Quaker activities in Ohio and Vermont also may have been scrutinized under the program. The database obtained by NBC showed that the Pentagon also had labeled as "threats" counter-military recruiting protests and other planned demonstrations around the country, including one at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.

A Defense Department spokesman said last week that the TALON program is intended to deal with suspicious activity and threats to national security before an attack occurs. "Unfiltered" information in the database can come from law enforcement, counter-intelligence or even concerned citizens, he said. The information then becomes a "dot" that could later be connected to other "dots" to identify a possible terrorist attack plot in its early stages. The information is shared with law enforcement, intelligence and other government security agencies and analyzed. The spokesman, who declined to be identified by name, said information that does not belong in the database is not deleted but is instead placed in an oversight file after a period of time.

Peter Goselin, an attorney for the Connecticut chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, said Thursday that a number of peace organizations are considering joining together to file mass Freedom of Information requests of the state and federal government to determine if lawful political protest is under surveillance here. "Over the last couple of months, there have been a number of disclosures concerning improper and illegal surveillance actions by everything from the [National Security Agency] and the [Defense Department] to the New York Police Department," Goselin said. "These activities would be a violation of political or religious freedom."

7 comments:

JR said...

Ya gotta watch them Quakers, dey got shifty eyes, heh, heh, heh, heh. ;-)

Foilwoman said...

Hey, this is the same FBI that got all pissy about 'radical librarians' not complying with all their information requests about citizen reading habits. Yup, the Quakers brought down slavery in the British Empire without a civil war. The Feds should be nervous.

CyberKitten said...

V V said: Ya gotta watch them Quakers, dey got shifty eyes, heh, heh, heh, heh. ;-)

..and Foilwoman said: Yup, the Quakers brought down slavery in the British Empire without a civil war. The Feds should be nervous.

The Quakers do tend to put themselves in harms way to get results don't they....? I'm very impressed by that kind of non-violent action.

Paste said...

Errr - excuse me 'Land of the free?'

CyberKitten said...

dave said: Errr - excuse me 'Land of the free?'

I don't think it's been that for a while dave......

Random said...

Okay, I'm going to be a contrarian here. We appear to be talking about people picketing military establishments, harassing military personnel going about their lawful business and whatnot, and you're seriously saying the law enforcement agencies *shouldn't* investigate such activities? All that appears to have happened here is that the authorities have had a look at these groups, decided they're harmless, and taken no further action. What is wrong with this?

Let me offer you an alternative scenario - suppose a major terrorist attack occurred at a US military installation and it came out in the subsequent investigation that the terrorists had prepared for the attack by using an anti-war picket as cover for reconnaissance activities and furthermore that the law enforcement agencies had declined to investigate the picket out of respect for the right of protest. Bearing in mind the apparent fact that no protests even appear to been disrupted or suppressed, would your reaction be that unmonitored free speech (as distinct from free speech per se) is so important that we must allow the occasional terrorist attack to get through, or that the law enforcement agencies had fallen down on their job?

CyberKitten said...

random said: What is wrong with this?

Well... It depends on how far you go in the name of 'national security' and whether or not people still have any rights in 'time of war'.

Is it OK to spy on meeting & infiltrate protests? Is it OK to tape peoples phone conversations or open their mail etc.. etc..

What kind of evidence do you need to undertake such activities? What kind of oversight should you have? Etc.. etc..

It's certainly not a carte blance issue. There should be balance and proportionality in any response to a perceived threat. The difficulty is where to draw the line and what recourse people have when their rights have been violated.