The Maryland American Civil Liberties Union on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Maryland State Police, alleging the agency is hiding information about the surveillance of peaceful protesters.
Documents disclosed after the arrests of two people in 2003 at a protest at the National Security Agency indicated that a “Baltimore Intel Unit” had been monitoring protesters.
State police refused to disclose more information.
David Rocah, a staff lawyer at the ACLU, discussed the lawsuit with The Examiner.
What?s the purpose of the lawsuit?
The purpose is to get some real answers. The fact the state police has this document they won?t release does nothing but raise a bunch of questions: What?s the document? Why are they surveilling nonviolent peace activists? What are they doing? If there are wholly innocent answers to these questions, it seems odd they?re withholding the document.
Have you figured out what the “Baltimore Intel Unit” is?
The Baltimore police department swears up and down it?s not them. I don?t have any evidence to say that?s not true, but they?re still the most likely suspect. We?re awaiting documents from the NSA. We?ll follow where the clues lead.
How concerned are you about the NSA conducting surveillance on peaceful protesters?
It?s a real concern. People have a right to protest. This kind of monitoring and surveillance is chilling. They don?t want their names, car licenses and photographs in a government database, because they?re exercising their First Amendment rights.
But doesn?t the NSA have a right to monitor protesters to make sure they?re not planning something more sinister?
The NSA is quite clearly an extremely paranoid institution. The level of resources that went into policing this protest is somewhat staggering. On the other hand, the NSA has the right to be paranoid: Most of what they do is as top secret as you can get, and some of what they do, from my perspective, is blatantly illegal. But none of that requires surveillance of protesters. It certainly doesn?t require state and local authorities to cooperate with that surveillance.
