Environmental advocacy group Chesapeake Climate Action Network revealed it was among the targets of state police spying, bringing into question the actual scope of the surveillance that was justified as a public safety measure.
“Clearly, the state police’s surveillance went well beyond infiltrating the meetings and communications of anti-death penalty activists ahead of an upcoming execution, as has been cited by [Maryland State Police] as the impetus for their surveillance,” said David Rocah, lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Whatever criteria the state police had for placing activists in the database had nothing to do with the rationale offered thus far.”
CCAN, at a conference Thursday in Silver Spring with the ACLU of Maryland, announced that Mike Tidwell, the network’s founder and executive director, and Joshua Tulkin, a former deputy director of CCAN, were among the 53 activists whom state police tracked and labeled as terrorists in a federal criminal intelligence database between 2005 and 2006.
“As an innocent citizen, it is terrorizing for me to think of the Maryland police watching me,” said Tidwell, whose environmental advocacy won him the Audubon Naturalist Society’s Conservation Award in 2003.
Members of CCAN, which provides environmental education and lobbying, held two peaceful demonstrations on the dangers of global climate change, according to the ACLU.
The first demonstration occurred in 2004, before state police claim the surveillance began; the second one was in 2006, after state police claim the 14-month surveillance concluded, the ACLU said.
“Young people understand that global warming and the destruction of our national resources are serious threats to our future, and I see my work in this fight as a moral obligation, not a crime,” Tulkin said in a statement.
“It is wholly unacceptable for the Maryland State Police to monitor activists and enter their names into databases for doing what our Constitution calls and empowers us to do in engaging in the political process.”
State Sens. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, and Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George’s, joined CCAN on Thursday along with several other environmental groups to call for legislation to prevent future intrusions on civil liberties.
State police could not be reached for comment Thursday, but Superintendent Col. Terrence Sheridan implemented recommended regulations, which Gov. Martin O’Malley has deemed sufficient without requiring legislation.
[email protected]
