Documents obtained by the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union and released Thursday show that the state police spent 288 hours over 14 months spying on members of certain political activist groups.
According to the documents covering a period between 2005 and 2006, the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division closely monitored peace group the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, the Coalition to End the Death Penalty, and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, another anti-death penalty group.
Police agents kept watch of private organizing committees, events held in several churches in nearly every corner of the state and rallies in Baltimore and Annapolis. In one case, an officer infiltrated an e-mail list, the documents showed. The information obtained was passed on to federal, county and city law enforcement agencies and the surveillance continued despite reports that said activists were acting lawfully at all times.
ACLU of Maryland Executive Director Susan Goering compared the revelation to the release of FBI documents in 1970s that put an end to similar, federal initiatives to monitor peace groups.
Goering called the program, “un-American,” and said, “I fear that the documents … may be only the tip of the iceberg.”
State police superintendent Col. Terrence B. Sheridan said in a release that the “department does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protesters or organizations acting lawfully.”
Sheridan said the surveillance is necessary “to protect the citizens of Maryland from threats both foreign and domestic,” which has became a main responsibility of the agency since Sept. 11, 2001.
But Max Obsuzewski, a well-known Baltimore peace activist who is now an ACLU client after the documents revealed he was a target of state police activities and was identified in federal databases as a terrorist, said the surveillance was an expected government response to Sept. 11, 2001.
“With the growth of the surveillance state after 9/11, it was evident that government agencies would come looking for groups and individuals engaged in peaceful protest activity and label them terrorists. … I was not surprised to be informed that I was wrongfully labeled a terrorist.”
