State police blindly encroached on the rights of peaceful activists to express themselves freely and further violated a federal regulation by labeling them terrorists during a 14-month undercover operation, according to a report released Wednesday.
Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs met in Annapolis to discuss the results of an independent review of the state police spying.
Sachs said police infiltrated anti-death penalty and war opposition groups between 2005 and 2006 without any evidence of criminal activity — and justified it as protecting the public.
But the police, he said, failed to consider the impact on civil liberties.
“They were sincere, but misguided,” he said.
“There was an ‘end justifies the means’ and a ‘better safe than sorry’ attitude.”
He said state police also violated a federal regulation by entering intelligence information into a database maintained by the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, a federally funded initiative to promote cooperation among law enforcement agencies.
The names of law-abiding individuals were entered into the database as possible terrorists without reasonable suspicion of illegal activity, Sachs said.
State Police Superintendent Col. Terrence Sheridan said the information was never disseminated beyond HIDTA, and he agreed to remove the names as recommended in the report.
Other recommendations included:
– Forming binding regulations to govern covert surveillance of advocacy groups and requiring the superintendent’s approval to use undercover agents;
– Establishing standards for collecting and disseminating criminal intelligence information and requiring that information be purged promptly if it is incorrectly entered as criminal intelligence;
– Revising or discontinuing the use of the HIDTA database for intelligence gathering;
– Contacting all individuals identified in the database as terrorists whom state police have no evidence of their involvement with criminal activity.
The report comes on the heels of accusations that state police covertly spied on additional activist groups beyond those they’ve admitted to monitoring.
The Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed information requests on behalf of 32 additional advocacy groups who fear state police also monitored their activities.
Sheridan said the surveillance was initially intended to prevent violent protests of an inmate’s pending execution, but according to the ACLU, that rationale puts all controversial groups at risk of surveillance.
Sachs said Wednesday that state police appeared to be monitoring activist groups in general, but nothing indicates the level of infiltration extended beyond anti-death penalty and war opposition groups.
He said the war protesters were infiltrated because many of the members overlapped into the anti-death penalty groups.
O’Malley said he was pleased with the report findings and believes the recommended regulations will be sufficient instead of legislation.
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