Maryland Police Put Activists' Names On Terror List 426
aaandre writes with word of a Washington Post story which begins:
"The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday. The police also entered the activists' names into the federal Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, which tracks suspected terrorists. One well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, was singled out in the intelligence logs released by the ACLU, which described a 'primary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-government' and a 'secondary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-war protesters.'"
According to the article, "Both [former state police superintendent Thomas] Hutchins and [Maryland Police Superintendent Terrence] Sheridan said the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries." Reader kcurtis adds "The State Police say they are purging the data, but this is one more example (on top of yesterday's news that datamining for terrorists is not feasible due to false positives) of just how badly the use of these lists can be abused."
Check yourself, (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing which scares me more is the CLETS [calstate.edu].
CLETS is basically a law-enforcement database which compiles info on people regardless of charge or conviction. I found out about it after my buddy interviewed well for a prison job only to be called at the last minute -- he was denied employment(even after having passed the DOJ LiveScan [usafingerprinting.com]) because of a petty theft charge of which he was never convicted. Doing more research, we found that basically any cop can write anything about you that they want whether or not you were charged or convicted. It's a sneaky way to criminalize somebody without actually going through the legal motions.
It's been awhile since I checked it out, but from what I recall it had something to do with www.leo.gov [leo.gov] and its "public inquiry" phone number led to a place in West Virginia!
I wasn't able to find all the details(who may access the database etc.) but I suggest that you Californians follow the yellow brick road and hopefully discover what the good ol' boys think about you, before it bites you in the ass someday. Happy hunting.
Re:All these lists are insane (Score:1, Interesting)
And I am not saying this as endorsement to the Democrats, but by default, any other major opposition to McCaine should have won the election by now. Just 8% lead? This probably will explain why such lists exist and abused.
Why can't we arrest them? (Score:3, Interesting)
When can we arrest the police for falsely labeling us as terrorists?
How about huge personal lawsuits?
Re:Check yourself, (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't even have a field that this could go into. It's just a generic database of people who have been in contact with the police and why.
Now, it's shocking, shocking I say, that it would be misused (used?) in this way.
And it does seem stupid to me to enter "terrorists" into a database of drug traffickers. While there is a small amount of overlap between the two groups, this smacks of a "hmm, where can we put this information on terrorists. Well sir, we have the database of drug traffickers. We could just put it in there, until we can create a separate database for terrorists." And then forgetting about the "creating a separate database" part...
Re:Terrorists? (Score:3, Interesting)
These lists could be a really useful tool for stopping stupid asshats who are planning attacks
The idea of lists like these is not to stop stupid asshats who are planning attacks. They are intended to induce fear in the public. Fear of the government. If people are afraid to publicly protest the stupid shit their government does - well then it is a lot easier for government to get away with whatever they want.
Additionally, in order to justify taking away everyone's rights - just about everyone is going to have to be a "terrorist".
Terrorism is violence with the aim of influencing public behavior in such a way as to subvert either the popular will or to force a government to give concessions to the group in question.
By the way - the goal nor the means of terrorism is political in any way. It is a social framework. Even if given all the "political" concessions they want, they aren't going to stop - because ultimately they are generally just taking young men who can't find a job - blaming their failure on a political entity and giving them an ideology (usually religious) to cement them into their particular social group. The social group is going to continue with or without the political aims. Which is why the only real way to defeat terrorism is to make it much more profitable socially as well as financially for these people to join a different social group - preferably one which prefers not to blow people up. Ok, /rant
no surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
The United States is a police state. Why is anyone surprised by news like this?
Re:In Soviet-America... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. I doubt any of them laughs when they get turned away from the check-in counter next time they which to take an flight to somewhere. "Sorry sir, you are on a terrorist watch list. You can't fly with us today. Next!..."
The real joke nowadays, is freedom.
Re:All these lists are insane (Score:5, Interesting)
If they've done something illegal, then arrest and prosecute them. If they haven't, then they should be free to go about their lives.
You're absolutely right. Hutchins and Sheridan should be arrested and prosecuted for slander, making defamatory statements, and abridging the civil rights of the 53 people they falsely accused of a truly heinous crime. And they should certainly be given a fair trial, and if found innocent their records should be cleaned and they should be free to go about their lives.
But saying stuff like "the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries" should be very compelling evidence of making the false accusation in the first place. Trying to fix it later should be strong evidence that the suspects knew what they had done was wrong, and therefore had malice aforethought. There was no good faith here. This was an outright criminal act designed to deny 53 people their rights as citizens.
I'd say those 53 defendants have a pretty solid case on their hands.
Re:All these lists are insane (Score:1, Interesting)
> And I am not saying this as endorsement to the Democrats, but by default, any other major opposition to McCain should have won the election by now. Just 8% lead? This probably will explain why such lists exist and abused.
Obama is currently projected to win an electoral landslide. US Presidential elections are almost always close, in part due to party loyalists. An 8% lead in the popular vote becomes absolutely staggering when you see how many states he'll win.
Let's put it this way: even Texas shows as "weakly Republican" and it should be completely, absolutely, unquestionably in the Republican column in any normal year.
Re:All these lists are insane (Score:3, Interesting)
I so wish there were term limits for all government offices. In for two terms then you HAVE to be out for one term. You can run again and if you win, be in for two more terms before having to be out again. They have to win each term. If this was done maybe there would be politicians who would listen to the people they are supposed to be representing in office.
Then again, those same politicians would have to vote for this idea.... which they would never do. (sigh)
Classifications? (Score:5, Interesting)
Food for thought: is there an entry for "terrorism-anti-abortion protester"?
Does the Maryland State Police throw everyone who protests into the terrorist list, or only those who protest against whatever groups or policies that certain members of the State Police like?
Re:Why can't we arrest them? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it libel when its printed in a database? Is there an establishing precedent?
Re:In Soviet-America... (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems an appropriate time to ask this: Is your sig meant to disparage Booth, patriotism, or Lincoln? Are you saying that Booth, generally regarded as a bad guy, was actually acting honorably? Are you saying that patriotism is not all it's cracked up to be, because Booth was acting out of patriotism and look at the horrible thing he did? Are you saying that Booth and patriotism are both good things, because Lincoln was bad?
Help me, I'm overcome by multiple interpretations!
Re:no surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
It's suprising because things like this are the exception, not the norm.
We clearly don't live in a police state, if we did, this would not make the news, this would not make any news, just as police using fingerprinting to identify suspects does not make the news. Not to minimize the dangers of the errosion of freedom, but let's please keep it realistic, not wild-eyed "the sky is falling" or rampant cynicism endemic to /.
If the US is a police state, then can you name a single country that isn't? If you can't, then what the hell is the point of the term?
Re:New edition will also offer . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
. . . the "Thoughtcrime" classification.
Who made this software? Someone who watches their "24" DVD set over and over?
Why do you attack the people who wrote the software? The fact that "the software offered limited options for classifying entries" shows that those people put much more thought into who could be legitimately tracked with the software than the police.
Re:Check yourself, (Score:5, Interesting)
Paranoid much?
CLETS is just another state law enforcement messaging system - not a single database. I'm pretty sure every state has one and they talk to each other via NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System). Nothing new. NLETS itself has been around in various forms since the 60s and several of the state systems originated before that.
Yeah, and law enforcement tracking and harassing peaceful activists is nothing new either. They've been doing it since well before the 60s. I guess I'm not supposed to worry, because they added computer databases to their toolbox for doing this a long time ago?
A cop being able to "write anything about you" means that whatever state/local agency is running the system that data gets put in isn't properly auditing their system. Something that actually pisses off the Feds.
I'm sure they do, in so far as the factual data (location, occupation etc) is inaccurate, or any information doesn't actually lead them to any person they are really interested in. Who likes that?
On the other hand, if it is someone they're interested in (for political not criminal reasons) but don't have any actual dirt on, and what is written in the database gives them an excuse to have a little fun RICO- or USAPATRIOT-style, then that lack of proper auditing is a boon, now isn't it?
And don't tell me I'm being paranoid, police and the feds have both been caught abusing their powers vis-a-vis those two laws to act against benign and harmless but anti-establishment activist groups repeatedly. Hell, the FBI has submitted reports to Congress stating their use of USAPATRIOT powers in such cases, that's how ballsy they are about it. So I'm bracketing that on one side with MLK Jr. on the other and saying that's not paranoia in between, it's business as usual.
In the states I've worked in, a person's access is limited based on their role and what they've been certified for. Your average cop wouldn't be able to enter or modify data, just query it, and even there they normally wouldn't be able to query all systems. A highway patrol officer, for example, would most likely only be able to query DMV, Wants/Warrants, and Stolen Vehicles - and that's assuming they have the ability to access it themselves instead of having to call it in to a dispatcher.
Well someone had write access and put these activists names on the list, and classified them as terrorists. Somebody had the write access to create the categories "terrorism-anti-government" and "terrorism-anti-war protesters". So your assurances, even coming as they do from personal experience, don't mean very much to me.
My cousin worked for the NSA. He told me if I knew what they really did, I'd be very disappointed. I trust him so I bet from his perspective that's true. Which would mean they must not have invited him into the wiretapping-millions-of-Americans room and told him what they were up to.
Re:USA vs China (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In every country ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Beautifully said.
I see the current two-party system as the ultimate gesture of divide and conquer. Roughly half of the population believes that the other half is wrong and feels a mix of strong negative emotions against it. But the fact is, the whole (non-elite) population suffers, and our power and choices are taken away from us as soon as we believe the polititians' bs and forget that our unity is the only thing more powerful than the elite's tools.
If we unite, we can take down the gas prices.
If we unite, we can have an *accountable* government, with public servants, actually doing their job for a change.
If we unite, we can have free healthcare supported by tax money (healthcare=commodity? when did *YOU* and *I* decide that this is a great idea?)
Same with clean energy.
As long as we think and believe the thoughts planted by the mouthpieces on the boobtube, as soon as we allow our frustration to be channeled towards "them," and turn a blind eye to the disastrous clusterf*ck that the government, market, economy, health care and education have become to be, we will sink deeper and deeper in the shit.
Hope we enjoy the taste.
And who knows, maybe it's better that way. Maybe we've come to a point where the uberelite is ready to "pay the price" of the genocide of its people in the name of its ultimate power.
We may have guns, but our government has brainwashed trained killers (soldiers are so last century, today our teen "soldiers" are "trained" to unflinchingly kill anything assigned as "target," including women and children), nerve gas, nukes, and weapons that can level our cities in minutes.
I think if our separation continues, a civil war or worse, a government/power-elite backed genocide is a logical conclusion.
Money is more important than human life, after all.
And, our servants have become our keepers.
What do we do now?
Re:In every country ... (Score:5, Interesting)
soon we end up with people fearful of what they say on the phone and in emails
If you were friends or colleagues with anyone who has ever worked in the intelligence community, you would know that there are plenty of people who already act likes this. I was first cut off with a curt "not over the phone" talking to a friend who was ex-DSD (Aust. intel) in the mid nineties. To say that things have deterioated somewhat since then would be an understatement.
The most recent trend with my ex-intel friends, by the way, is to use private nameservers. I have absolutely no evidence as to why that might be necessary. I am just sayin', that's what they're doing now.
Re:In Soviet-America... (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think the final result will be any better than what you have now?
Could it be any worse?
Re:Fascism (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't 1930 and we aren't in Italy or Germany, nor are we discussing a far-left sociopolitical system of government control of private industry.
You are quite correct, this is 2008.
What's the appropriate term for a far-right sociopolitical system of private industry control over government?
Re:Fascism (Score:4, Interesting)
This occurred under the administration of Republican Robert Erlich, and was authorized by Erhlich's appointed state police superintendent Thomas E. Hutchins. Not that our Maryland Democrats don't have shit to answer for, but this one was a GOP play all the way.
Ha! If Maryland border on an economic system based on the exchange of labor, instead of the control of capital by an owning class, I've somehow missed it for 38 years. (Here's a hint for you: regulated capitalism is not socialism.)
Re:Fascism (Score:4, Interesting)
By definition, there is no such thing. The "far right" would never be in favor of the government controlling private industry.
Read it again slowly. It isn't government that controls the businesses, but the businesses that control government. And corporations are required by law to be amoral (which is essentially immoral), and they are the ones running the governemnt for their benefit. That's sufficiently close to the effect of fascism that there is no need to create a new word when we can co-opt a previouse word, especially since many people already believe that to be the definition.
Re:In every country ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Technically speaking the technology is now appearing that will force change. A simple genetic test for sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies and a permanent block being placed upon those individuals from ever running for public office, of becoming company executives , or pretty much being banned from any position where they can gain control of or exploit other people.
Which pretty much means all those current arse holes at the top will be permanently prevented from ever getting there again and, oh boy, will they lie, cheat, kill and steal kill to prevent that from happening. It is likely to happen but that implementation period is likely to be painful and bloody.