Groups want to know if FBI, police spied on them?
By William Kates
3.03.06 APMarch 14, 2006, 2:06 PM EST
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The New York Civil Liberties Union filed Freedom of Information requests Tuesday on behalf of itself and 13 political and religious groups to determine whether the FBI and local law enforcement agencies have been spying on them.
Requests were filed by NYCLU chapters in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and New York City, said Barrie Gewanter, director of the group's Central New York chapter. Anti-war activist Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella organization for more than 1,300 national and local anti-war groups, also joined in the requests.
"Given what we now know about the government spying on political and religious groups around the country, we have every reason to believe that such abuses of power are being committed in Syracuse and elsewhere in New York," Gewanter said.
"This government can't figure out the difference between legal First Amendment rights to criticize the government and terrorism. So we have cause for concern," added Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director.
The groups are seeking information from the FBI under the federal Freedom of Information Act. They asked for the same information from local and county law enforcement agencies in Onondaga, Monroe and Erie counties and New York City under the state law, Gewanter said.
"We have nothing to hide. Anything we can release, we will," said Paul Holstein, chief division counsel for the FBI in Albany.
The NYCLU action comes the same day the ACLU of Pennsylvania released a series of documents it received in response to its own FOIA requests. Those documents, the ACLU said, show the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is spying on the pacifist Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh.
"It scares us to know that our government spies on peaceful, law-abiding political activity," said Cecilia Resti, co-chair of Peace Action of Central New York, a group vocal in its opposition to the war in Iraq and critical of the Patriot Act and military recruitment practices.
Although the groups have no concrete evidence they have been under surveillance, the representatives said they have seen strangers at their meetings and events videotaping the gatherings and writing down license plate numbers. They also fear authorities have conducted warrantless electronic eavesdropping, intercepted e-mails and that informants may have infiltrated their organizations.
Gewanter said past FOIA requests have revealed tens of thousands of pages of documents showing the FBI has a history of surveillance of the ACLU and its state affiliates and conducted extensive spying on the groups throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Links:
Peace Action Caught Up in Bush's Spying and Lying
