Sunday Morning: Spying on the People

After 9/11 our country became crazy. Before that, you know the story, the intelligence community knew that al Qaeda was going to attack us but there was nothing more than a big yawn from the country's leaders. "Terrorism" was a word, maybe, in a foreign language, it was something that happened somewhere else. Then we watched our televisions that day in 2001, we saw the flailing bodies leaping from buildings on fire, the people running from storm-clouds of debris, the flames, gigantic buildings collapsing into themselves, and it was just like it happened right here. You would have thought Rockville and Olney and Germantown had come under attack, it was like it could happen, some vague Arab underground had organized and plotted against each one of us. We all took it personally, our own town was in danger, they hated each of us, individually, and our unique "way of life." And they were everywhere, terrorists plotting horrible things, and we had to do anything we could to stop them. Somebody taking a picture, somebody looking at a building, somebody mumbling, all had to be investigated.

For some reason, our little state took it more seriously than most. Little old ladies walking with umbrellas on a sunny day, people listening to incongruous radio stations, men who shaved their beards off, became objects of suspicion. Last year the news media got wind of the extent of the surveillance, today there is more. At first we thought it was just people against the war and people opposed to the death penalty. The Washington Post:

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor. More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying

The previous governor would have said that it was "unrepublican," except ... this was extremely Republican behavior by the police state, conducted under a Republican governor.

I'm not usually like this, but I'll tell you a secret, when this article came out I scanned it for the text string "teach the facts." We seem to fit the profile, people who care what happens enough to get involved.

Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007.

The surveillance ended with no arrests and no evidence of violent sedition. Instead, troopers are preparing to purge files and say they are expecting lawsuits.

The effort, made public in July, confirmed the fears of civil liberties groups that have warned about domestic spying since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Interviews, e-mails, public records and an independent state review reveal that police in Maryland were motivated by something far narrower: a query about death penalty activism directed to a police antiterrorism unit that was searching for a mission.

But some observers say Sept. 11 opened the door. "No one was thinking this was al-Qaeda," said Stephen H. Sachs, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to review the case. "But 9/11 created an atmosphere where cutting corners was easier."

So when cutting corners is easier, the thing they want to do is spy on us.

There is something you hear, people shrug and say, "I got nothin' to hide." I am always a little bit sorry for people whose lives are so boring that there would be no surprises if you found out what they were really up to. It doesn't mean everybody is planning to crash airplanes into big buildings, but people do have private lives, and there's a reason that's important. People have secret thoughts and secret desires, and sometimes they share their secrets with someone else in a private setting and that's just the way people are. The government has no business hanging a microphone boom over their conversation, sometimes people need to speculate, blow off some steam, sometimes people need to act to take something that some powerful group has taken away from them. Sometimes people need more from life than playing by the rules will give them. That's just how it is. You can't stop that. People are alive, people need privacy.

Skipping down, here's how it works.

After trawling the Internet, an analyst reported a "potential for disruption" at both executions. Mazzella dispatched a corporal who needed experience in undercover work to the Electrik Maid community center in Takoma Park, where death penalty foes were organizing rallies.

At a rally to save Vernon Evans Jr. outside the Supermax prison in Baltimore a few weeks later, the woman who said her name was Lucy McDonald asked veteran activist Max Obuszewski how she could learn more about passive resistance and civil disobedience.

The activists recall that she had a genial disposition and refreshing curiosity, and she quickly became a fixture at meetings and rallies of death penalty opponents and antiwar activists. She used a laptop computer at meetings, but the activists say no one was alarmed. "Maybe I wondered what she was typing," said Mike Stark of Takoma Park. "But you always check yourself. In our movement it's very important to be outward and not paranoid."

The trooper provided weekly reports to her bosses, logging at least 288 hours of investigative time. She did not return phone calls seeking comment, and The Post is not identifying her because of concerns about compromising her cover in other possible operations.

The logs described silent vigils outside the prison and a ceremony of poetry and songs to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. The activists pledged nonviolence. Yet she closed several entries this way: "Due to the above facts, I request that this case remain open and updated as events warrant."

The woman's bosses considered her surveillance a low-risk training exercise; it quickly expanded to the antiwar movement as she met activists whose causes overlapped, police said.

To the average person sitting at home with the TV on, this story is going to be nothing. You don't do anything to call attention to yourself, you keep your mouth shut, nothing will happen to you. Make yourself interesting at all and suddenly you are a test of freedom. Will the secret police come to your door? It seems to me America should be different from that, we are a country based on an incredible combination of cynicism and trust, we are cynical about the intentions of the powerful and trusting in the goodwill of the ordinary citizen and that's how it should be. Our state, our country, somehow got it turned around when we the people were looking somewhere else.

There's a lot more to that story, if you are active in your community at all you ought to follow the link and see the rest.

There was one other little paragraph on the front page of The Post that seemed too important not to mention. Let me just copy and paste this one little thing.

Over the past 15 years, during which a large majority of current lawmakers were first elected to Congress, partisan feuding has reduced Congress's output to a bare minimum of must-pass measures. Party-line voting peaked during the Bush presidency, while productivity slumped. In 2008, the Senate voted the lowest number of times since 1951, according to a Congressional Quarterly survey. Tone May Be Key to Obama's Agenda

That's how this happened. There are people who say government is bad, they are anarchists but white-collar anarchists so they talk about stuff like "free enterprise" and "capitalism," they are anarchists because they don't want any government to be examining their books and making them play fair. They dress their anarchy up -- "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem" is nothing more than an anarchistic slogan -- and people like you and me might think it sounds pretty good, but it's not about us, it's about the rich getting richer. Our nation's legislative body has been locked up for fifteen years, eight of which they had the compliance of the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary leans their way more with each new appointment. The white-collar anarchists' idea was to drown government in a bathtub, and they almost succeeded at that. But government exists to take care of the citizens, it's protection for you and me, you don't want it drowned in a bathtub, you want the government to make big decisions and do jobs that are bigger than what you can do, thankless jobs that don't necessarily make a profit. Somehow Americans let government turn into a bad thing, and not surprisingly it became an arm of the powerful, it got to the point where they spied on you if you were opposed to the death penalty, if you were a softy for animals -- if you wanted bike lanes, for crying out loud.

I am hopeful that all this will change.

There is a nice light jazz guitar on WPFW this morning, the drummer is playing with brushes. It's cold outside and they're saying it might even snow on Tuesday. I slept in today, we are trying to buy a new car and last night we sat up playing with numbers, one point nine percent for sixty months, how much is that a month? Our old car is a disaster, it has a blown head gasket and it looks like we won't get anything for it as a trade-in. Don't you hate that? Twenty thousand dollars for a car, it's got like fifty-five thousand miles on it, it's junk. A 2002 Suzuki, even if it was in good shape we'd only get a few thousand trade-in on it. Well, the holidays are over, tomorrow is going to be a real work day. I imagine we'll slide back into it slowly, don't you figure? Enjoy your Sunday.