First it was Quakers, now, college students:
A federal Department of Homeland Security agent passed along information about student protests against military recruiters at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, landing the demonstrations on a database tracking foreign terrorism, according to government documents released Tuesday.
The documents were released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of student groups that protested against recruiters who visited their campuses in April 2005.
The students were angry when they turned up in the database of a Pentagon program called Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, which the government started in 2003 as a way to collect data that could help stop terrorist attacks. Officials have acknowledged that the reports on protests should not have been included.
In the Santa Cruz and Berkeley reports, the source of information was listed as an agent for Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service. The reports were filed by the 902nd Military Intelligence Group, the Army's largest counterespionage unit.
"Oh gee, I guess we shouldn't have! We'll be more careful next time!" Riiight. An inch, a mile...
Spotted at AmericaBlog.
Posted by binky at July 20, 2006 11:29 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Free Speech | J. Edgar Hoover | Liberty | The Ever Shrinking Constitution