Well, if they're spying on kids who prepare and feed vegetarian meals to homeless people (Food Not Bombs) and the good folks at forums like the Tennessee Independent Media Center, I guess the FBI has agents looking over the shoulders of bloggers too.
It doesn't feel much like a democracy when fear of government surveillance keeps people from participating in democracy. Of course, without that participation, it is most definitely not a democracy.
LA Times:
DENVER — The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.
"They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me," said environmental activist Kirsten Atkins. Her license plate number showed up in an FBI terrorism file after she attended a protest against the lumber industry in Colorado Springs in 2002.
"We have to be able to go out and look at things; we have to be able to conduct an investigation," said William J. Crowley, a spokesman for the FBI in Pittsburgh. His field office filed a report — released by the ACLU this month — in which an agent described photographing Pittsburgh activists who were handing out fliers for a war protest. The report mentioned no potential violence or crimes.
The murky connection that the federal government makes between some left-wing activist groups and terrorism was illustrated in a Justice Department presentation to a college law class this month.
An FBI counterterrorism official showed the class, at the University of Texas in Austin, 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamist groups. Senior Special Agent Charles Rasner said one slide, labeled "Anarchism," was a federal analyst's list of groups that people intent on terrorism might associate with.
The list included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people, and — with a question mark next to it — Indymedia, a collective that publishes what it calls radical journalism online. Both groups are among the numerous organizations affiliated with anarchists and anti-globalization protests, where there has been some violence.
Elizabeth Wagoner said she was one of the few students who objected to the groups' inclusion on the list. "My friends do Indymedia," she said. "My friends aren't terrorists."
Rasner said that he'd never heard of the two groups before and didn't mean to condemn them. But he added that it made sense to worry about violent people emerging from anarchist networks — "Any group can have somebody that goes south."
Any group? Does that mean they're watching the Southern Baptists?
Read the whole thing, it gets scarier.
Civil Liberties Bush Food Not Bombs Indy Media Democracy 1984 Government Surveillance
