Maryland Cops Spied on Peaceniks

Activists branded terrorists & drug dealers
By Peter Fearon,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 18, 2008 4:25 AM CDT
Maryland Cops Spied on Peaceniks
Anti-war activists outside the White House. Documents show Maryland State Police secretly infiltrated and spied on legal anti-war and anti-death penalty groups.    (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Groups opposing the death penalty and the war in Iraq were infiltrated and spied on by undercover Maryland State Police officers, according to police logs obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. Some activists were placed on terrorist and drug trafficking databases with no evidence they were involved in any illegal activity, reports the Baltimore Sun

"Everything noted in these logs is a lawful, First Amendment activity," said an ACLU attorney, who called the surveillance "stupefying." For "undercover police to spend hundreds of hours entering information about lawful political protest activities into a criminal database is an unconscionable waste of taxpayer dollars." (More Maryland State Police stories.)

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