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Widespread Spying Preceded '04 GOP Convention
Frosty Piss alerts us to a story in the New York Times reporting on details that are emerging of a far-flung spying operation lasting up to a year leading up to the 2004 Republican National Convention. The New York Police Department mounted a spy campaign reaching well beyond the state of New York. For at least a year before the convention, teams of undercover New York police officers traveled to cities across the US, Canada, and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention. Across the country undercover officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists. In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with other police departments. Outlines of the pre-convention operations are emerging from records in federal lawsuits brought over mass arrests during the convention.
The problem here isn't necessarily what they were monitoring, but why they were monitioring it. As the article repeatedly states, one must have grounds for an inquiry (i.e. possible illegal activity, backed up by either compelling circumstantial evidence or hard empirical evidence) before conducting a covert inquiry. As an example: it would be perfectly legal, in most cases, to begin covert surveillance of a target if the object of the investigation could in some way be demonstrated to be a possible factor involved in illegal activty, such as someone here in TN buying extremely large amounts of, say, nyquil (can be used in making crytsal methamphetamine), so long as the amounts were truly beyond any conceivable norm (compelling circumstantial evidence). While this would by no means be enough for an arrest or conviction, a judge could be convinced to allow wiretapping, diversion of assets towards surveillance, etc. However, one bottle of nyquil would not be enough (one would hope) to get this kind of permission.
In the case reported in the article, the NYPD was effectively conducting surveillance of the one bottle of nyquil people. Simply being involved in a political protest group is by no means indicitive of illegal activity; however, the police apparently deployed assets to groups with apparently peacful intentions, with no cause to suspect illegal activity (one bottle of nyquil.) Now, if the police could show that Group A. had been responsible, say, for severe property damage at the WTO riots in Seatlle, that is compelling circumstantial evidence (did it before, might do it again) that could be used in obtaining permission for covert intelligence gathering (55 gallons of nyquil, so to speak). This does not seem to be the case here, however.
The reason that this distinction is so important is that power does tend to corrupt, not necessarily morally, as the old adage is often taken to be stating, but more often ethically. You're a cop: protect and serve, preserve the peace, and all that. By the very nature of your job, if you're dedicated to it, anyways, you are going to always be pushing as close to the edge as possible. But where exactly is that edge? Where society (in the form of government, an ethical government one would hope) places it. Only when these distinctions are upheld, only when this line is constantly reinforced and restated, does the concept of checks and balances truly work. In this case, the police have overstepped their authority, it seems. Conducting an investigation with no probable cause is no different than pulling random people off of the street and interrogating them for a crime that one has no reason to suspect they comitted. Case in point: guys, how would you feel if everytime a woman was raped in your town, every male was wiretapped, followed, and snooped on? You might say that such a thing would be different, but it's not. After all, you have a penis (these people were involved in protest groups), and almost all women are raped by men (these groups are similar in form to groups that have created disruptions in the past), so all men should be surveilled equally (RTFA).
The argument can go on and on: it is logically sound. However, the thing that is most compelling to me in this instance is it reminds me of the FBI during the Cold War, expecially during the Mcarthy era, and the Vietnam war. Do we not find it disturbing that people like MLK Jr., John Lennon, and the vast majority of the faculties of NE colleges were under surveillance, that dossiers were compiled on their potential "socialist," or "Communist," leanings, due to no more evidence than that they "fit the profile,"? Same thing here. Such policies were the product of Hoover and his protegees at the FBI, which nowadays are
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