Oops. Pentagon Caught Spying on Harmless Peaceful Protesters

“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”
— David Hume

Now that they got caught, they’re sorry:

A South Florida anti-war group’s peaceful protest of military recruitment during last year’s Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea Show was labeled ”subversive” and was being monitored by the Pentagon, which kept a report on the protest in a database designed to track domestic terrorist threats.

That report in the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice database, or TALON, was a mistake, a Defense spokesman said Thursday.

And we won’t do it again until next time, we promise.

What was the dangerous activity the Pentagon had identified as such a terrible threat?

‘BAWC plans to counter military recruitment and the ‘pro-war’ message with ‘guerrilla theater and other forms of subversive propaganda,’ ”

For next few days you can read more about this in the Miami Herald article, Pentagon admits error on ‘threat’. The initial source of the report was a civilian agency, maybe the Miami Police. So there are people — lots of people — in our civilian government and in our military, who think that “subversive propaganda” (read, First Amendment protected activities) are a reason to put you on a list of people to be spied on.

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One Response to Oops. Pentagon Caught Spying on Harmless Peaceful Protesters

  1. janinsanfran says:

    Unfortunately, I never doubted this. But I suppose it helps every time our suspicions are verified.

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