Word: marylands
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...most Americans weary from eight years of the Bush Administration's war on terror. Even the recent revelation that the National Security Agency has been listening to the private calls of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq probably didn't surprise too many jaded citizens. But the news that Maryland State Police had entered the names and personal information of 53 peaceful left-wing activists and protesters into state and federal databases as terrorists, well that may take the cake. None of them had done or thought anything more violent than raising a placard against the war in Iraq...
...surveillance of the activists that led to their inclusion in the databases took place in 2005 and 2006. "I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government," Thomas Hutchins, the former Maryland state police superintendent who authorized the monitoring program of the activists, told a state legislative hearing earlier this month. The names were entered into the Maryland state database, as well as a federal Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, and some of them may have been shared with the National Security Agency - though current state police officials...
...defending the use of the program, Hutchins described its targets as "fringe people." Other than describing some of my family, I hadn't realized fringe was a criminal activity. But more to the point, What does Maryland know about terrorism? Does the Baltimore grocer from Pakistan's North Waziristan merit ending up on Maryland's terrorist list because he calls home every weekend...
...York's JFK airport and sent home on the first flight. He missed his son's wedding - the son is an American citizen. The FBI at JFK was courteous but would only tell him he was on a terrorist list. Nothing the man could say helped. Was he on Maryland's list, now an undesirable alien and permanently excluded from the United States? Probably not, but in this era of secret evidence, who knows...
...Abusing the system like Maryland has is not going to improve our national security - it is only going to irritate Americans who will rebel against it. Terrorism lists should be compiled by the FBI, and reviewed by an Congressionally-mandated, independent body to purge the names that shouldn't be on it. The United States does not do well as a police state, but it does even worse when local and state authorities get to decide who the enemies of this state...