Private Security Firm Keeps Tabs on Pennsylvania Activists

(Please welcome Kelley Vlahos, the latest new writer for Change.org's Criminal Justice blog.)

Are peace activists, Tea Partiers and Quakers a security threat? A growing number of private and public security agencies seem to think so. Since 9/11 the expanding homeland security complex has invested much in the way of intelligence gathering -- and with all of that money and energy a wider and wider net has been cast about for "threats to the homeland." What has happened in Pennsylvania is only the latest example.

According to a report from The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review over the weekend, an American-Israeli non-profit corporation contracted with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to produce a year's worth of security bulletins for local law enforcement that pegged everything from Tea Party meetings to Quaker-sponsored anti-war protests -- even opponents of the controversial Arizona immigration bill who were planning a protest outside a Pittsburgh Pirates game -- as potential security threats.

According to the bulletins, which were generated by the Institute for Terrorism Research and Response and released amid controversy by Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell's office on Friday, state "infrastructure vulnerabilities" included corporate entities like Johnson & Johnson and the YMCA, which have been the target of an anti-abortion boycott.

Most recently, a bulletin warned about an animal rights group protesting a local rodeo, and a support rally for jailed Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking classified material to the website WikiLeaks.org. Anti-drilling activists and other environmentalists seem to get special attention in the bulletins, each of which suggests "key dates" for law enforcement to watch, like last week's visit of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Philadelphia. (For a taste of the September bulletin, click here.)

And the scrutiny is not just applied to typically liberal organizations or causes; a November report last year cited two Tea Party rallies as potential magnets for "white nationalists."

Outrage from the revelations has prompted Gov. Rendell to cancel the $103,000, no-bid contract with the firm and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to call for legislative hearings.

"I think that citizens have a right to see if they have been targeted themselves or been called part of a terrorist organization," State Rep. Babette Josephs, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

They certainly do. The fact is, state governments and police departments, in collaboration with the federal government -- whether it be the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice -- have been receiving millions of dollars since 9/11 to do just this: engage in surveillance and data collection in the interest of improved and proactive security measures. Some would say their efforts have gone too far, veering straight into territory where individual constitutional rights are being violated.

Take journalist and activist Ken Krayeske -- he was arrested in 2007 for taking photographs during Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell's inaugural parade. Krayeske later found that police were tracking his online organizing. He is now suing the state and is running as a Green Party candidate for congress. Guess what one of his top issues will be?

No doubt the peace activists planning rallies outside the 2008 Democratic Republican National Convention in St. Paul were equally surprised they were on a government watch list. They were raided in their own homes by a S.W.A.T. team with guns drawn. All but eight of the 50 detained released without charge.

"Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined," wrote Salon.com writer Glenn Greenwald at the time. Four of the eight charged  are still awaiting trial. The terrorism charges for all the defendants were dropped early in the case and all of the charges against three of the accused (including felony conspiracy to commit riot, property damage and civil unrest) have been dropped, too. One defendant took a plea and did 90 days in jail.

Meanwhile, last summer in Washington State, it was reported that a military operative had actually infiltrated a peace organization, leading many to wonder if the government was not only bending the Constitution, but laws restricting military activity in domestic law enforcement, too.

The Pennsylvania case may be one of the first in which a private company is being accused of inappropriate surveillance against U.S. citizens (the company, ITRR, has insisted, "we track events ... we don't track people"). It will be interesting to see whether this is a country-wide trend or an anomaly.

Photo Credit: Frank Roche