Political Crossfire Forums

[F'losrix]

(Emphasis on some portions below added by me):

"(Washington) The Department of Defense has admitted it conducted surveillance on groups opposed to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on a more extensive level than previously reported.

The new revelations are part of an ongoing call for information under the Freedom of Information Act by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization that represents gays in the military.

Some of the surveillance outlined in the new documents suggests, SLDN says, that the spying may have been part of an undercover Pentagon operation.

The new material shows government surveillance of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and anti-war protests at the State University of New York at Albany, William Paterson University in New Jersey, Southern Connecticut State University and the University of California at Berkeley.

The documents released today indicate that emails sent by various student groups were intercepted and monitored by the government and that the government collected reports from seemingly undercover agents who attended at least one student protest at Southern Connecticut State University.

None of the reports in the documentation, however, indicated any terrorist activity by the students who were monitored. "

~snip~

"Last December media reports said that the Pentagon has been spying on “suspicious” meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military’s "don't ask, don't tell". (story)

The reports said that the Pentagon had spied on New York University law school’s LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw and gay groups at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey.

In February, the DoD acknowledged in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had ‘inappropriately’ collected information on protestors but did not name any of the organizations.

The DoD initially refused a Freedom of Information request from SLDN. But, when the organization sought a court order to force compliance with FOI it began releasing some of its information. (story)

Other agencies have either denied participating in domestic surveillance of the LGBT community, or have refused to release information about their activity.

In a June letter to SLDN, the National Security Agency said it will “neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence” of information that may have been obtained in its surveillance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. "

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/06/062606military.htm

- - - - - - -

I'd suggest we work harder on developing our telepathic abilities, but no doubt they're working on a way to intercept that form of communication, too.

Does anyone else find this troubling? Apparently the government can just target whomever they don't like and intercept their communications at will now?

Dissenters beware!

[Enoch]

And, sadly, as long as the GOP supports the USA Patriot Act, we are going to get more and more accounts of people and groups being monitored.

It's actually become, unfortunately, an accepted fact that the government watches people. I have a friend who is a political science major, minoring in chemistry, and is taking Arabic as her foreign language. We jokingly told her the CIA would be watching her. "Yeah, they probably have me on a list somewhere," she laughed.

But, it's the truth. We have an administration in power now that is so paranoid that it has taken to spying on its own citizens.