Dale Mills
The FBI has long been known to engage in extensive surveillance of activists in the United States. However, the sheer extent of those operations has shocked civil libertarians following the release of a large amount of material under freedom of information laws, according to the March 27 Los Angeles Times.
Groups monitored have included environmentalists and people giving vegetarian food to the homeless. The FBI's definition of terrorism includes damaging property, and this alone is enough to trigger extensive surveillance powers.
A spokesperson for the FBI told the LA Times that "It's one thing to express an idea or such, but when you commit acts of violence in support of that activity, that's where our interest comes in".
However, "Any definition of terrorism that would include someone throwing a bottle or rock through a window during an anti-war demonstration is dangerously over-broad", Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told the LA Times.
Once a person has thrown such a bottle or rock, or is suspected of being about to do so, or being in the same organisation or at the same protest as such a person, the terrorism surveillance powers are triggered.
According to the Times, environmentalist Kirsten Atkins found that within the hundreds of pages of released documents was a note of her car numberplate following a protest against the timber industry in 2002. "They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me", said Atkins.
The confusion between "activists" and "terrorists" seems to permeate FBI thinking. An FBI counter-terrorism official giving a presentation at a law class at the University of Texas in February showed 35 slides, including of neo-Nazi and Islamist groups. One slide labelled "Anarchism" was also shown, with the official saying that these were the sorts of people that terrorists might associate with. Other types of people that terrorists might associate with were the homeless support group Food Not Bombs, as well as the open-publishing web group Indymedia.
The 2002 environmental protest justified FBI surveillance because activists planned to hold a workshop on "nonviolent methods of forest defense ... security culture, street theater and banner making", according to a released memo.
Sarah Bardwell, an activist who works for the Quaker social justice group American Friends Service Committee, was visited by the FBI in July 2004 after they obtained a leaflet advertising a meeting near her house to form an anarchist group. The group was never actually set up. "All we did is eat some cookies and talk about various prisoners and realize we didn't have enough money for a P.O. box", one person involved in the meeting told the LA Times.
The FBI documents reveal "domestic terrorist" activities included the coming together of 40 people to form a car pool to attend an anti-war demonstration.
Other groups monitored by the FBI include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the ACLU itself.
From Green Left Weekly, April 5, 2006.
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