From: frankferg@aol.com
Date: 2009-10-28 23:05:44
British activists outraged by government’s domestic spying revelations www.fsrn.org/audio/h… British activists outraged by government’s domestic spying revelationsA recent article in a British newspaper has sent activists reeling. It exposed 3 secret UK police units dedicated to spying on protesters and storing data about them, whether or not they ever committed a criminal offence. Naomi Fowler reports from London. Protesters have condemned today’s revelations in the Guardian newspaper; they say police monitoring of this kind is operating without proper accountability and should be scrapped. The police categorize the targets they’re monitoring as ‘domestic extremists.’ Civil liberty campaigners say this term has no legal basis. Many of these thousands of protesters may end up on a secret police database simply because they attended a demonstration. Others may be suspected of minor public order offenses such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience. So-called ‘environmental extremists’ and anti-war campaigners are also included. The police have refused to say who is on the database and exactly how many are there but have said that protesters on the database ‘should not worry at all.’ Naomi Fowler, FSRN, London.
