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Joe Shlabotnik

(5,604 posts)
Mon Jun 23, 2014, 10:03 PM Jun 2014

Suit by Protest Groups on Spying Is Dismissed

A federal judge in Washington State has dismissed a lawsuit that accused a civilian intelligence analyst working for the military of breaking the law by using a fake name to infiltrate antiwar groups and trying to thwart protests by sharing information he collected with the Army, law enforcement agencies and private security firms.

Plaintiffs in the case, which was filed in 2010, contended that the actions of the analyst, John J. Towery, had deterred their free speech and led to their arrests, violating First and Fourth Amendment rights as well as statutes forbidding military surveillance of civilian groups.

snip...
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that they planned to appeal.

“This ruling did irreparable harm to the Constitution, and we cannot allow it to stand,” one lawyer, Lawrence A. Hildes, said. “The court essentially granted the military the right to spy on nonviolent political activists with impunity.”

snip...
Documents also showed that another defendant, Chris Adamson, a member of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, who had directed some of Mr. Towery’s activities, had identified some protesters as “domestic terrorists” and included their names, photographs and biographical information in a database created by a counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing office in Washington State known as a fusion center.

Mr. Towery’s lawyers had said that their client, who worked with the base force protection agency, had gathered information about protest groups not as a military employee, but as a volunteer working for Mr. Adamson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/us/suit-by-protest-groups-on-spying-is-dismissed.html?_r=1

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Suit by Protest Groups on Spying Is Dismissed (Original Post) Joe Shlabotnik Jun 2014 OP
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