MEDIA ADVISORY FOR
October 23, 2008
CONTACT: Meredith Curtis, ACLU of Maryland, 410-889-8555; media@aclu-md.org
Mike Tidwell, CCAN, 240-460-5838
WHAT: Maryland environmental organizations unite for a press
conference and rally to release important new information about targets of
Maryland State Police spying on peaceful political activists and to call for
legislation to ensure such spying never happens again.
WHO: Mike Tidwell, Executive Director, Chesapeake Climate Action
Network; Josh Tulkin, former Deputy Director, CCAN; Cindy Schwartz,
Executive Director, Maryland League of Conservation Voters; State Senator
Jamie Raskin; David Rocah, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Maryland.
WHERE: Silver Spring Metro Station, Silver Spring, MD; Wide sidewalk at the intersection of Colesville Road and East/West Highway, next to the Metro station and across the street from Caribou Coffee. Parking behind Caribou Coffee in the strip shopping center. For mapquest, use Caribou’s address: 1316 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, Md 20910.
WHEN: Thursday, October 23, at 10:30 a.m.
BACKGROUND: On July 17, 2008, the ACLU of Maryland made public shocking documents obtained days before through a Maryland Public Information Act lawsuit, revealing that the Maryland State Police engaged in covert surveillance of local peace and anti-death penalty groups for over a year from 2005-2006, and had entered at least one peaceful political activist in their criminal intelligence database as a suspected terrorist, even though he was not, in fact, suspected of any crime whatsoever, much less terrorism.
Subsequently, the state police revealed that 53 individuals associated with a wide variety of peaceful political organizations were wrongly labeled as “terrorists” in their criminal intelligence database, to which numerous federal security and law enforcement agencies had access. Although the state police has begun notifying those individuals of the improper data collection, the MSP has also taken the position that the victims cannot make copies of files kept on them or have their lawyers accompany them to review their files. The Maryland ACLU has called on Governor Martin O’Malley to direct MSP to remove these unconscionable restrictions on the victims’ right to obtain all of the information to which they are legally entitled.
Go online for information about Maryland ACLU’s challenge to MSP spying:
http://www.aclu-md.org/Index%20content/NoSpying/NoSpying.html
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