BoGlo: ACLU seeks files from FBI on possible surveillance

[Now, you just KNOW domestic surveillance is back, big-time. Even so, we need to cite reputable news organizations, now don't we?

Boston Globe: ]

ACLU seeks files from FBI on possible surveillance

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | May 18, 2005

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is seeking FBI files on behalf of four advocacy groups and 10 activists in the state, saying it believes they have been targets of surveillance because of their politics.

The ACLU, in Freedom of Information Act requests it plans to send out today, is requesting all records kept by the FBI and antiterrorism agencies on the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group in Cambridge; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has a state chapter in Boston; the International Action Committee Boston, an antiwar group, and the ACLU itself. The letter also seeks government files on 10 activists and political dissidents, including such liberal heavyweights as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
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The request is part of a coordinated nationwide effort by the ACLU to obtain records of alleged spying on activists who oppose the war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act, and other government policies. ACLU affiliates in nine other states planned to file similar requests today.
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In Massachusetts, Keith Harvey, director of the New England office of the American Friends Service Committee, is one of those who believes he's been watched. For at least two weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention last summer, he said, black SUVs and black sedans were parked outside his group's office on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. A helicopter often hovered overhead and even appeared to follow one employee home to Dorchester, he said.

At one point, Harvey said, he approached a man sitting in a sedan and asked him to identify himself. The man politely replied that he worked for the US Department of Homeland Security but declined to identify himself, he said.

''He said, 'Keith, I'm just doing my job,' " Harvey said.