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The ACLU of Maryland will seek legislation to outlaw police spying of peaceful organizations in the wake of revelations that undercover troopers infiltrated groups opposed to the Iraq war and the death penalty.
"The shadow of spying has been cast over all of us now in Maryland," said Cindy Boersma, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.
Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) selected Sachs to review police procedures after the ACLU revealed the spying in July.
Sachs has recommended new limits on police surveillance, and the ACLU has heard from several lawmakers — Boersma would not name them — interested in sponsoring legislation to prohibit law enforcement from investigating lawful First Amendment activities or keeping dossiers on people for political or social beliefs.
On Monday, the ACLU demanded more information from Maryland State Police regarding 32 groups, ranging from peace activists to abortion opponents, that suspect the police might have spied on them, too, ACLU staff attorney David Rocah said.
The surveillance, conducted by undercover police between March 2005 and May 2006, was done with a "systemic obliviousness" to potential civil liberty violations, Sachs said.
"Without throwing any unnecessary bouquets here, I feel compelled to say that that was then and this is now," Sachs said at an Annapolis news conference attended by O'Malley and state police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan.
The surveillance was conducted on the watch of former state police superintendent Thomas E. ‘‘Tim" Hutchins, a point made by both Sachs and Sheridan.
"We joined this request because we believe in the Constitution," said Jean Athey of Peace Action Montgomery, one of the 32 groups represented by the ACLU. "The freedom to dissent without fear is a fundamental aspect of what the country should be about."
The report did not go beyond investigating the initial reports of spying on anti-death penalty and anti-Iraq war opponents.
Since then, more than 100 groups have come forward, suspecting their members also were spied upon, Rocah said.
State police have said the undercover investigation of the groups began out of concern over violent activity.
"If that worry was the true motive, it could exist with respect to any and all of the groups we are filing for," Rocah said. "All of these are pretty hot-button issues."
But Rocah said no evidence showed any of the groups planned violence; in fact, they wanted peaceful demonstrations.
"History shows us that our democracy works best when the voices of people are heard, and the chilling of free speech puts our nation at risk," said Rev. Andrew Foster Connors, of the Baltimore-based grass-roots group Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. "I can't for the life of me understand how a police organization would conclude that groups like ours would pose a threat to public order or safety. The real threat to the public comes from unbridled state power, which must be checked by the Maryland legislature to ensure that this kind of spying never happens again."
"This spying has an absolutely chilling effect," said Stephanie Gibson of Marylanders Against State Executions. The group has always advocated peaceful demonstrations, even passing out fliers explaining that to people who join them, she said.
"This is peaceful activity," she said.
The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee will hold a hearing on the spying on Tuesday.
"The fact that police are spying on law-abiding citizens … that's pretty bad," said Sen. Brian J. Frosh, chairman of the committee, in an interview. "It's bad because it chills people's right to First Amendment expression, the right to association, the right to speech. But it also uses police resources.
"When they're devoting resources to chasing down a bunch of coffee-drinking, cookie-eating people opposed to the death penalty, it's just a waste of time," said Frosh (D-Dist. 16) of Bethesda.
Although Sachs said spying prohibitions could be handled through regulation, Frosh said lawmakers would want to legislate new rules.
Seeking answers to the extent of the state police spying, Frosh wrote Sheridan on July 24, requesting documents related to the ACLU action. He also asked for an account of why state police undertook the investigations and who authorized them, including all documents related to how that decision was reached.
While state police provided some of the documents Frosh requested, he renewed his request for the remaining information in a Sept. 23 letter to Sheridan. Without the documents, Frosh said he has not been able to formulate questions.
State police spokesman Greg Shipley said the state police turned over documents to Frosh's committee Thursday and would provide any information to the ACLU that the groups were entitled to receive.
Hutchins, the former state police superintendent, declined to participate in Sachs' investigation, but plans to join Sachs and Sheridan at next week's hearing.
"I felt that's the appropriate forum in order to get all the information out in front of all the media and in front of all the people that I'm closest to and that's the General Assembly," said Hutchins, a former delegate. "They are the policy-making body."
Hutchins said he had not seen the report and didn't put much stock in allegations that the state police overreached their authority. "That's their conclusion, that's not my conclusion."
Sachs' report said state police violated federal regulations when some of the information gathered by troopers was entered in a database maintained by the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. The Justice Department limits intelligence collected through the federally funded initiative only to information relevant to criminal activity.
"Again, no such reasonable suspicion existed with respect to the investigation at issue here," the report said.
State police also "showed a lack of judgment in labeling as ‘terrorism' … the peaceful activism that was the subject of its investigation."
Police used the "terrorism" label to categorize entries about the surveillance into the HIDTA database and its own database.
"As for the monikers of terrorist, they were absolutely wrong," Sheridan said. "They shouldn't have used those types of descriptions. But they were convenient at that particular time."
State police are already acting on the report's recommendations that the agency establish guidelines for collecting intelligence, said Sheridan, who called the episode a "learning experience."
Among the report's recommendations, the state police will create new regulations to surveillance of "advocacy" or "protest" groups. And it will establish standards for collecting and disseminating criminal intelligence information, periodically audit its intelligence database and purge any inappropriately entered information.
Staff writer Alan Brody contributed to this report.
