Our Say: State police spying program an outrage

Word that the Maryland State Police spied on peace and anti-death-penalty activists in 2005 and 2006 brought back thoughts of the 1960s - and not nostalgic ones. We would have thought today's police officials had learned something from the blunders of their predecessors four decades ago.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in one of its best moments, uncovered an activity that is as outrageous as it is scandalous. That a state police agency, paid for by taxpayers, would engage in such a practice gives us no confidence that it knows the difference between suspected criminal activity - the only justification for surveillance - and constitutionally protected exercise of free speech.

According to documents obtained through an ACLU lawsuit, undercover officers working for the state police Homeland Security and Intelligence division spied on several groups opposed to the Iraq war and the death penalty. The names of individuals involved were even entered into a database identifying suspected terrorists and drug dealers. That database was made available to local police agencies, including those in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.

Police spent nearly 300 hours of surveillance time keeping watch on protests and marches - some at Lawyers Mall in Annapolis - over 14 months. The results of this cloak-and-dagger work? Nothing - there was no criminal activity witnessed, no stolen secrets traded, no terrorists caught.

State police officials are unapologetic. Although Col. Terrence Sheridan, the current superintendent, didn't have the post when the surveillance was conducted, he says the officers broke no laws and did not deny the rights of protesters.

He has to be kidding - and he has certainly missed the point.

First, the money spent on such activity was a colossal and obvious waste. Imagine what good could have come from spending 300 hours of surveillance time watching drug activity in public housing. Do police really think a guy protesting the Iraq war is a greater threat to the country than the guy peddling drugs to kids just a few blocks from Lawyers Mall?

Second, do civil rights mean anything any more? Did we lose them because there is a war going on overseas?

We're all for staking out the homes of suspicious foreign nationals or suspected terrorists. But the people our state troopers were watching were average, law-abiding Americans exercising their right to freedom of speech. That's precisely the sort of freedom we're trying to spread abroad.

Gov. Martin O'Malley needs to step in. Not only must he prevent this from recurring, but he must insist that the people who were under surveillance or put on the database be told about it, and assured that their names will be immediately expunged from government records.

Furthermore, he should take a hard look at his state police superintendent, whose response to this debacle was not an apology, but an excuse.