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TechnoratiPolice Spy on Climate Activist While Global Warming Goes Unarrested
Police spied on activist Mike Tidwell for months as a 'suspected terrorist'.
I'm not sure what's more shocking: the news that the Maryland State Police wrongfully spied on me for months as a "suspected terrorist," or that, despite surveillance of me, officers apparently wouldn't recognize me if I walked into their police headquarters tomorrow.
I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer, an Eagle Scout, church member, youth baseball coach, and dedicated father. I also happen to be director of one of the largest environmental groups in Maryland, a nonprofit that promotes windmills and solar panels in the fight against global warming. So imagine my shock to get a police letter last month saying I was one of 53 Maryland activists on a terrorist watch list that has been discontinued because - can you believe it? - there's "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime."
Matters turned especially Soviet-esque on October 14 when I called the police requesting a full copy of my surveillance file. A spokeswoman told me I could visually inspect the file, but I couldn't make photocopies, I couldn't bring an attorney, and the police would be destroying the entire file after I read it.
And bring a valid photo ID, she said, to make sure you're who you say you are.
A what? Really? You spied on me, for God's sake.
The mess all began last summer when astonishing evidence surfaced revealing that the Maryland State Police - under former Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich - posed as activists and infiltrated an anti-death-penalty group, attending the organization's meetings and taking secret notes to send back to HQ. But what were they doing to me and my organization - the Chesapeake Climate Action Network - during this surveillance program in 2005 and 2006? Bugging our phones? Reading our emails? Monitoring me as I walked my kid to the bus stop?
I still don't know for sure. Yielding to public pressure, the police finally gave me a printed copy of my "file" on October 29. It raised more questions than it answered. Seven of the 12 pages were withheld without full explanation. And of the pages I did receive, at least half the words were redacted - blacked out with a marker.
There was a photo of me on the last page, lifted from my website. And on the first page, there were these words: "Crime: Terrorism, environmental extremists."
What terrorism would that be? My file - what little of it I have - makes reference to a morning speech given in Bethesda, Md., by then-governor Robert Ehrlich on November 17, 2005. A small audience of invited guests and journalists attended inside a classroom at Walt Whitman High School. Ehrlich wasn't doing enough to fight global warming, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network believed, and several of my staff arrived to peacefully demonstrate and hold up signs that said things like, "It's Getting Hot in Here, Gov!" But troopers with the governor's "Executive Protection Division" believed this was extreme, according to my file. For example, CCAN staffers invited high school students to hold up protest signs during the governor's speech. Pretty extreme, huh?
There was no civil disobedience at this event. No one was arrested. No county, state, or federal laws were breached. The entire affair was utterly peaceful, above board, and appropriate. Political demonstrations exactly like this happen a thousand times a day in America. There were no media reports of anything unusual.
Yet Ehrlich's security team considered this "aggressive protesting." Afterward, the troopers contacted the Maryland State Police's Homeland Security and Investigation Bureau. The result was creation of intelligence files on me and three of my staff under the crime category of "terrorism, environmental extremists." The real motivation, however, appears to be political spying. We were opponents of the governor's policies. We were organized and vocal about it. We wound up on an intelligence list along with dozens of other innocent, nonviolent opponents of the governor's policies.
Ironically, I wasn't even present at the protest in question. I've never been to Walt Whitman High School. But a case file was launched on me nonetheless, on November 28, 2005, with my name, photo, job title, "no SMTs" (scars, marks, or tattoos), and the declaration that no charges had been brought against me. Strangely, according to the police papers, there's no record of any intelligence-gathering related to me after the file was created, just a narrative describing my staff's protest at the Ehrlich speech.
Meanwhile, the state police say they've released everything to me that's relevant to me, but I don't believe them. Since July, the state police have made numerous public statements related to this spying controversy that have proved to be factually untrue. They initially said, for example, that the entire surveillance program was limited to anti-death-penalty activists. But we now know activists for peace, immigration, and the environment were spied on too. I believe more of the spying story is yet to come out, however. With the help of a heroic Maryland attorney, David Rocah of the American Civil Liberties Union, and an equally heroic Maryland state senator, Jamie Raskin of Takoma Park, I believe all the facts will soon surface and we'll see legislation in the state General Assembly in 2009 specifically banning police abuses like this.
The final tragedy here, of course, is how much this whole episode has been a distraction to the public. The real threat of terror to Maryland and the nation is the prospect of up to 23 feet of sea-level rise as the Greenland ice sheet continues to implode from rapid global warming. The violent activity behind this threat is our astonishing over-reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal, to power our economy while suicidally saturating the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. For all our declarations of "never again," the ground-zero site of the World Trade Center will itself be literally under water from sea-level rise if we don't switch quickly to 100-mile-per-gallon cars and clean electricity from wind power.
But you can't have strong and lasting environmental protections without a strong democracy. Most of the transformative, positive change experienced in American history has happened only after significant citizen engagement at a noisy grassroots level. That's why, ultimately, the objective of almost all environmental groups - from the more liberal Greenpeace to the more conservative Nature Conservancy - is inspiring average citizens to care enough to take action, to make their desires known, to get involved in the system.
But who's going to get involved and get noisy - in Maryland or elsewhere - if citizens fear that the police are secretly attending the same rallies and meetings, secretly watching and taking notes and keeping lists? Thank God that outraged Marylanders from Ocean City to Cumberland continue to demand full disclosure and reform in the face of this tawdry police spying affair.
The national economy is tanking, we're bogged down in two wars, and the accelerating impacts of global warming could soon get so severe that Pentagon planners already anticipate security challenges worldwide from the inevitable social unrest spawned by biblical droughts, floods, wildfires, and the rest. History shows that it is precisely during times of war and want that governments tend to overreach and trample liberties. And it's only in resisting these temptations that certain kinds of governments - democracies - grow stronger.
With a climate disaster looming, I've worked very hard for many years to promote clean, renewable energy. But perhaps the greatest contribution I'll ever make to this cause is the action I'm taking right now: standing up and working hard to keep government itself clean.
Mike Tidwell is director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and author of Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast.
This article was shared by our content partner Grist, a member of the Guardian Environment Network.
14 Comments so far
Show AllEnough is enough. I wanna see some of these jack-booted thugs and their bosses behind bars where they belong.
*Support your local organic family farmers.*
Appalachia has become Third World America thanks to Presidebt Bush and THE COAL INDUSTRY. END MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL www.wisecountyissues.com
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/timmullins
Looks like some posters are on tonight looney enough to slog through this hodge-podge of climate change dot-connecting and offer an opinion:
Sometimes it's helpful to make a few observations and see where they take us. The following may seem too simple, or over the top, but consider:
The IPCC ice core data charts,as seen in Gore's Book, so it can be studied, show us that there have been about 6 ice age cycles in the last 650ky. We are on the up-swing of a temp/CO2 spike now, with GHGs now well out of historical norms. This begs certain questions---
What weather phenomenon has defeated and reversed the previous spikes, yet not drastically lowered the mean planetary temp?
What is the trigger? temp, CO2, other? Obviously, the reversals occurred before the ice caps melted appreciably, otherwise there would be no data to harvest...Is, then, the reversal of our spike immanent, or even, overdue (tipping point)?
When does the ice of an ice age build up? All at once or gradually, as the temp/CO2 decreases?
How is the atmosphere supplied with the moisture and energy necessary to transfer so much water to the poles as snow and ice?
What role does methane play as it is released from tundra and the oceans?
Was there massive methane release during the previous cycles? Or did the reversals act to put the methane back to sleep, so to speak, before it could compound the greenhouse effect?
There were humans present during the previous cycles, how and where did they survive the reversals?
What can the paleo-geologic record found in the magnetic striping of the mid-Atlantic ridge tell us about tectonic plate movement and possible, or sudden, volcanic warming of the oceans?
Is it possible that the mass of melt water transferred to the equatorial bulge would be sufficient to change the angular momentum of the earth enough to tweak the plates into movement?
Does USGS data show increased activity along plate boundaries that might be a "forcing of the forcings" related to shifting water mass or rising landmass?
The answers to these questions are not hard to compute. The answers dictate the type and intensity of response that is called for. The answers have probably been known for some time, by some people who have the connections and means to respond. The answers demand a change to the status quo, a change from "growth and consumption" to sustainability and survival. Look at the tops of the spikes and decide if we have any more time to dally around with any energy sources that add heat or GHGs to the ecosphere. Coal and oil are out. Nukes and geo-thermal are out. NG, too, even though it's cleaner, adds heat. The grid has to change. Wealth has to be used in different ways.
It's a different game, and we're all in the same boat.
We can have just as much fun surviving with wind and sun, as with burning and consuming---let's do it!
Additionally, and a bit redundantly:
Subjectively, one of the main characteristics of a spike is that everything is relatively normal, until it isn't. We are getting lots of clues now.
The emerging scenario seems to be: rising temp melts land-borne ice along with sea ice. Fresh water disrupts the thermo-halyene circulation of the gulf stream and if we're lucky, that's as far as it goes--an ice age cycle of normal proportions is initiated and technologically enabled civilization is disturbed, but maybe not destroyed.
If ice melts at such a rate as to enhance the above, another scenario might unfold: Land-borne ice melt flows to the equatorial bulge (the planet is not a perfect sphere-it bulges at the equator because of centrifugal force) thus changing the mass distribution and angular momentum of the earth and putting enough pressure on the tectonic plates to start a geotectonic event that would activate the ring of fire and the mid-Atlantic ridge. The resulting undersea volcanism, (not to mention the earthquakes, and worst case, the popping of the Yellowstone magma dome,) would flash heat the oceans. That seems to be the hidden key to how and when an ice age starts, and how it gets the moisture and enough energy to move that much water back to the polar latitudes, forming the glaciers, part of which slide on down around Cincinnati, melt and recede over the next 100,000 years.
Apparently planetary methane has been sequestered for a very long time--dinosaur time. It would be very bad for us to loose enough heat into the mix to stir up the methane. The previous ice age cycle/reversals evidently have occurred soon enough to keep the methane down under frozen tundra and cooled ocean water. An additional factor related to tectonics gleaned from USGS info is that land masses such as Greenland, relieved of the weight of the ice, tend to rise, actually float higher on the magma. National Geog had an article on the mechanics of the melting that is shaping up on Greenland---flows of melt water form surface streams which drop through the thousands of feet of ice to the land surface, creating a layer of slush under incredible pressure. The next dot in that progression is: earth tremor, separation and departure of a largish section of that ice cap which, worse case, might produce a tsunami out into the Atlantic. Or worst case, a chain reaction of tsunamis as some of the crumbling islands of the east Atlantic, in turn, loose a mountain or two (PBS).
A serious multi-disciplinary approach, including even rogue generalists, like those on site tonight, seems called for.
So…amazing deductions, pseudo-science in prose, or story board for “The Day After The Day After Tomorrow”?
CAP AND TRADE = Corporate/Government Boon-doggle
Global Warming through Disaster Capitalism is a scheme that will be used by the Government to further destroy individual liberty here in America and world wide.
http://thebigagenda.com/channel.php?id=6&video=7&type=documentary
I'd guess that the Maryland State Police had to show the Federal government that is was putting the Homeland Security funds it was getting to "good" use. So at bottom, another case of Shrub-s--t.
first post. ever.
lets let them watch, and laugh at the perverted sense of a good country. i have no issue with the law, except when we the people allow ourselves to be punished for acts that are well intentioned and simple in nature.
I also happen to be director of one of the largest environmental groups in Maryland, a nonprofit that promotes windmills and solar panels...
Is Robert Ehrlich the new Don Quixote..fighting agaisnt windmills?
The Man from La Maryland?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
We can’t be intimidated by the police state. Stay active and speak truth to power. Live as independent as you can. Don’t get sucked into consumerism, though I am sure most that read this are not. We have weekly peace and justice vigils here in Regina Canada now continuous for 85 weeks. Keep the faith. Look at the big picture and think in the long term.
You're both right of course. And as a Collective Conscious are we not getting really really sick of this Homeland Security bullshit? Like the Bush people claiming that they are responsible for the fact that there has been no "terrorist" act approaching 911 since 911 in the United States. Let's all run out into the atmosphere and "prove" a negative.
Meanwhile, I, too, have been "investigated" as was my father. My father was FBI'd when I was a kid. Locals were interviewed and my family was shunned. These people know not what they do. In the name of Patriotism they destroy Community. And they are paid by us to do it.
My heart goes out to Mike Tidwell not only for his work but for his anticipation of the actions of the people we should not be paying to spy on us.
Keep it up Mike. Fight the goddam Paranoid State.
You all have heard my story about the extreme right and their spy machine having me on a watch list 24/7 for two years.Specially after I had a custom sunshade made for my car declaring 8 points of our constitution that needed to be saved with "OBAMA 01-20-09" smack in the middle.That was dec 07, not a popular thing to do in Tampa Florida. Needless to say the the right wing terror machine had their eye on me.And its been hell until Obama won.They still watch me, and hares me with loud music and surviellance, but they are not in my face as much.
Do you think I will get a similar letter. I hope I get mine after Obama is Inaugurated.
My first call will be to the ACLU, because I was tortured by these surviellance crews.They made no effort to hide what they were doing, and went out of there way to make me feel the pressure of their presence. Hell, the stress led to a heart attack, and quadruple by pass surgery.
That said, you can already see the the National spy machine has turned its attention away from the American activists , porn addicts, drug addicts, and so forth.
We have served our purpose, they used us to place key republican cronies to run power hungry agencies that control the nation wide spy machine.A lot of well placed republicans are very upset Obama won, their money train is about to come to a halt.And so is their rule of terror.
Obama taught Constitutional law. Maybe, he knows about all the abuse in the warrant less surviellance world.
Do you think that the AIG executives caught in two extravagant outings and the arrival of Detroit's Auto CEOs by executive jets were just the media doing their jobs.
No friends, the fools at the top of the food chain that supported warrant less surveillance are now going to be placed under the spy microscope.
Watch out wall street, bankers, fortune 500 CEOs , their watching you.
Lets face facts , most of us have nothing to hide or worry about.Nor does it make any sense to launch million dollar investigations on people earning less than 75000 a year.Most of us are small fish.That is how they sold warrant less surviellance to the masses.Terror and fear, but if you are doing nothing wrong, no big deal.
But the elite, the big fish, who control the wealth of the nation, now that's a different story.
They usually have plenty to hide, don't they. More money, more power, more abuse, more to hide.
If I were them, I would have my lobbyists in Washington day one after the inauguration , making sure that they work hard at having the Patriot Act warrant less surveillance repealed.
But , what do I know, I am just an average American that loves the Constitution in its true form,loves my country, love free speech and view warrant less surviellance as a cancer on our Democracy, free speech, civil liberties.
And I am a surviving warrant less surviellance torture victim.All they were trying to do to me was discredit my character, and drive me insane.I didn't have a fortune they could take. I am broke.
I just hope that the fat cats who are terrorizing this country with warrant less surviellance all get a taste of their own medicine before we dismantle the spy machine.
They should all know what its like to be terrorized by their own tactics.
BornFreeMen
Live Free or Die, Save the Constitution, while it still breaths life into America.
a
Dear bornfreeman,
It truly is a shame that those things have been happening to you. You must be very naive however to believe that an Obama administration will use his powers of spying on people without need of reason or probably cause to do good things like spy on Fortune 500 CEOs. Now that I actually type it out I realize this assumption is not naive, but fuckin' ridiculous! Warrantless domestic spying is wrong no matter who's in control of it. Sure, in theory it could be used to expedite the gathering of information that could help authorities do justice, but the potential evil vastly outweighs the good.
We don't live in a world where Republicans are bad and will abuse these powers and Democrats are good and will use these powers to bring justice to the disadvantaged. It's time for you sir to wake up and realize we live in a world of duplicity, ambiguity, and nuance.
First off, the author sounds like he'd be a friend of mine.
SiouxRose: You're onto something with the "steady job" theory. For years, TSA airport screeners have been thoroughly shaking down senior citizens in particular, precisely because the seniors don't fight back. If you're going to violate someone's human rights year after year, pick someone safe. The absolute best targets of spying are of course the Sisters of Mercy! Too bad they're so hard to infiltrate. There must be somebody else somewhere who serves good cookies, who can come over and help you wash your car,... who you can then infiltrate and then frame a terrorism rap on them.
Sioux Rose
Three thoughts combine in my head when I read this:
1. Law and Order did more than one episode that portrayed environmentalists as "terrorist" suspects to let the public know this kind of blurring of the lines was already underway.
2. 60 Minutes did a story at least a decade ago showing that an FBI agent was planted in an environmental group, and tried to stir some to leave to form yet another similar organization all with the purpose of finding out data on these ecologically conscientious souls.
3. In this economy, people employed by the massive Homeland Security State have to push papers to "earn their keep." Since they won't go after the true scoundrels, those who have the power to negate their jobs; they have to find SOMETHING to do. It's like from a mystical standpoint, if you invest in insurance you subconsciously expect/want to get your money's worth, so you may inadvertently help to cause a situation where the insurance $ will be needed. In a like manner, these spying-on-fellow-citizen jobbers need to believe in a domestic enemy to find one. It's all a grotesque fishing experiment and damned if it doesn't smell like what it is.