To view the TALON documents in PDF format (524 pages) click here.
To view the full ACLU report click here.
The Pentagon has released to the Guardian and the American Civil Liberties Union 534 pages of documents relating to domestic surveillance — and we don't know much of anything new about the notorious Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) program.
The vast majority of the documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, are entirely blacked out or heavily redacted. It's clear there has been a lot of high-level discussion about policies and procedures related to military spying on civilians — but the government isn't coming clean about more than a sliver of it.
One thing the records do show is that the Pentagon at one point had between 12,000 and 13,000 files in its TALON database — and 2,821 contained information about "U.
S. persons." At least 186 of the reports in the files involved antiwar or antimilitary protests.
The Guardian and the ACLU went to federal court in 2006 to demand access to Pentagon records related to domestic surveillance after Santa Cruz Students Against the War and the Berkeley Anti-War Coalition compiled evidence to suggest that they had been the subject of TALON spying.
TALON was originally designed to monitor threats against military bases, but its mission expanded to encompass, for example, protests against military recruiters on the Santa Cruz campus. Pentagon officials admitted in December 2005 that the Santa Cruz student group was spied on under the TALON program.
In fact, documents we received earlier show that data about the student group were shared with the Department of Homeland Security and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which works with local police agencies (see "No End to Pentagon Spying," 7/5/06).
Initial documents received last year showed that, as of early 2006, there were no clear rules barring the military from conducting surveillance on peaceful protesters. The new documents indicate that in January and February of that year top Pentagon officials ordered a review of procedures and set some restrictions on retaining files on people who were not considered imminent threats.
One document states that information on protesters "has not been provided by recruited sources of information" — in other words, the military wasn't sending spies to watch protests — but concludes that "this statement is not intended to state that TALON reporting could not result from recruited sources or tasked personnel."
That only confirms what we had learned already: that there is no formal ban on armed forces personnel spying on protesters or planting sources inside peaceful groups or peaceful protests.
However, the operation seems to be winding down a bit. By June 16, 2006, one of the few uncensored documents shows, TALON reports had dropped by 80 percent.
It wasn't easy to get even these highly censored records. The Guardian-ACLU request was stymied at first, and only after Federal Judge William Alsup on May 25, ...
What that means is that many Americans who might have ideas that could improve our real homeland security will end up remaining silent and instead, the government runs the danger of becoming irreversably a thing apart from the people, not only of this nation, but of the entire world.
That is exactly what the founders of this once great nation went to such lengths to try to avoid, ever-fearful that this day would come.
Why else would they have started the Constitution with the huge words "We The People" as if to serve to us a constant reminder that we should never forget that a government OF, BY and FOR the people of this nation was legitimate, and that one which was not of that mind was not.
Please, think about this and lets do our best to work together to bring this national nightmare period of divisiveness to an end.
We just might find that real security comes from respect for the strengths that made this nation strong in the past, primary of which is a respect for the creative energy that tolerance of opposing views and discussions brings to our country, which is still fairly unique in its multicultural values.
Here's a disturbing, subversive idea. Why don't the secret spooks (or whatever they are) solicit the people directly for ideas that might really improve our homeland security in non-divisive ways? For example, by building strong communities in which people knew and looked out for one another.
The best thing we could do is work to end the increasing levels of social stratification and isolation. Anything that attacks that is a good thing. Because its only when people lose hope that they fail to speak out against violence.
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