Spying spies in the NYPD [NYCLU Barf Alert]

A series of recent disclosures about political spying by the federal government was capped by the revelation last week that members of the NYPD have been participating undercover in political demonstrations and perhaps even instigating confrontations between police officers and legitimate protesters. Just as the disclosures about federal abuses have prompted congressional leaders to schedule oversight hearings, the recent disclosures about the NYPD justify similar actions here. It came as no surprise that Police Department officials once again have gone too far when it comes to monitoring political activity. Anyone following the department during Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly's tenure knows that he has moved aggressively to build the NYPD's intelligence-gathering capacity, and the First Amendment has proven to be no restraint to that work.

Starting in September 2002, the department asked the federal courts to scrap a set of longtime surveillance restrictions put into place following an NYPD political spying scandal of the early '70s. Though Kelly justified the request as necessary to fight terrorism, it was clear to us that this move was intended to reopen the door to surveillance of lawful political activity.

Eight months later, in April 2003, the NYCLU learned and disclosed that the NYPD had started a secret protester-interrogation program. Under that program, people charged with minor offenses at anti-war demonstrations were questioned about their political affiliations and their past protest activity, with the information being entered into a database operated by the NYPD's Intelligence Division. Though the department quickly abandoned most of the program and claimed to have destroyed the database, the disclosure was an ominous warning about possible other programs.

A glimpse of those programs came with the August 2004 Republican National Convention. Police officers videotaped every demonstration, capturing images of tens of thousands of lawful protesters for police files. Nearly 1,500 protesters arrested for minor offenses were unlawfully fingerprinted.

The most recent revelations may leave many New Yorkers wondering just how far the NYPD has insinuated itself into political activity. Are they monitoring E-mail? Are they eavesdropping on phone calls? Are they secretly attending meetings? Are they instigating unlawful conduct amongst law-abiding demonstrators? Are they creating permanent records at 1 Police Plaza of people simply participating in lawful demonstrations?

Police officials will never voluntarily disclose these unlawful activities, and the public and advocates should not have to rely upon occasional leaks to learn of them. As is happening on Capitol Hill, the time has come for City Council oversight hearings. The public and First Amendment deserve no less.

Dunn is associate legal director and Lieberman executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union

The response from the NYDN reality-based editorial:

Paranoia strikes deep

[Above] is a remarkable example of the fevered imaginings of unhinged minds ["Spying spies in the NYPD"]. They come from Christopher Dunn and Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union. From New York to Washington, the two suggest, government political spying is trampling the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. And chief among the tramplers is an army of snoops otherwise known as the New York City Police Department. So filled is the piece with unsupported assertions that would have made Joe McCarthy blush, we thought long and hard about running it. But unmasking the combination of naivete and zealotry that makes Dunn and Lieberman so dangerous as legal advocates seemed important before they further propagate their paranoia.

In their most recent cause, this pair battled to bar police from subway bag searches, losing only because they encountered a judge who took seriously, where they refuse to, the threat of terrorism. What has now pushed their buttons are press dispatches indicating the U.S. and the NYPD are actually trying to prevent another 9/11.

First, The New York Times reported that the feds have been monitoring, without warrants, phone calls and E-mails to and from places like Afghanistan, an effort that appears to be both perfectly legal and effective. (It disrupted a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.)

Then, NBC News disclosed that the Defense Department, on the lookout for domestic threats, had compiled a list of 1,500 "suspicious incidents," including about four dozen at which someone checked the goings-on at anti-war rallies or meetings. Dunn and Lieberman take this rather comforting revelation, marry it to the foreign wiretapping and, incredibly, label both as "political spying by the federal government." Political spying? On whom? Al Qaeda?

But what really sent them off the dial was a story in which The Times was amazed to discover that plainclothes cops mingle among protesters when there are concerns that some in the crowd are intent on vandalism, violence or other law-breaking. This, the civil libertarians declare, is part of a wholesale NYPD drive to monitor and interfere with New Yorkers' political activities.

And deploying the jackboots is Commissioner Ray Kelly. Never once mentioning Osama Bin Laden or the loss of 2,749 lives, Dunn and Lieberman slanderously conclude, for instance, that Kelly "intended to reopen the door to surveillance of lawful political activity" when he persuaded a federal judge in 2002 to relax perilous restrictions on the NYPD's ability to monitor, say, a terror cell masquerading as a civic group.

After slinging other false allegations (sorry, protesters around the Republican convention were not illegally fingerprinted), Dunn and Lieberman call for a City Council probe, asking, without evidence, whether cops are committing felonies: "Are they monitoring E-mail? Are they eavesdropping on phone calls? Are they secretly attending meetings? Are they instigating unlawful conduct among law-abiding demonstrators? Are they creating permanent records at 1 Police Plaza of people simply participating in lawful demonstrations?"

Have you no sense of decency, Mr. Dunn and Ms. Lieberman, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

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