police surveillance of death penalty opponents & peace activists

wow! here's a scary post from karl keys at capital defense weekly. i'll just paste the whole thing:

As most probably know, cops in Maryland have been targeting people opposed to the ultimate use of state power. I’m too cheesed off to even pretend I can talk rationally about this as everyone I know who supports ending the dp in Maryland is, well, ridiculously normal/mainstream. I’ll leave it to Dr. Michael Blankenship from the Justice Gambit:

Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on local peace activists and groups opposed to the death penalty, including some in Takoma Park, for more than a year during the administration of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), documents released this morning show.

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No evidence of criminal behavior was reported during almost 300 hours of undercover surveillance. It was doubtful that the investigation originated because of any illegal activity. So? Being opposed to capital punishment has rarely been viewed in a positive light by the government. I speak from experience when local prosecutors and sheriff’s joined together to complain to the university about my research and testimony as an expert witness.

However, this is a new low. The use of public funds and resources that were supposed to be expended on crime control activities to conduct covert surveillance on a legal and peaceful group of people should make rational individuals afraid - very afraid. Will there be any accountability for this outrageous abuse of power and public resources?

The Maryland docs are here. The only positive thing I can say about all of this (and friends are listed in the docs) is that the officer(s) assigned determined that this was (B)ravo (S)ierra and asked the investigation be terminated.

this is worse than spending all those fbi resources to find all the iraq war protestors when we were signing our names & providing personal info on all those petitions.

truth is this is outrageous, but on the other hand maybe there'll be another good thing to come of this. (i'm making some assumptions here:) i guess we middle-class middle-aged white folks are discovering that the whole criminal justice thing really isn't all that fair and that law-abiding peaceful people are not immune. maybe if this hits home then we'll start to pay better attention to what's really happening in other neighborhoods. and maybe be more willing to believe similar claims by others.