POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA

STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL SEIZES NEWSPAPER HARD DRIVE TO WIN MINOR CASE

JOHN SHIFFMAN PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER - In an unusual and little-known
case, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office has seized four
computer hard drives from a Lancaster newspaper as part of a statewide
grand-jury investigation into leaks to reporters. The dispute pits the
government's desire to solve an alleged felony - computer hacking -
against the news media's fear that taking the computers circumvents the
First Amendment and the state Shield Law. The state Supreme Court
declined last week to take the case, allowing agents to begin analyzing
the data.

"This is horrifying, an editor's worst nightmare," said Lucy Dalglish,
executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
in Washington. "For the government to actually physically have those
hard drives from a newsroom is amazing. I'm just flabbergasted to hear
of this."

The grand jury is investigating whether the Lancaster County coroner
gave reporters for the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal his password to a
restricted law enforcement Web site. The site contained nonpublic
details of local crimes. The newspaper allegedly used some of those
details in articles. If the reporters used the Web site without
authorization, officials say, they may have committed a crime.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/14084455.htm

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FBI SPIED ON PENNSYLVANIA PACIFISTS

REUTERS - FBI antiterrorism agents spied on a US peace group simply
because it opposed the Iraq war, part of an ''unprecedented campaign" to
spy on innocent citizens, the American Civil Liberties Union said
yesterday. FBI documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act
and provided to reporters show that the FBI conducted surveillance of
the Pittsburgh-based Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice during
antiwar demonstrations and leaflet distributions in 2002 and 2003. One
document said the Pittsburgh Joint Terrorism Task Force had learned that
''The Thomas Merton Center . . . has been determined to be an
organization which is opposed to the United States' war with Iraq.". . .


A November 2002 FBI memo said the Merton Center ''holds daily leaflet
distribution activities in downtown Pittsburgh and is currently focused
on its opposition to the potential war in Iraq." The war began in March
2003. The memo called the Merton Center ''a left-wing organization
advocating, among many political causes, pacifism.". . .

The agent was pursuing leads ''from another source possibly establishing
a link between an ongoing investigation and the group engaging in
antiwar protests. Finding no such link, he terminated his surveillance,"
the FBI said in a statement. . .

''We know that this surveillance is about the political views of the
Thomas Merton Center because that's what the documents say," said Mary
Catherine Roper, a lawyer with the Pittsburgh ACLU.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/03/15/documents
_fbi_spied_on_pa_pacifists/
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