If You Aren't Doing Anything Wrong
why would you worry about the government snooping? I hear it every day. I heard it again this morning on C-Span.

This is why. "FBI agents monitored Web sites calling for protests against the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism unit." It seems that they have "collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration".

It should come as no surprise that the bulk of the documents are from groups the Bush administration vigorously opposes, namely 1,173 pages on the ACLU and 2,383 on Greenpeace.

According to the Times the executive director of the ACLU said "I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us. Why would the F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?"

Of course this comes as no surprise to those of us who have watched them for more than five minutes. But according to the sycophants on the right, the fact of the file is evidence enough to demonstrate bad behavior. I'm so sick of them.