Military admits to new spying on groups

The Department of Defense (DoD) has admitted it conducted surveillance on groups opposed to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on a more extensive level than previously reported. The new revelations are part of an ongoing call for information under the Freedom of Information Act by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), an organization that represents gays in the military. Some of the surveillance outlined in the new documents suggests, SLDN says, that the spying may have been part of an undercover Pentagon operation. The new material shows government surveillance of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and anti-war protests at the State University of New York at Albany, William Paterson University in New Jersey, Southern Connecticut State University and the University of California at Berkeley. The documents released indicate that emails sent by various student groups were intercepted and monitored by the government and that the government collected reports from seemingly undercover agents who attended at least one student protest at Southern Connecticut State University. None of the reports in the documentation, however, indicated any terrorist activity by the students who were monitored. "Federal government agencies have no business peeping through the keyholes of Americans who choose to exercise their first amendment rights," said SLDN executive director C. Dixon Osburn. "Americans are guaranteed a fundamental right to free speech and free expression, and our country's leaders should never be allowed to undermine those freedoms. Surveillance of private citizens must stop. It is the suppression of our constitutional rights, and not the practice of them, that undermines our national security. It is patently absurd that this administration has linked sexual orientation with terrorism." Last December media reports said that the Pentagon has been spying on "suspicious" meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The reports said that the Pentagon had spied on New York University law school's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy group OUTlaw and gay groups at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. In February, the DoD acknowledged in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had 'inappropriately' collected information on protesters but did not name any of the organizations. The DoD initially refused a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from SLDN. But, when the organization sought a court order to force compliance with the FOIA request it began releasing some of its information. Other agencies have either denied participating in domestic surveillance of the LGBT community, or have refused to release information about their activity. In a June letter to SLDN, the National Security Agency said it will "neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence" of information that may have been obtained in its surveillance of the LGBT communities.