ACLU: Md. State Police spying on protests

BALTIMORE, July 17 (UPI) -- Maryland state troopers have been going undercover to spy on protest meetings, the American Civil Liberties Group said Thursday.

The ACLU released documents obtained through a lawsuit against the Maryland State Police, the Baltimore Sun reported. Police were especially interested in meetings to plan demonstrations against the death penalty and protests outside Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency.

"For undercover police officers to spend hundreds of hours entering information about lawful political protest activities into a criminal database is an unconscionable waste of taxpayer dollars and does nothing to make us safer from actual terrorists or drug dealers," said David Rocah, an ACLU staff attorney.

State ACLU Director Susan Goering said the documents depict activities similar to COINTELPRO -- Counter Intelligence Program -- an FBI program that featured covert, and sometimes illegal, investigations into political dissidents from the mid '50s through the early '70s.

Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. Terrence B. Sheridan issued a statement Thursday saying his department "does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protesters or organizations acting lawfully."

Sheridan said state police took "no illegal actions" against people exercising free speech and assembly rights "in a lawful manner."