Welcome to the surveillance society

Welcome to the surveillance society.

That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union concluded Tuesday with a report chronicling government spying and the detention of groups and individuals “for doing little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.”

“Our review of these practices has found that Americans have been put under surveillance or harassed by the police just for deciding to organize, information pills march, visit web protest, espouse unusual viewpoints and engage in normal, innocuous behaviors such as writing notes or taking photographs in public,” Michael German, an ACLU attorney and former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, said in a statement.

The report, Policing Free Speech: Police Surveillance and Obstruction of First Amendment-Protected Activity (.pdf), surveys news accounts and studies of questionable snooping and arrests in 33 states and the District of Columbia over the past decade. – [source]

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/aclu-surveillance/#ixzz0sLQM2iVI