They're watching you

So, turns out the Maryland State Police (MSP) has been spying on anti-death penalty groups, such as the Campaign to the End the Death Penalty, a group I often worked with in my younger days. This news is shocking, because I and my friends, while not actually in the spied on have been close to organizations spied on and it shows that we are not far from being the victims of state surveillance. Particularly galling is the fact that the MSP agents consistently found that the anti-death penalty groups were non-violent and law-abiding, yet recommended that the spying continue and kept all of the records they made of these groups. This is a good depiction of the way the state will try to spy on people not as far as necessity, but instead will try to spy as much as they can get away with. This story has more than just a passing familiarity with COINTEL-PRO. 288 hours were spent spying on good people trying to end state imposed barbarism when instead they could have been spying on real potential threats, or fighting crime. Here is one good article about it.