[Infowarrior] - NYC Asks Court Not to Unseal Police Spy Files

[Richard Forno]

March 26, 2007
City Asks Court Not to Unseal Police Spy Files
By JIM DWYER
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/nyregion/26infiltrate.html?_r=1&oref=slogi
n&pagewanted=print

Lawyers for the city, responding to a request to unseal records of police
surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican convention in New York, say
that the documents should remain secret because the news media will ³fixate
upon and sensationalize them,² hurting the city¹s ability to defend itself
in lawsuits over mass arrests.

In papers filed in federal court last week, the city¹s lawyers also say that
the documents could be ³misinterpreted² because they were not intended for
the public.

³The documents were not written for consumption by the general public,²
wrote Peter Farrell, senior counsel in the city¹s Law Department. ³The
documents contain information filtered and distilled for analysis by
intelligence officers accustomed to reading intelligence information.²

Because the materials have not yet been used to decide or argue any issues
in the civil lawsuits, Mr. Farrell said, ³there is no right of public
access.²

The documents show that the Police Department¹s Intelligence Division sent
undercover detectives around the city, the country and the world to collect
information on political activists and others planning to demonstrate at the
2004 convention, according to a sampling of records reviewed by The New York
Times that were the subject of an article yesterday. The records included
intelligence digests and field reports from detectives, known as DD5s.

Those records showed that some of the surveillance was conducted on groups
that planned to disrupt the convention, but the bulk of it was on groups and
people who expressed no apparent intention to break the law. In at least
some cases, the reports were shared with other law enforcement agencies.

Before monitoring political activity, the police must have some indication
of wrongdoing, a federal court judge has said.

Yesterday a spokesman for the Police Department reiterated an earlier
statement that the surveillance was conducted lawfully and that the
preparations helped keep order when large crowds of demonstrators gathered
in the city the week of the convention.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, said the revelations of widespread surveillance would
increase pressure for the records¹ release. ³People all over the country
will want these documents to see if they were spied upon,² he said. ³That
will make the debate about releasing them all the more important.²

In late January, the city turned over about 600 pages of intelligence
digests to the civil liberties union and other lawyers suing the city on
behalf of people who say they were wrongly arrested and detained during the
convention. The documents are under court seal, but Mr. Dunn and a lawyer
for The Times have asked a federal court magistrate to make them public.

City lawyers have described the intelligence documents as central to the
city¹s defense.

³They detail what information the N.Y.P.D. relied on in formulating its
policies,² Gerald C. Smith, an assistant corporation counsel with the Law
Department, wrote in a letter filed in federal court last month. He said the
intelligence helped the police forecast how many people were coming to New
York for the convention and had spoken about breaking the law.

Moreover, Mr. Smith wrote, the intelligence showed the city was justified in
applying intensive scrutiny to the 1,806 people arrested during the
convention, including fingerprinting more than a thousand people who faced
charges no more serious than traffic tickets. Some were detained as long as
two days for minor offenses.

³The decisions to adopt those policies were based in large part upon
intelligence that had been gathered regarding the number of individuals
planning to attend the R.N.C. in some capacity and the number of groups and
individuals intending to, or at least professing to intend to, engage in
unlawful behavior,² Mr. Smith wrote.

In ruling that some of that information could be used by the city for its
defense, a federal magistrate judge said that a debate over security and
First Amendment rights would come to a head in the litigation.

³The questions posed by these cases have great public significance,² the
judge, James C. Francis IV of Federal District Court in Manhattan, wrote on
March 12. ³At issue is the proper relationship between the free speech
rights of protesters and the means used by law enforcement officials to
maintain public order.²

One group that learned it had been the subject of an intelligence report,
Billionaires for Bush, offered a lighthearted response to the news. The
group, a satirical troupe, dresses in tuxedos and gowns to provide faux
endorsements of the administration.

Marco Ceglie, a national co-chairman who performs as Monet Oliver DePlace,
said a member of the group known as Meg A. Buck had issued a statement: ³We
suspect they were looking for stock tips.²