Deja Vu

A Matter of Malice

Tags:

Bill of Rights,

civil liberties,

Maryland,

police

“Review of Maryland State Police Covert Surveillance of Anti-Death Penalty and Anti-War Groups from March 2005 to May 2006,” by Stephen H. Sachs et al., Oct. 2008.
Stephen H. Sachs served as Maryland’s Attorney General between 1979 and 1987.

From March 2005 to May 2006, the Maryland State Police (MSP) covertly
monitored individuals and groups engaged in anti-death penalty and anti-war
activism in Maryland. The surveillance was not predicated on any information
indicating that those individuals or groups had committed or planned any criminal misconduct. The state trooper assigned to lead this surveillance was then a member of MSP’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division (HSID) and acted at the direction of HSID commanders. Using a false identity, the trooper attended more than two dozen protests and meetings. She took significant steps to build trust with the subjects of her surveillance. She reported on what she saw and heard at these meetings about the subjects’ views and their plans to express those views publicly.

“An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States,” approved July 14, 1798.
Though the law was never tested in court, the Supreme Court of the United States has long maintained a precedent that John Adams’s temporary “Sedition Act” of 1798 was an unconstitutional overreach of federal power.

SEC. 2. And be it farther enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years….

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