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Md. investigates incident of surveillance at Homewood
Issue date: 10/2/08
Hopkins has been part of an ongoing investigation of possibly illegal police surveillance of anti-war and anti-death penalty protests in Maryland.
Governor Martin O'Malley held a press conference yesterday to discuss the findings of a civil liberties violation investigation that involve the 2005 protest at Homewood.
The Maryland State Police sent a trooper to monitor and gather information from a ceremony held on the Homewood Campus on Aug. 9, 2005 to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan 61 years earlier.
Participants of the protest of Maryland United for Peace and Justice, a social justice group, held signs protesting nuclear weaponry against Hopkins's Applied Physics Lab, which had previously accepted government contracts for expansion.
Maryland State Police Colonel Terrence Sheridan was allegedly instructed to launch the surveillance program in 2005 by a top law enforcement official during the administration of former governor Robert Ehrlich.
"The ACLU filed a bunch of new public information act requests Tuesday in Maryland," the ACLU attorney on the case David Rocah said. "This reflects the ACLU's strong belief that the subject of Sachs' investigation was only a part of a much broader effort by the state police to improperly gather information."
O'Malley's office noted the possible transgressions of the State Police due to an investigation conducted by the Maryland chapter of the ACLU, in which the organization successfully sued the State Police for access to the documentation of surveillance records.
The documents revealed that State Police reported, in a covert capacity, on at least 27 different activists over a 14-month period from March 2005 to May 2006, resulting in 288 hours of surveillance.
Sheridan has since denounced the spying program and participated willingly in the investigation led by Stephen Sach, an ACLU member and former Maryland attorney general who was appointed by O'Malley to privately investigate the case.
Governor Martin O'Malley held a press conference yesterday to discuss the findings of a civil liberties violation investigation that involve the 2005 protest at Homewood.
The Maryland State Police sent a trooper to monitor and gather information from a ceremony held on the Homewood Campus on Aug. 9, 2005 to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan 61 years earlier.
Participants of the protest of Maryland United for Peace and Justice, a social justice group, held signs protesting nuclear weaponry against Hopkins's Applied Physics Lab, which had previously accepted government contracts for expansion.
Maryland State Police Colonel Terrence Sheridan was allegedly instructed to launch the surveillance program in 2005 by a top law enforcement official during the administration of former governor Robert Ehrlich.
"The ACLU filed a bunch of new public information act requests Tuesday in Maryland," the ACLU attorney on the case David Rocah said. "This reflects the ACLU's strong belief that the subject of Sachs' investigation was only a part of a much broader effort by the state police to improperly gather information."
O'Malley's office noted the possible transgressions of the State Police due to an investigation conducted by the Maryland chapter of the ACLU, in which the organization successfully sued the State Police for access to the documentation of surveillance records.
The documents revealed that State Police reported, in a covert capacity, on at least 27 different activists over a 14-month period from March 2005 to May 2006, resulting in 288 hours of surveillance.
Sheridan has since denounced the spying program and participated willingly in the investigation led by Stephen Sach, an ACLU member and former Maryland attorney general who was appointed by O'Malley to privately investigate the case.
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