ACLU releases files showing innocent Americans caught up in surveillance

(Guardian) Civil liberties groups released newly obtained documents Thursday that they say show innocent Americans being swept into a broad nationwide counterterrorism program.

The American Civil Liberties Union and several other organizations released 1,800 so-called suspicious activity reports that local law enforcement officials and others submitted to two California intelligence-gathering repositories called fusion centers.

The documents, nearly all of which were obtained by the ACLU through a public records request, do not appear to show valuable counterterrorism intelligence.

"An off-duty supervising dispatcher with Sacramento PD noticed a female subject taking pictures of the outside of the post office in Folsom on Riley Street this morning," reads one suspicious activity report created June 4, 2010, and released Thursday. "The female departed as a passenger in a silver Mazda."

Another reports a Lodi Police Department sergeant "reporting on a suspicious individual in his neighborhood." The sergeant, whose name is redacted from the document released Thursday, said he "has been long concerned about a residence in his neighborhood occupied by a Middle Eastern male adult physician who is very unfriendly."

The fusion center program was a target of a blistering Congressional report last year complaining that too many innocent Americans engaging in routine and harmless behavior have become ensnared in the program.

The ACLU and others are calling on the Obama administration to overhaul the program so that only activities with legitimate links to terrorism investigations are reported.

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