Big Brother is Watching You!
Pentagon spying on counter-recruitment movement
By Samantha Esguerra
Junior at Avalon School, St. Paul

In December, a 400-page document containing information gathered by the Pentagon on counter-military recruitment groups and peace activists was leaked to MSNBC. This Pentagon domestic spying program, known as “Threat and Local Observation Notice or TALON, was started in 2003 to keep track of people and groups with potential ties to terrorism” (San Jose Mercury News, 3/7/06).

The Pentagon document contains information on over 1,500 antiwar and counter-recruitment protests, meetings, and groups much like YAWR. The Pentagon has also set up a toll-free hotline, 1-800-CALL-SPY, for citizens to report suspicious activity directly to the military.

Under the all-encompassing guise of thwarting terror, the U.S. government is simply repressing opposition to pursue its own imperial interests. Programs such as TALON promote corruption and disregard of civil rights.

On March 7th, 2006 the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of student antiwar activists in California whose counter-recruitment protests were labeled a “credible threat” in the Pentagon’s report.

Jen Low, a University of California, Santa Cruz, student explained: “Over 300 students marched into a campus job fair, occupying the building and holding a teach-in until all military recruiters left. The notion of the Pentagon spying on peaceful protesters is a major threat to the freedoms that they claim to protect” (santacruz.indymedia.org).

History repeats itself

Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer, blew the whistle on a similar Defense Department operation in January of 1970. A congressional investigation revealed that the military had spied on at least 100,000 American citizens, many of them anti-war activists and civil rights advocates.

Although the Pentagon defends information collected through TALON as “properly collected,” it defies laws approved by Congress with the help of Pyle, which placed new limits on military spying inside the U.S. “Some people never learn,” Pyle says of his former military colleagues (MSNBC 12/14/05).