Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition/Atlanta
www.georgiapeace.org

GEORGIA ACLU TO RELEASE INFORMATION ON GOVERNMENT SPYING ON GEORGIANS


For Immediate Release: Monday, January 23, 2006

Contacts:

Ann Mauney, GPJC – 404-373-3864 (h); 404-630-8910 (c); annmauney555@aol.com
Gerry Weber, Georgia ACLU – 404-523-6201; gweber@acluga.org



Atlanta, Georgia—The Georgia ACLU will release documents on government spying on Georgians at a press conference at 10 a.m. Wednesday, January 25, outside the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Building, 77 Forsyth St. in downtown Atlanta, which houses the local Homeland Security office. The documents were obtained through Freedom of Information requests.



“We have just seen the tip of the iceberg, but it is clear that citizens throughout Georgia have been spied upon by their own government,” said Gerry Weber, legal director for the Georgia ACLU, who will present the documents to the media at the press conference.



Weber will be joined by Rev. Tim McDonald, minister of the First Iconium Church of Atlanta and past president of Concerned Black Clergy; State Representative Nan Grogan Orrock; Ann Mauney, coordinator of the Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition/Atlanta, whose activities recently turned up in a Pentagon database; and other law-abiding Georgians who have been spied upon by the Bush administration in the exercise of their constitutional rights.



"We are at a critical moment in our history when the president of the United States shamelessly claims to be protecting us from terrorists by spying on Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers," Rev. McDonald asserted. "We must act with determination to defend our rights to freedom of speech and association against those who, at this moment, are undermining the fundamentals of our democracy.”



Increased government spying on American citizens came to light on December 14, 2005, when NBC News released a report concerning a secret 400-page Department of Defense document listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the US which its intelligence office had under surveillance. Among the several dozen incidents listed in an 8-page excerpt obtained by NBC were a public meeting of the Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition in the Atlanta offices of the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), a well-known pacifist group; a peaceful demonstration outside an Army recruiting center in Atlanta; a peaceful protest at the Kings Bay Naval Station near Brunswick; and similar legal, peaceful activities around the country.



The 12/14/05 NBC newscast is available at here. The Department of Defense surveillance document can be found here.