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.
"These types of inquires, with no nexus to criminal activity ... will not be part of the future of the Maryland State Police," Sheridan reportedly said on July 25.
The trooper assigned to the Hopkins event noted that the protesters were respectful of city laws and maintaining the peace.
The Maryland State Police Department went through official and public censure over its surveillance of activist groups, which occurred during the Ehrlich administration.
"It was our lawsuit that disclosed the documents back in July that caused O'Malley to appoint Sachs and our call from the beginning was for a full, thorough and transparent accounting of what happened," Rocah said. "The report that Sachs has done is that and has done that."
One of the earliest State Police surveillance reports begins with an unidentified trooper who "attended an organizational meeting in Takoma Park in an undercover capacity."
This March 15, 2005 report detailed the meeting events, named attendees and listed the group's discussion topics, which included "soliciting donations for signs."
The ACLU learned that such investigations led to the listing of group members in terror databases and even arrests.
Max Obuszewski has a group Pledge of Resistance, which is called a "security threat group" by the State Police. This group describes itself as "committed to non-violent resistance" and "utilizing the practices and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr."
Obuzewski was found listed in the Maryland High Intensity Drug Trafficking Database, and was listed as a terrorism suspect.
He was also arrested while protesting the Iraq War at the National Security Administration, also located in Maryland.
In other reports, two Catholic nuns are listed as terror suspects, according to Sachs's report.
The Police Superintendent's Office insisted that all surveillance of these groups permanently ceased in 2006. Greg Shipley of the Maryland State Police confirmed that surveillance ended with the Hopkins event.
"I believe that this report is an accurate account of the operative facts of the events in question and the law and regulations applicable to the State Police's conduct," Sachs said, when presenting his completed report to O'Malley. "The report also makes observations and recommendations that I hope you will find constructive."
State Police have accepted all of Sachs's recommendations, which include "binding regulations that govern covert surveillance of 'advocacy' or 'protest' groups," establish standards for collection and dissemination of criminal intelligence and review the listing of all individuals in state databases of suspected involvement in terrorism.
But Sachs still indicated continuing doubt.
"I believe that MSP's 14-month undercover investigation of anti-death penalty and anti-war groups would fall somewhere in the middle of these cases with respect to the constitutional concerns that they raise," he said.
Chairman of the State Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, Senator Brian Frosh, expressed similar doubts.
"I think the surveillance was illegal under some of the regulations of the Federal Homeland Security money that the state receives," he said.
But Frosh noted that the actions were most likely permissible under Maryland State law.
"There are arguments that this surveillance violated the constitutional rights of the protesters - I don't know," Frosh said.
There will be a hearing on the surveillance issue before Frosh and his committee next week. The ACLU's top lawyers will be in attendance to present their case.
The ACLU, among others, believes that Wednesday's proceedings are still not enough to protect the citizens of Maryland from unreasonable surveillance.
Rocah explained that police codes are often written "behind closed dorms."
"It should not be up to whim or good will what the rules are. They should be written by the people through their elected representatives," Rocah said.
According to the Rocah, disturbing parallels exist between the increasing focus on counter-terrorism at the national level and infringement on civil liberties in the states.
Sachs cited the increasing pervasive attitude of "better safe than sorry," as an underlying problem and rationale in police decision-making.
