Pentagon ordered to expedite handover of UC spying records

[struggle4progress]

By ROGER SIDEMAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
This story ran in Saturday's Sentinel.

.. In January, Students Against War asked the Pentagon to disclose whether it spied on San Francisco Bay Area student organizations, and release any information gathered on the organizations.

U.S. 9th District Court Judge William Alsup ruled Thursday that such information is "of significant importance to public policy and public protest," impelling the Department of Defense to act more quickly on the student request ..

"We're happy because it shows that being spied on has to be taken seriously," said Students Against War member Kot Hordynski, who sat in on Thursday's hourlong hearing in San Francisco. Hordynski said lawyers told him the Pentagon records, public under the Freedom of Information Act, could be handed over within three months.

A lawsuit filed in March by the Northern California chapter of the ACLU, on behalf of Students Against War and a UC Berkeley anti-war group, asked the Department of Defense to promptly disclose information from an obscure Pentagon agency that included reports on protests and other peaceful civilian demonstrations in a database meant to detect terrorist activities ..

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/May/28/local/stories/16local.htm