I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
As more federal and local agencies collaborate across the country in a high-profile campaign against terrorism, civil liberties advocates are becoming increasingly anxious about what they call mission creep.
And that fear is playing out in New Mexico.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday it will lobby the Legislature in the session starting next week to pass a law that would guard against collecting information on Americans lawfully protesting government policies.
“We want to ensure that political activities, any public expressions against the government, are protected against this type of activity,” Peter Simonson, executive director of American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters.
The act takes on a special resonance, Simonson said, given the sprouting of dozens of facilities across the country called fusion centers, including one in New Mexico, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. New Mexico’s opened in the fall of 2007 to little fanfare.
It comes also as authorities in some jurisdictions appear to be crossing the blurry line between protecting civil rights and ensuring national security. A report this past summer revealed that undercover Maryland State Police officers collectively spent more than 288 hours on surveillance on war protesters and death penalty opponents over 14 months.
A draft of the ACLU legislation, sponsored by Rep. Antonio “Mo” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, would prohibit a law enforcement agency from collecting, maintaining and sharing “with any other law enforcement agency, information about the political, religious or social associations, views or activities of a person unless” they are suspected of committing a crime.
Agencies would also have to destroy information collected on an individual if a criminal charge is not brought against the person or is dismissed. The state attorney general would have access to agencies’ files and records to ensure their compliance with the law.
New Mexico’s fusion center, called the All Source Intelligence Center, sits in a nondescript building at the National Guard Center off Highway 14 south of Santa Fe.
Its analysts collect and interpret tips and raw data from an alphabet soup of federal, local and state agencies, as well from tribal governments.
The fear, civil rights advocates say, is that a focus on identifying and breaking up terrorist cells or criminal activities will drift toward domestic spying that ensnares political activists because of the sometimes blurry line between competing priorities — that of protecting civil rights and ensuring national security.
A call to a spokesman for the state’s Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management was not immediately returned Tuesday. But the center’s director, Earl Rose, said in August, “We have a privacy policy in place where we stipulate what we will collect, and how we collect that.”
He added at the time that New Mexico’s center only analyzed data and did not conduct investigations. That’s similar to many fusion centers across the nation.
The staff at New Mexico’s fusion center numbers fewer than 10, and includes an analyst for terrorism/Islamic extremist activity, and one for militia/white supremacists and another for border security. Critical infrastructure and collection management were assigned to two other analysts.
Two full-time captains from the New Mexico Department of Public Safety who act as liaisons rounded out the team, Rose said in August of the New Mexico All Source Intelligence Center.
