Pentagon officials have spied on student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on openly gay military personnel, according to media reports but there's more...

A February protest at New York University was one of the events under government surveillance, NBC News reported last week.

The network reported that the law school's gay advocacy group, OUTlaw, was classified as "potentially violent" by the Pentagon.

"I was shocked to read that OUTLaw was classified as a threat and investigated," OUTlaw Co-chair Rebecca Fisher said in a telephone interview on Monday. "Since we still don't know how the Pentagon went about investigating us, I'm wondering how far they went in invading our personal privacy to make their determination. Did they read our e-mail? Monitor our meetings?"

Ellen Kranke, a Department of Defense spokesperson who handles issues regarding sexual orientation at the Pentagon, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Fisher said the Bush administration continues to display an attitude that is anything but democratic.

"For all its talk about democracy and free speech, this administration seems to feel very threatened by our peaceful exercise of our First Amendment rights," Fisher said. "This does not reflect the values of our Constitution. It's what you'd expect to see in a totalitarian police state, not in a country founded on freedom of conscience."

NBC also reported that a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protest at University of California Santa Cruz, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism by the Pentagon.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group dedicated to helping military members affected by the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, condemned the Pentagon surveillance and monitoring.

"The Pentagon is supposed to defend the Constitution, not turn it upside down," Dixon Osburn, SLDN executive director, said in a statement released Dec. 20. "Students have a first amendment right to protest and Americans have a right to expect that their government will respect our constitutional right to privacy."

Read more here.

Posted by Bryan Harding

This entry was posted on Friday, December 23, 2005 at 10:36 AM. Want to discuss? Leave a comment below.