Chatrooms of Mass Destruction

Judith Miller, a key conduit of bogus WMD intelligence from Dick Cheney's office to the front page of the New York Times, pops up in her post-NYT gig on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd; alt. free link) to argue that the massive NYPD surveillance of groups planning to protest at the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan was justified. This surveillance, which appears to have violated a long-standing court order, included infiltration of anti-Bush groups. Part of her claimed justification is that people say weird stuff on the Internet --

The "Constitutional Rights Enforcement and Support Team," an Internet-based group, stated on its Web site that "many people who join this group will die, be wounded, or jailed" in its efforts to counter "police brutality." Ashira Affinity, a Colorado-based anarchist group, urged members to join protests that were "strategic, ruthless, efficient, as well as chaotic."

In addition to the usual crackpot threats posted in Internet chat rooms, such as the one by a writer who vowed to "fly a 767 into the convention and take care of the American problem on Thursday" -- which the police nevertheless could ill afford to ignore -- came vaguer if still troubling counsel from would-be protestors: "Give them the New York they are afraid of," urged one listing.

Nowhere in this list is a shred of evidence of any intent or capacity to implement any of these "threats". And there are all kinds of simple tools, like "the Google", that can help sort out who's who before there's a need for a city police department to be running its own domestic intelligence service.

Even more preposterously, Miller's article gets the headline: When Activists Are Terrorists. But the potential activities cited, such as rushing hotel lobbies and blocking traffic, don't meet any sensible definition of terrorism. They are civil disobedience, illegal, and ill-advised -- not least because they create grounds for arrest. Miller says --

... although I am devoted to the First Amendment and privacy rights, and believe that effective judicial and administrative oversight is critical to preventing police abuses, I also want the NYPD to have the tools and programs to protect the city from terrorist attacks. If that means scanning the Internet and sending plainclothes officers to public meetings to learn about planned actions that might turn violent, or be infiltrated and taken over by violent dissidents, so be it.

Is Cheney's office now handing out evidence that, say, Ashira Affinity has been infiltrated by al Qaeda?