March 30, 2005 — The ACLU filed the FOIA request in December, 2004 on behalf of 17 political, environmental and faith-based groups in Oregon to determine whether the FBI and local police are illegally spying on these groups.
In response to the ACLU of Oregon's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the FBI has informed us that they do have documents on at least half of our clients named in the request.
Until we receive those files, it is premature to speculate as to the contents. For a number of reasons, we believe it is highly likely that the contents would violate Oregon law if they had been collected or were being maintained by an Oregon police agency.
ACLU of Oregon's FOIA request is part of a nationwide ACLU effort to expose illegal FBI spying on political, environmental and faith-based groups.
“It is now beyond dispute that FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces have been used to systematically spy on the lawful political and religious activities of individuals and organizations,” said Oregon ACLU Executive Director David Fidanque. “Unfortunately, most of this activity has occurred under a cloak of secrecy so we don’t know how much of it is occurring in Oregon.”