New York's finest admit to having kept tabs on protestors.

New York police admitted on Thursday to compiling and then destroying a database of people arrested during anti-war protests, but rights groups decried the practice as an erosion of civil liberties in the name of the U.S. war on terrorism.
A "debriefing form" was used by detectives to record information on hundreds of people arrested in a series of protests since mid-February against the U.S.-led war on Iraq.
"After a review, the department has decided to eliminate the use of the Demonstration Debriefing Form," NYPD chief spokesman Michael O'Looney said in a statement that was first reported in Thursday's New York Times.
"Arrestees will no longer be asked questions pertaining to prior demonstration history, or school name. All information gathered since the form's inception on Feb. 15 has been destroyed."

Uh-huh... so you've basically just admitted to having secretly kept this information until now. Is there any reason we should believe you're not still secretly keeping it?

posted by James Russell | 10:21 PM