This following article was taken from the Miami Herald .

Do you think this is an invasion of privacy? Is the PATRIOT ACT going too far or was this just a mistake that will sometimes happen? Giving the government power to get stuff done has its price. Unfortunately, an extreme example always ends up coming out just like this situation. A bunch of military veterans get assumed to be part of a terrorist sect, and have to be monitored. Have we given the government too much power? Personally, I think we are living in a different world and some freedoms needs to be mixed with security. I want my friends and families to be safe, but I don’t want my personal freedoms to be violated.

WAR ON TERRORISM

The Department of Defense said it made a mistake by listing a Broward anti-war group in a terrorist-watch database and said it has put measures in place so that it won’t happen again.

BY ROBERTO SANTIAGO

rsantiago@MiamiHerald.com

ANTI-WAR PROTEST: More than 200 protestors, including members of the Broward Anti-War Coalition, chant ‘No blood for oil’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’ at a protest in 2002.

A South Florida anti-war group’s peaceful protest of military recruitment during last year’s Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea Show was labeled ‘’subversive” and was being monitored by the Pentagon, which kept a report on the protest in a database designed to track domestic terrorist threats.

That report in the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice database, or TALON, was a mistake, a Defense spokesman said Thursday. And the circumstances that led to the surveillance of the Broward Anti-War Coalition — along with other groups nationwide — have already been corrected, said Maj. Patrick Ryder, spokesman for the office of the assistant secretary of defense.

Nonetheless, details of the report, one of several such documents on groups around the country that were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Thursday, provided fresh details about the TALON program, which first received attention in late 2005.

”The Broward Anti-War Coalition [BAWC], with support from other local groups, is planning to conduct a large-scale protest at the Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea show,” the report said.

‘BAWC plans to counter military recruitment and the `pro-war’ message with ‘guerrilla theater and other forms of subversive propaganda,’ ” it said.

Peter Ackerman, a member of the coalition who organized the protest last year for Fort Lauderdale Friends, a Quaker group, said the protest drew 30 people, who cooperated fully with police regarding where to stage the demonstration.

The most outrageous thing protesters did? They passed out pamphlets about how to be a conscientious objector to military recruiters, Ackerman said.

”They took them and gave us blank looks,” he said.

SOURCE OF REPORT?

It’s not clear how the group’s plans for last year’s Air & Sea Show, which began April 30, 2005, were reported to the Defense Department.

Documents that the ACLU obtained via the federal Freedom of Information Act indicated that the source of the report was the Miami-Dade Police Department, which filed a report dated April 12, 2005.

But Miami-Dade police on Thursday disputed the document, saying its officers never investigated the Broward anti-war protesters — and never provided information on the Air & Sea Show protest to the Pentagon database.

The police department ran across the planned protest on a website, www.antiwarbroward.org, and passed along the information to police in Broward County and military personnel organizing the event to plan for proper security, said Detective Bobby Williams, a spokesman.

”The purpose is to provide planning for the show, for manpower allocations for the safety of the show attendees as well as the protesters,” Williams said.

It’s unclear how the report made its way from the local planners into the TALON database, which generally relied on reports from local individuals and groups — a practice that gave rise to criticism.

”We were the recipients of information from concerned citizens and organizations, and it became clear that there was questionable information,” said Ryder, the Defense Department spokesman.

`OVERSIGHT STEPS’

In December 2005, when NBC News first reported on the TALON database, ”We put oversight steps into place that will prevent these kind of mistakes from happening again,” Ryder said.

He said reports that are not relevant to terrorism have been removed from the database and that government “personnel received immediate refresher training concerning the laws, policies and procedures that govern collection.”

After initial news reports about TALON, the Broward Anti-War Coalition protested the program in West Palm Beach. And two months after that, the ACLU filed an official request for the documents.

One ACLU leader criticized what he described as a pattern of government surveillance of war protesters.

”I am gratified and pleased by the government’s 25th annual announcement that it made a mistake with regards of the rights of American citizens to peacefully protest against the war,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida ACLU. He added that this ”abuse of power” was similar to what President Richard Nixon did to Vietnam anti-war protesters.

Ackerman, of the coalition, remained skeptical of the entire incident.

”It’s easy to admit you made a mistake when you’ve been caught,” he said.

”These tactics don’t discourage veteran peace activists,” he said. “They discourage new peace activists from getting involved.”

Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this report.

More post coming up about the PATRIOT ACT.