yeah, go Independent!

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1. From Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=89632EU's secret network to spy on anti-capitalist protesters.

By Stephen Castle in Brussels

20 August 2001

European leaders have ordered police and intelligence

agencies to co-ordinate their efforts to identify and track the anti-capitalist demonstrators whose violent protests at recent international summits culminated in the shooting dead by police of a young protester at the

Genoa G8 meeting last month.

The new measures clear the way for protesters travelling between European Union countries to be subjected to an unprecedented degree of surveillance...

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2. Editorial in same issue of Independent:



Police co-operation must not trample on protesters'

rights 20 August 2001

One of the surest ways to ensure that Europe-wide

policing initiatives are regarded with suspicion by the public is to try to identify and track small groups of troublemakers within larger, law-abiding movements. First it was football hooligans, when supra-national efforts were prompted by a riotous confrontation between some England fans and the Belgian police in

Charleroi last year. Now it is anti-capitalist protesters. Again, politicians feel impelled to act, because of the

televised scenes of mayhem at the summits in Gothenburg and Genoa. Clearly, lessons must be

learnt, but our governments seem in danger of learning

the wrong ones.

Our Prime Minister made a fool of himself at the time by

instantly supporting the Italian police in Genoa, before he had established any of the facts about the abrogation of the human rights of several British citizens, arrested while they slept.

Now, his Home Secretary has lent his support to a new EU apparatus designed to pool intelligence about violent protesters. Nothing wrong with

that in principle, except that it must be perfectly

obvious that police forces in Britain and elsewhere do not have much information about the tiny groupuscules of anarchists and others who are keen on violent clashes with the authorities. Just as with football supporters, what such an initiative means in practice is that expensive surveillance will be carried out on groups of people who are merely suspected of association with violence. These are resources which would be much better deployed fighting the more pressing threat of terrorism from groups such as Eta and the Real IRA.

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