| Big brother watches anti ftaa church Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.churchcentral.com/nw/s/id/17985/template/Article.htmlhttp://www.churchcentral.com/nw/s/id/17985/template/Article.html
Church members wonder whether ‘big brother’ is watching 15 Jan 2004
CORAL GABLES, Fla. — A document from the county’s Emergency Operations Center has members of Coral Gables Congregational Church wondering if they were under police surveillance in the days surrounding the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in November.
The Miami Herald reported that the document — a printed memo from the "tracker" system used by the center as a sort of internal bulletin board — notes that an unnamed Coral Gables Congregational pastor "who is very anti-FTAA, had offered to allow 100 protesters a place to stay at the church this week."
Church members said the one-page document, dated Nov. 17, during the week of the FTAA meetings, makes them wonder whether police were keeping an eye on them during what they said were constitutionally protected religious and educational activities.
The church sponsored several forums during the summit but took no position on the free-trade proposal, members said.
"This document is a source of great concern for our rights of free expression and freedom of religion," said Roy Wasson, a church member and attorney representing the church. "We are using this to investigate further, to ask questions."
The words "Coral Gables Division EOC" and "Coral Gables PD" appear on the document, which would have been accessible to all 25 or 30 agency representatives in the Emergency Operations Center.
Coral Gables police spokesman Sgt. Raul Pedroso said he was unable to comment because he was still trying to locate the author of the memo, the newspaper reported.
The fact any government agency was taking notes on church activities is worrisome to church officials.
"Churches should not be subjected to this kind of monitoring," said Margarita Lopez, co-chair of the Justice and Peace Committee of the church. "Our work in social justice should not be subject to police surveillance."
Compounding suspicion, the emergency center did not give the church the document when it responded to a Dec. 19 public-records request from the church, the newspaper reported. The request covered the time period from Sept. 1 to present and specifically asked for center records involving the church, its pastors, staff, members and visitors.
The center gave the church a handful of documents, including two "incident briefing reports," from Nov. 17, a list of FTAA-related events from Nov. 21 and an "incident action plan" from Nov. 21.
An accompanying letter from acting Assistant Director Bill Johnson said the office "has no records that mention the pastors, staff or involved members of the church."
Johnson said the document was inadvertently omitted.
"It was an oversight," he said. "We only use the tracker when we activate the EOC, and I just forgot."
He said he is reviewing all documents generated by the tracker to see if there are any others that mention the church.
Church officials said they are withholding judgment about what the document means.
"We’re going to wait until we hear back on our public records requests from the other agencies and then sit down and digest the information," Wasson said.
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