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NYT:

An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that “a church service for peace” would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding “nonviolence training” sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The Defense Department tightened its procedures earlier this year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist threats — and not peaceable First Amendment activity — was included in the database.

The head of the office that runs the military database, which is known as Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been collected in the first place[...]

The latest Talon documents showed that the military used a variety of sources to collect intelligence leads on antiwar protests, including an agent in the Department of Homeland Security, Google searches on the Internet and e-mail messages forwarded by apparent informants with ties to protest groups.

In most cases, entries in the Talon database acknowledged that there was no specific evidence indicating the possibility of terrorism or disruptions at the antiwar events, but they warned of the potential for violence.

One entry on Mr. McPhearson’s group from April 2005, for instance, described a protest at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces at which members handed out antimilitary literature and set up hundreds of white crosses to symbolize soldiers killed in Iraq.

“Veterans for Peace is a peaceful organization,” the entry said, but added there was potential that future protests “could become violent.”

I realize the military is trying to spin this like some sort of innocuous mistake, but I have a very, very hard time buying that. Once or twice maybe, but we're talking somewhere between hundreds and thousands of entries here. How stupid do they think we really are?

Here's what the new acting director said about the information:

I don’t want it, we shouldn’t have had it, not interested in it

Clearly, however, his predecessor didn't agree with him, otherwise the information wouldn't have been collected and in the first place, right? Once or twice is an accident. Hundreds of times is anything but.

And for the record, no, its not actually the civil liberties issues that scare me the most. It's the sheer stupidity of it all that is really terrifying. Instead of monitoring real threats, these idiots were tagging pacifists and Quakers as potential sources of violence, expending time, effort, and money to keep track of them all.

Hey America, do you feel safer now?