Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 2. April 2007 / Time Line April 2, 2007
Version 3.004/02/2007
Øget fokus på
ikke-spredning i eksportkontrolarbejdet 
Regeringen offentliggør i dag rapporten
”Udførsel af våben og produkter med dobbelt
anvendelse fra Danmark 2006”.
Rapporten rummer detaljerede oplysninger om udførsel af
våben og produkter med dobbelt anvendelse fra Danmark i 2006.
På våbenområdet redegøres for antal og
værdi af eksporttilladelser fordelt ikke alene på
modtagerlande, men også på produkttyper og kategorier
af modtagere i bestemmelseslandet. Som et af de få lande
offentliggør Danmark desuden oplysninger om afslag på
eksportansøgninger.
Danmark fører en tilbageholdende politik med hensyn til
våbeneksport, bl.a. gennem en restriktiv anvendelse af
kriterierne i EU’s adfærdskodeks for
våbeneksport. Eksportansøgninger vurderes desuden
under hensyn til de øvrige forpligtelser, Danmark har
påtaget sig i det internationale samarbejde. Der udstedes
ikke eksporttilladelse i strid med en våbenembargo vedtaget i
FN, OSCE eller EU.
Regeringen har givet ikke-spredningsarbejdet høj prioritet
bl.a. i forbindelse med Danmarks medlemskab af FN’s
Sikkerhedsråd, som sluttede ved udgangen af 2006.
Prioriteringen afspejler sig desuden i, at Danmark i begyndelsen af
oktober 2006 overtog formandskabet for missilteknologiregimet
(MTCR).
Rapporten er blevet til i et samarbejde mellem Økonomi- og
Erhvervsministeriet, Justitsministeriet, Forsvarsministeriet, samt
Udenrigsministeriet. Sidstnævnte har forestået
redaktion af rapporten. De faktuelle oplysninger leveres af
Justitsministeriet og Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsen, som er de
licensudstedende myndigheder for henholdsvis våbeneksport og
eksport af produkter med dobbelt anvendelse.
Med offentliggørelse af rapporten er det regeringens
ønske at imødekomme ønsket om åbenhed om
Danmarks eksport af våben og produkter med dobbelt
anvendelse.
04/02/2007
Dissent Is Not Terrorism
by Chris Pifer, TomPaine.com
Chris Pifer is a policy analyst at the Washington office of the
American Friends Service Committee.
An e-mail went out to people in Springfield, Mass., on February 28,
2005, asking them to join in a protest against the second
anniversary of the war in Iraq. "All are welcome," the e-mail said.
To the Department of Defense, this was suspicious - so they
added it to a secret military database.
The organization that sent that e-mail was the American Friends
Service Committee, a 90-year-old pacifist Quaker organization, a
co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. This was the first
of two events the Department of Defense felt were worth
watching.
News of this has been around for a while, but as the Democratic-led
Congress focuses its attention on open government, the experiences
of the Service Committee highlight the excesses of an unaccountable
government and the importance of tools like the Freedom of
Information Act to preserve that accountability.
It was as early as 1921, just three years after the Service
Committee was founded, that the FBI took notice and created a file
on the organization. Through 1978, that particular file generated
over 3,498 pages of surveillance. Throughout that surveillance,
agents and other FBI staff consistently and repeatedly concluded,
to quote a February 1951 FBI memorandum: "There is no information
on hand indicating that the American Friends Service Committee ...
is engaged in any activities of unlawful or subversive nature."
Yet the surveillance went on. It continues today.
In 2005, peaceful protests planned by AFSC in response to the
second anniversary of the war in Iraq were identified in a secret
Department of Defense database as "potential terrorist activities,"
according to internal documents received through the Freedom of
Information Act, or FOIA. This database, which is most frequently
referred to in the media as the TALON database, also identified a
79 year-old Quaker grandmother attending an anti-war meeting at a
Quaker meeting house in Florida as "potential terrorist
activity."
TALON is known more precisely within the Defense Department as the
Joint Protection Enterprise Network. Entries in the database can be
created at almost any level of government and, once entered, they
are accessible to over 28 different federal, state and local
agencies, including 3,598 individuals throughout various branches
of government. Managed by the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field
Activity program, we owe much of what we know about this database
to strong investigative reporting by NBC and The Washington Post ,
with some gaps filled in by multiple FOIA requests with the
Americaan Civil Liberties Union.
We are left to wonder: How many times were the TALON reports on
AFSC accessed? How many times were the activities of another
government agency towards AFSC or our employees influenced by these
TALON reports? What is to prevent future First Amendment-protected
protests from being tracked in this database? We may never
know.
We do, however, know without question of several other instances
where the government has conducted surveillance of AFSC.
In 2002 an ACLU Freedom Files lawsuit and FOIA request revealed the
Denver police had falsely identified AFSC as a "criminal extremist
organization." It was conducting extensive surveillance of the
organization and recording it in a police database. The ACLU staff
prosecuting this lawsuit noted that two items about this database
stood out:
1) the simple act of planning and organizing a protest was
sufficient to create an entry in this database and initiate an
investigation;
2) The content of this database was shared very widely across
jurisdictions, and with the federal government.
There is no way to trace whose private information was transferred
from this database to other branches of government and if these
branches still hold that information.
In 2004, during the Republican National Convention, the AFSC office
in Cambridge was under surveillance by multiple black SUVs with
tinted windows and, periodically, a helicopter. While the people in
the SUVs said they were with the Department of Homeland Security,
AFSC was unable to figure out why they were suddenly interested in
our work.
In 2002, the AFSC office in Chicago was infiltrated by local police
during preparations for an anti-globalization protest while the
office was negotiating with police about protest logistics. An
internal audit of the police department found "boxes" of
surveillance materials created during this period, although, to
date, a Freedom of Information Act request has produced only a
handful of documents.
The biggest concern today is that we see history not repeat itself.
Do we really want to go back to the McCarthy era, or COINTELPRO
when nonviolent activists, such as Martin Luther King Jr. were
labeled as "radicals," and were watched and infiltrated?
What can we do about this? What are the lessons we are to draw from
these experiences? We expect our elected officials to uphold the
rule of law, and we ask Congress to assert its role to create
checks and balances on other branches of the government in order to
protect our civil liberties. Specifically, Congress should:
Investigate the Department of Defense use of TALON reports and the
Joint Protection Enterprise Network database and evaluate the
impact they have had upon constitutionally protected dissent.
Revisit the US PATRIOT Act. Start with the common-sense bipartisan
proposals from the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act Act
of 2005, which would address roving wiretap provisions, sneak and
peek powers, and national security letter provisions which the FBI
Inspector General has just found have been repeatedly abused.
Evaluate the First Amendment implications of the intelligence
gathering activities of local police and the Joint Terrorism Task
Force to ensure they are not harming constitutionally protected
dissent.
Rather than the government spying on the people of this country,
the people of this country should hold our government accountable.
Spying and dismantling the constitution makes us neither safe nor
more secure.
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