Better beware those Quakers!

So I finish my previous post and then I see this story, which exactly illustrates the increasing US hostility toward civil liberties.
Raw Story has an explosive scoop about how the National Secutiry Agency mounted a massive spy op on a Baltimore peace group Here's some of what they did:

. . . According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found. NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for the demonstration and the content of their signs . . . Extensive plans are described for the day of the Oct. 4, 2004 demonstration . . . NSA planned to have their Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team on site, an officer with a shotgun, an increase in the number of officers, mobile units monitoring the highway and parking lot, roving patrols on bicycles in various areas, four K9 handlers, agents to provide counter-surveillance, aerial observations by the . .. police and photography/video surveillance of the activities. "The NSA Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team will have a limited staffing on hand to support the event," Talbert's memo reads. "...County Police will be requested to provide aerial observations" . . . Allwine also discussed how the Pledge has been infiltrated. She described a March 20, 2003 demonstration in downtown Baltimore where "a provocateur (whom we had identified at our planning meeting the previous night) joined us. We'd never seen him before. . . during the die-in at the federal courthouse, he was taunting the police in a violent manner. We had to quiet him down, he then disappeared and we never saw him again - and, of course, he wasn't arrested with the other 49 of us." The monitoring is ongoing. Allwine says that at demonstrations the police "have had cookies and drinks set up for us (we don't partake!) and tell us they knew we were coming."

And all this organization and effort is for just one little group. Imagine how many thousands of law-enforcement hours are being spend doing this across the US.