Civil liberties groups will stage a protest tomorrow, June 1, at Boston Police headquarters against a controversial anti-terrorism intelligence center based there.
The protest follows recent articles in the Jamaica Plain Gazette and DigBoston about how the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) overlooked the alleged Boston Marathon bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but kept secret files on legal activities of local peace activists. BRIC is one of many state and local “fusion centers” that have been criticized as ineffective, wasteful and dangerous to civil liberties, including by a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation last year.
The protest, billed as part of the “International Day of Privacy,” is slated to begin at 2:30 p.m. at the headquarters building at 1 Schroeder Plaza along Tremont Street at Ruggles Street. It is being staged by Digital Fourth, a Cambridge-based organization that opposes warrantless searches of personal digital information, and MassOps, a new civil liberties activist organization affiliated with the Anonymous movement, according to Digital Fourth President Alex Marthews.
The protest rally will include speakers and will be followed around 6 p.m. by a “pub crawl,” Marthews said.
For more information, see warrantless.org and massops.weebly.com.