At issue is the Patriot Act (no surprise), which changed the definition of "material support of terrorism" to include "expert advice and assistance" given to "foreign terrorist organizations."
Rowley provides a couple of choice quotes showing how anti-terrorism officials think:
In 2003, a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center said, apparently without thinking too hard, that evidence wasn't needed to issue warnings about war protesters: "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that [protest]. ... You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act."Following this type of logic, the FBI raided the homes of six people and the Justice Department has called them to testify at a Grand Jury investigating who knows what.
In a similar vein, the Department of Defense asked on its annual mandatory antiterrorism test, "What is an example of low-level terrorism activity?" The correct answer was "protest."
Thanks to Rowley for reminding us all of the raids. They're a bad use of taxpayer money, as well as a clear infringement of First Amendment rights.
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