Old New York Police Surveillance Is Found, Forcing Big Brother Out of Hiding (NY Times)

[inanna]

JUNE 16, 2016

From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, police surveillance of political organizations in New York was extensive enough to require more than half a million index cards, simply to catalog and cross-reference the many dossiers. But over the ensuing decades, the dossiers themselves were presumed missing or lost. Police Department lawyers said they had no idea where the files had gone.

Now, a significant portion of the missing files have been discovered during what the city said on Thursday was a routine inventory of a Queens warehouse, where archivists found 520 brown boxes of decades-old files, believed to be the largest trove of New York Police Department surveillance records from the era.

“It’s the whole mother lode,” said Gideon Oliver, a civil rights lawyer who two years ago filed a lawsuit on behalf of a historian seeking records about a group that was a target of surveillance.

The boxes, according to a written index, contain extensive files about the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the Young Lords, as well as public demonstrations and civil unrest. Files on individuals are also among the documents; at least 15 boxes primarily contain photographs, Mr. Oliver said.

The city’s Records Department, in a statement, said it was working to develop rules regarding public access to the documents, though no timetable or process has been set.

cont'd...

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/nyregion/old-new-york-police-surveillance-is-found-forcing-big-brother-out-of-hiding.html

[marble falls]

1. Burying them didn't mean they could stay buried. This stuff needs the light of day on it.

[Hoppy]

2. If ya didn't do nothing wrong, your name won't be on any of the index cards. So stop worrying.

Settle down, Martha, it's sarcasm.

[L. Coyote]

6. Somehow, the word wrong was mistakenly inserted in your title.

If you did anything, you made the list.

[malthaussen]

3. Sounds like there will be a fire soon.

From the standpoint of someone who absolutely drools over primary sources, I would love to get my hands on some of these files. There should be some interesting books coming out of them by-and-by.

-- Mal

[TheBlackAdder]

4. Yep. And what doesn't burn will get drenched with a million gallons of high-pressure water.

[Warpy]

8. I'm sure they'll find a sub sub basement near The Battery

and just wait for the next big storm.

Hell, I'm shocked they didn't already do this.

I'm also not naive enough to think there isn't a similar trove buried in some store room in Boston.

Yeah, the phones were bugged. You could tell it back then by the clicks on the line.

[hueymahl]

5. I was thinking the same thing. NT

[bemildred]

7. Yep, put it on the internet now.

This kind of old hardcopy is harder to accidentally delete, but a fire is still good.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Good news. Hope there's so much publicity the city won't destroy them. n/t