A military intelligence database contained 186 reports of “anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S.,” according to a Pentagon memo released by the American Civil Liberties Union Wednesday. At the same time, the ACLU released a report which shows that while it obtained copies of the intelligence reports, it utterly failed to read them.

Little of this is news. The only thing really newsworthy here is how much the ACLU likes to make noise without actually doing anything constructive.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed that the Threat and Local Observation Notice database, intended to track terrorist threats to military installations and personnel, contained reports of peaceful anti-war protests and other such junk. After an internal review, the Department of Defense cleaned out the junk in the database.

On Wednesday, the ACLU released an internal DoD report (PDF) generated while the database was being reviewed and cleaned out. The memo says that 1,131 reports were deleted from the system, 186 of which involved “anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S.”

Titled “Review of the TALON Reporting System,” the four-page memo produced in February 2006 summarizes some interim results from an inquiry ordered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after disclosure in December 2005 that the system had collected and circulated data on anti-military protests and other peaceful demonstrations.

The released memo, one of a series of Talon documents made public over the past year by the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said that the deleted reports did not meet a 2003 Defense Department requirement that they have some foreign terrorist connection or relate to what was believed to be “a force protection threat.”

A Pentagon spokesman said there are 7,700 reports in the Talon database. Some involve U.S. citizens, but the spokesman declined to say how many. Over the past year the program has instituted multiple layers of review for screening which reports should go into the database, the spokesman said.

CIFA has begun a process for analysts to review materials to make sure they fit the program’s criteria before being uploaded and made available to Talon users. CIFA was established in 2002 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, originally to coordinate the counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations of the various branches and agencies of the Defense Department. — Washington Post

Over the last year, the ACLU has released copies of some of the TALON reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. But, it seems, nobody there actually read or analyzed them to find out where the data came from or why it would have been submitted to a military database in the first place. I did, however. Every such report I reviewed originated with the Federal Protective Service, a little known police agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

FPS is responsible for maintaining security at federal buildings and other federal property, except military assets. It routinely monitors Web sites and mailing lists of peaceful anti-war and pro-liberty groups. What is not known is the nature and extent of any database FPS may be maintaining as part of its monitoring.

I’m just wondering why the ACLU won’t criticize the Federal Protective Service for spying on Americans.