Last month the FBI -- which hosted trainings for Czech police in Washington during the last round of IMF/World Bank protests in April -- opened its own office in Prague. American law enforcement officers, along with special agents from Interpol and Scotland Yard, were on hand both before and during Prague protests this week to advise Czech authorities. Scotland Yard even sent a "media specialist" to help counter negative spin.

After Tuesday's violent protests in Prague, police will likely increase surveillance of activist groups. But so far authorities have done a poor job of differentiating the violent from the peaceful demonstrators.

A recent Canadian security report, "Anti-Globalization -- A Spreading Phenomenon" warns that authorities must brace for a variety of threats from the growing protest movement. "Continued presence and use of large numbers of security forces, fencing, and similar restrictive measures could dampen the enthusiasm of protesters and might gradually reduce the size of some gatherings, as could adverse weather conditions," the report states.

"But, as demonstrated by extremist animal-rights and environmental activists, security measures could prompt a rise in the scale of violence from smashing windows to arson attacks, the use of explosive devices, and even physical threats against individuals, including posting warning letters purported to contain contaminated razor blades."

The report, which was produced in preparation for protests at the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Alberta, last May, was widely mocked in the Canadian press for its "highbrow" intelligence. It cites recent articles on protesters in the New Yorker and Harper's, as well as the book "No Logo" by Canadian media theorist Naomi Klein.

"The report shows they have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what is motivating activists," Klein says, "certainly far more so than our elected officials here in Canada, who portray activists as anti-globalist, or protectionist.

"The problem is," she says, "they portray grass-roots activists as James Bond-like figures with all these high-tech tools, which then gives them the rationale to spend all sorts of money on their own high-tech surveillance."

The Internet has become a central organizing tool for demonstrators, as well as a key target for police, who are monitoring activist Web sites and discussion groups, and in some cases, even posing as protesters to gain information. Some police have targeted activists with cellphones, noting that the use of cellphones and radios gives protesters a new level of "tactical mobility" with which police must contend.

"Legal, grass-roots activism has become the new 'terrorism' in the post-Cold War world," Klein says. "They need a new enemy, and the activists are it."

Both before and during the recent protests in Washington, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, police infiltrated meetings and disrupted public gatherings. Activists complained that their phones were tapped and that police were posted outside the homes and offices of suspected organizers. In Los Angeles, some infiltrators were so successful that they even got arrested or gassed by fellow officers.

Last May, the Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter reported that reserve units from U.S. Army Intelligence were deployed to monitor the April 16-18 protests against the IMF and World Bank in Washington. "The Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence," the report states.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Michael Milord confirmed that the Department of Defense provided medical and "explosive ordinance support, as well as food and housing to the National Guard and Washington police during the April demonstrations." However, Milord insists the support amounted to no more than 30 Defense Department personnel. The Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Park Police and Federal Bureau of Prisons also provided support to the Washington police, Milord confirms.

According to the newsletter, activist files are being circulated via the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS), a network of computers used by law enforcement agencies nationwide. Created by the feds to track organized crime networks, RISS now serves more than 5,300 member law enforcement agencies in 50 states, two Canadian provinces, Australia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. It also networks to the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Intelligence Newsletter reports that among those currently labeled as "terrorist" organizations in the RISS database are Global Justice (the umbrella group that organized the April demonstrations in Washington), Earth First, Greenpeace, the American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and ACT-UP. A spokesperson from the Department of Justice called the report "bogus" and said the RISS system does not list domestic groups as "terrorists."

"We don't collect information in any group that wants to demonstrate anything, unless there is a crime being committed," insists Jerry Lynch, director of Magloclen, one of the six RISS regional centers. "If there's any individual or group that has as its purpose to commit crimes, we would be entitled to collect information on them, as would any law enforcement agency, " Lynch explains. "It is not the purpose of RISS to colect information on civil disobedience protests."

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