Although nearly a year has passed, the police have still failed to comply with his lawyers' motions for full discovery of evidence, police communications, and directives relating to his arrests.

This refusal to comply with basic evidentiary rules of disclosure is part of a pattern—both locally and nationally—of the new system of "Homeland Security," with its secret evidence, secret information sharing, and secret dossiers on political activists.

Richard was first arrested on March 12, 2004 for distributing information at the Boston Park Street T station about an anti-war protest. According to Richard, a "right-wing provocateur" tried to intimidate him as he was posting information about an upcoming event. The man threatened him with a knife, and then ran to nearby police when Richard stood his ground.

Rather than arresting the provocateur, they arrested Richard. While he was in custody, they tried to question him about protests planned for the upcoming DNC. Ultimately they charged him with "tagging property," "disorderly conduct," and "resisting arrest."

For anyone familiar with the recent case of Aimée Smith, this looks like a suspiciously familiar pattern: an activist is falsely arrested for exercising free speech; charges of "disorderly conduct" and "resisting arrest" are tacked on to cover for the police. It took an honest judge about five seconds of deliberation to throw out all these charges in that case.

One week later, during a protest against Bush's visit to a Republican fundraiser in downtown Boston, the police singled-out Richard from a crowd of a thousand demonstrators. When he refused to answer questions (a protected right), they arrested him and held him for a night in jail. On the following day he learned that he had been charged with "disturbing the peace."

At his first court hearing and in their report, the police revealed that they had identified him in the crowd from photographs. To date, they have neither supplied these photographs nor provided any further information--directives or other communications--that would explain why they were carrying such photographs or attempting to identify him.

At Richard's hearing on May 6, two of his sister activists witnessed the presence of federal agents in the courtroom. One agent was leafing through a yellow folder with Richard's name on it containing political statements and flyers from local organizations and events in which Richard has been involved.

This folder included anti-war flyers, a statement condemning Israel's illegal assassination of the Palestinian political leader Ahmad Yassin, and other examples of political speech and activism protected under the First Amendment.

Richard's arrests took place in the immediate context of police attempts to stifle dissent by arresting and intimidating activists in the period leading up to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. These included the arrest of Aimée Smith at MIT for flyering on a public sidewalk during MIT commencement ; the arrest of eight housing rights activists in Lafayette Square; and the arrest of three demonstrators at the DNC, who were seized without warning or provocation from the midst of a crowd at the Fleet Center.

Just as in Richard's case, the police have failed to comply with discovery for the Lafayette 8, explicitly refusing on the grounds that the activists were "under investigation" as "anarchists." This provoked their lawyer Daniel Beck to ask in court whether there was an "anarchist exception" to rules of evidence as yet unknown to him.

As the RNC approached, both the Boston Herald and the New York Daily News featured articles smearing Richard and other activists as "dangerous anarchists." Both articles consisted of a string of fabrications aimed at connecting political activism and "terrorism" and making this a justification for repressive police measures and surveillance.

Under the Department of Homeland Security and at the provision of post-9/11 legislation, Joint Terrorism Task Forces throughout the country are now regularly sharing information about political activists.

An internal JTTF/FBI memo was leaked to the press in October of 2003. It discussed plans for "mass marches and rallies against the occupation in Iraq." Mixing descriptions of legal and illegal activities together, it included directives to police concerning such protected activities as the following:

"Several effective and innovative strategies are used by protestors prior to, during and after demonstrations. The following tactics have been observed by U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies_Protestors often use the internet to recruit, raise funds and coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations...."

"During the course of a demonstration, activists often communicate with one another using cell phones or radios to coordinate activities or to update colleagues about ongoing events. Other types of media equipment (video cameras, photographic equipment, audio tape recorders, microphones, and computer and radio equipment) may be used for documenting potential cases of police brutality and for distribution of information over the internet.... "

"Post demonstration activities can include fundraising in support of the legal defense of accused protestors and demonstrations of solidarity calling for the release of the accused."

"...Law enforcement agencies should be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."

This coordination of local and federal police agencies sharing information about legal political organizing and protest is reminiscent of the COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s and 70s-infiltration of political organizations, extensive secret surveillance, and maintenance of secret files on people engaged in all forms of political action.

Amer Jubran was illegally detained in 2003 and forced from the country the following year because of his positions in support of Palestinian rights and in opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Freedom of Information Act petitions to local police agencies in the Jubran case revealed extensive police files on local activists, including 12 videotapes, and more than a hundred pages of still photographs, statements, flyers, lists of names and addresses and other information.

Equally disturbing was the evidence of file sharing between different agencies—local, federal, and even international—and the refusal to grant access to any information about this further level of coordination between agencies.

At stake in Richard Picariello's upcoming hearing is an elementary question of due process: Can police agencies withhold potentially exculpatory evidence—evidence demonstrating deliberate political targeting in an effort to stifle the exercise of 1st Amendment rights—under the new rule of Homeland Security?

It raises further questions about the growing threat of surveillance, secrecy, and unchecked police power in a US government increasingly reduced to a monolithic military-executive branch.

Anyone concerned about these issues should make an effort to attend Richard's next hearing on March 9 and support all attempts to force the police to make full disclosure of communications relating to Richard's arrests.