Hundreds of people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge in the early days of the Occupy Wall Street protests can proceed with their lawsuit against the police, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

PCJF Legal Director Carl Messineo is featured on a WUSA9 segment on DC-area police tactics and controversies

Many were arrested, even though they protested peacefully on public streets and in public parks all over the country.

The documents reveal that Fusion Centers and their personnel even conflate their anti-terrorism mission with a need for intelligence gathering on a possible consumer boycott during the holiday season.

The documents reveal that the police chiefs of major U.S. cities created an “Emerging Issues” Subcommittee and that “The first issue the committee is working is the Occupy Movement.”

U.S. government Fusion Centers, which operate as ill-defined "counter-terrorism" intelligence gathering and sharing centers, conducted spy operations against Occupy protesters involving police, the Pentagon, the FBI, military employees, and business people.

The documents show that people connected to the centers shared information about individual activists or supporters, and kept track of those who speculated in social media postings that the centers had been involved when police departments used force to clear Occupy camps.

Police departments around the country are using sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, but this activity on social media has raised some privacy concerns. PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard joins a panel on the Kojo Nnamdi Show.

A former CIA analyst is suing the State Department for putting him on a watch list on account of his political activities.