DOD pulls plug on Talon database

A step towards curbing surveillance by the executive branch:

The Threat and Local Observation Notice (Talon) database had become a lightning rod for criticism of military intelligence agencies’ monitoring of antiwar protestors. The decision to shut it down resonated with parallel litigation and debate about the legality of federal monitoring of international telecommunications.

...“It was high time for this [Talon] program to be shut down,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, in a press statement. “There should have been no place in a free, democratic society for the military to be accumulating secret data on peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights.”