On June 14 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit against the Department of Defense (DOD) on behalf if itself and six state affiliates over DOD's failure to respond to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The request seeks records DOD has collected on over two dozen groups critical of the administration's war policies. With the ACLU of Montana and Pennsylvania recently filing FOIA requests seeking information on surveillance of peace groups in their states, requests have been filed for over 150 organizations and community leaders in 20 states in total. The ACLU complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs are the national ACLU and affiliates in Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Main, Pennsylvania and Washington. The FOIA requests sought information on DOD surveillance of local groups and leaders as well as the ACLU, the American Friends Service Committee, Greenpeace, Veterans for Peace, and United for Peace and Justice. The FOIA requests were filed after it was revealed in February that since 2003 DOD had been collecting information on peace groups for a database known as the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON). DOD shared the information with other government agencies. In an ACLU statement, defense attorney Ben Wizner maintained, "The U.S. military should not be in the business of maintaining secret databases about lawful First Amendment activities. It is an abuse of power and an abuse of trust for the military to play a role in monitoring critics of administration policies." Still more state and local groups are requesting information on TALON surveillance and spying by other government agencies. The Jun. 8 FOIA request by the ACLU of Montana seeks information collected by DOD, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security about a number of groups, including the Helena Peace Seekers, Taking Action for Peaceful Solutions of Butte, and the environmental group Friends of the Bitterroot. The ACLU press release notes that more than 30 Pennsylvania organizations also filed FOIA requests on Jun. 14, because "they fear they may have been monitored because they have publicly opposed the war in Iraq." FOIA requests previously filed by the ACLU have yielded interesting results. In May the ALCU released documents showing the FBI used counterterrorism resources for surveillance of the School of the Americas Watch, a Georgia-based group opposed to the U.S. Army School of the Americas, an institution known for training notorious Latin American dictators, including Manuel Noriega. The group conducts an annual vigil at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the school, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is located. The group's peaceful protests included acts of civil disobedience outside the fort, earning the group "priority" status for counterterrorism monitoring. An ACLU press release notes that "[c]learly the FBI knew it was spying on a peaceful demonstration, activity protected by the First Amendment."