Information access and protest policing post-9/11: Studying the policing of the 2004 Republican National Convention

The War on Terror, created by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, has brought about changes in domestic intelligence and protest policing that have proven hard to conclusively identify, track, and explain despite the importance of these changes to research on the repression of social movements. This paper argues that a second important trend has also been part of the War on Terror: increasing government secrecy regarding its protest control and anti-terrorism programs. Using battles over access to information on NYPD's and the City of New York's planning for, and execution of, protest control strategies at the 2004 Republican National Convention, this article examines how information secrecy operates by using fears of terrorism as a veil and examines the collateral damage to academic inquiry, and therefore also to public dialogue and debate, created by increasing government secrecy.