You're reading the special April Fools' Day, 2008, edition of The Watcher.

The Department of Homeland Security's Center for Educational Nonprofit Speech Outreach and Research (CENSOR) announced a new program April 1 aimed at ensuring that public protest does not provide a public relations benefit to the administration's political opposition, terrorists, or criminal defense lawyers. Under the new rules, nonprofits that apply for permits to hold demonstrations in Washington, DC, must submit basic information on all their members, including name, address, e-mail, Social Security number, date of birth, political party affiliation, and blood type, to be checked against the terrorist watch lists. If any potential matches are found, the permit application will be denied. Demonstrators entering the protest zone will be required to sign a waiver of privacy and constitutional rights. Civil liberties groups attempted to object, but all their websites and e-mail systems mysteriously crashed simultaneously.