India, Jan. 13 -- But it shouldn't be on a government watch list

Headlines this week noted that the environmental group Extinction Rebellion was on a counter-extremism watch list, based on leaked documents from the British government's Prevent programme.

This, in itself, should not have been news. Governments across western Europe and the United States have unleashed their intelligence services on environmental groups since at least the 1970s. Most famously, Greenpeace's ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk in 1985 by the French while on its way to protest a nuclear test in French Polynesia.

In the UK, it has emerged in recent years, undercover police officers not only infiltrated environmental groups but went so far as to marry and have chil...