How the NYPD Slipped Blanket Surveillance of American Muslims Past the Courts—and the People [View All]

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from The Nation:



How the NYPD Slipped Blanket Surveillance of American Muslims Past the Courts—and the People

Aziz Huq
September 26, 2011


What prevents government from singling out a religious or political group for heightened, invasive surveillance and coercive recruitment into the ranks of state informants? In the Big Apple, the answer seems to be not much.

In August, the Associated Press’s Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman reported that the NYPD, with training and support from the CIA, has developed an extensive network of informants, long-term undercover officers, and agent provocateurs targeting New York’s Muslim communities.

A so-called “Demographic Unit” and a “Terrorist Interdiction Unit” within the New York Police Department (NYPD) deployed “mosque crawlers” and “rakers” to trawl Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities to “rake the coals, looking for hot spots.” Allegedly, these units have singled out businesses and civil associations for monitoring based on citizens’ First Amendment-protected speech. And they and exploit arrest and charging discretion powers to “leverage” people from those communities into becoming informants against their friends and neighbors.

You might think that the Constitution provides recourse against such measures. Indeed, the Framers thought they were going out of their way to protect unpopular minorities—both through the structure of government—specifically, both the system of checks and balances and also toe divide between the federal government and the states—and also through the Bill of Rights. But we are learning that neither is absolute. The NYPD program illustrates how both can dismally fail to protect minority groups in the absence of sufficient public attention and political will. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/article/163633/how-nypd-slipped-blanket-surveillance-american-muslims-past-courts%E2%80%94and-people