ACLU Lawsuit Details Constitutional Violations Of NYPD Against America’s Muslims

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a federal lawsuit against the New York City Police Department over what it calls invasive and unconstitutional monitoring of New York City mosques.

In 2011, the Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize for their initial reports on the covert NYPD program, which began shortly after 9/11. This program consists of the law enforcement agency sending paid, undercover informants to infiltrate New York mosques, community centers, and businesses, for the sole purpose of unearthing any Muslims with ties to radical extremist behavior. This is the third legal case filed against the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance program since its details were leaked.

Image credit: Bulletin of the Oppression of Women
Image credit: Bulletin of the Oppression of Women

Over the last ten years, the informants have taken photos, recorded videos, and noted the license plate numbers of hundreds of Muslims, based solely on their religious affiliation. These tactics have been widely supported by the CIA.

The suit comes just a week after the leak of the NSA’s sweeping meta-data surveillance program ?PRISM,? which has ignited fierce debate over the giving up some civil liberties in exchange for national security.

The discovery of the NYPD’s surveillance program has sparked outrage across Muslim communities in New York, who argue that the program has significantly disrupted their ability to worship, for fear that sermons might be taken out of context, and used against them in an attempt to criminalize their congregation and its members. These fears are not entirely unfounded.

The AP’s initial report cites that the NYPD practices a tactic known as ?raking,? in which informants use inflammatory language in an attempt to coerce Muslims into sympathizing with extremist ideals.

In 2011, a Southern California based Muslim civil liberties group filed suit against the FBI for their use of similar surveillance programs in numerous Orange County, California mosques. That suit however, was reluctantly thrown out by a federal judge on the basis of protecting national security. He stated

the state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security.

It is unclear at this point whether the surveillance program has successfully foiled any terror plots. What is clear however, is that the program has violated the constitutional rights of multiple community members.

  • The first amendment, guarantees American citizens freedom from religious discrimination. Hamid Hassan Raza, a New York city based Imam, voiced the effects that the surveillance program has had on his congregation in a rally outside of the New York City Police Headquarters. In speaking to supporters: ?Our mosque should be an open, religious, spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship.?
  • The second amendment, which requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant based off of “probable cause of wrongdoing” before any acts of “search or seizure” can take place–including the seizure of personal information. The police department has operated their Muslim watch program without oversight, and has actively engaged in the collection of video, photographs, and license plate numbers of New York mosque attendees. One Brooklyn mosque, Masjid Al-Ansar, went as far as to begin recording its sermons, in order to protect itself from any possible misinterpretation of their message by the NYPD.
  • The fourteenth amendment, provides all citizens equal protection under the law. Since discovering that their mosque had been under video surveillance, members of Masjid-At Taqwa, a New York City mosque, began to leave the tight-knit community out of fear that their religion was going to incriminate them in the eyes of the government.

The lawsuit details more of the experiences of various members of the Muslim community who were affected by the surveillance, including Asad Dandia, a 20-year-old founder of the New York-based charity ?Muslims Giving Back,? which provides underprivileged community members with food and other essential items. In the AP’s coverage of the program, an ex-informant admitted to having spied on Dandia, and acknowledged that

…the charity was stigmatized, and its reputation and legitimacy within the community was deeply damaged.

At a time when the relationship between governmental security programs and the rights of U.S. citizens is under heavy scrutiny, it is essential to distinguish the difference between surveillance based on evidence, and surveillance based on religious affiliation.

Edited and published by WP

Southern California writer, thinker, progressive.