Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, National Security Project
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Posts by Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, National Security Project
The Proof is in the Practice: FBI Documents Show Misuse of Community Outreach for Intelligence Gathering and Privacy Act Violations
02 months ago
Last week, the ACLU released FBI documents showing that the bureau is secretly and deliberately collecting information about innocent Americans through community outreach programs and retaining information about these Americans’ speech, beliefs, and other First Amendment-protected activities in violation of the Privacy Act. The Washington Post reported on Muslim community concerns over this practice.
In response, the FBI defended itself: “FBI policy requires that an appropriate separation be maintained between outreach and operational activities.” It added: “It is important to maintain an appropriate separation between outreach activities conducted to build trust and confidence and those conducted with a specific operational or intelligence purpose.”
We couldn’t agree more. The problem is that the FBI’s own documents show that, at least in California, FBI practice violates FBI policy. Numerous additional FBI documents released last week provide further support for the findings we originally highlighted: information collected through community outreach is recorded in memoranda sent to “800 series” case files — files specifically established for the FBI’s Domain Management intelligence program.
- Three 2009 San Francisco FBI memoranda (1, 2 and 3) documenting FBI community outreach efforts to cultivate named community leaders were provided to other FBI personnel for “suitable reference in the preparation of Domain Management products.” (Our emphasis.)
- A 2009 San Francisco FBI memorandum provided to FBI domain management and intelligence collection officials documents an outreach presentation to a community leader and describes statements made by the community leader.
- Numerous other FBI memoranda sent to 800 series intelligence files describe the efforts of agents to conduct outreach to “community leaders and organizations” or state that the memoranda concern “Community Outreach and Liaison” matters or “Community Outreach Matters”: 2010 San Francisco FBI memorandum, 2009 San Francisco FBI memorandum, 2008 San Francisco FBI memorandum, 2008 San Francisco FBI memorandum, 2008 San Francisco FBI memorandum.
These FBI documents cannot be squared with the FBI’s statement that “[t]he community outreach program cannot be used to conduct domain assessments.” That’s exactly what the documents show. So does a 2010 Sacramento FBI memorandum that is clearly labeled “Domain Management” and was prepared “[t]o document a community outreach meeting” between FBI and other government officials and the leader of a local mosque.”
The FBI’s response to our document release doesn’t address the crux of another problem we identified: FBI documents show violations of the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from retaining records describing how individuals exercised their First Amendment rights, absent special circumstances.
According to the FBI: “Field offices may maintain a database of their outreach contacts, but in keeping with applicable privacy laws and guidelines, this data should be kept separate from operational and intelligence databases. The policy expressly requires full compliance with the Privacy Act.” Again, that sounds great. But our alert showed that the FBI has recorded First Amendment protected beliefs and activities, such as this FBI memorandum documenting the names, contact information and First Amendment-protected opinions and associations of attendees at a Ramadan Iftar dinner, and this FBI memorandum identifying the expressive activities of a Pakistani community organization and the names of its leaders.
It’s time for the FBI to come clean. The first step in restoring the community trust betrayed by the activities documented in the FBI’s own records is to acknowledge that FBI policies and the law were violated. And to remove the taint from its community outreach efforts, the FBI must assure targeted communities and the American public that it is committed to investigating wrongdoing and that in the future it will not misuse community outreach to gather intelligence on innocent Americans, or record their First Amendment-protected activities.
Everyone knows that the FBI has an important job to do, but that job has to be done honestly, and in compliance with the law.
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Big Brother, Come Clean: The FBI is Misusing "Community Outreach" Programs for Intelligence Gathering
02 months ago
The FBI, in true Big Brother fashion, is secretly and deliberately collecting information about innocent Americans for its intelligence files, and illegally recording information about their speech, beliefs, and First Amendment-protected activities. This is bad enough. But to make it worse, the FBI is doing this intelligence collection through community outreach programs — programs that are supposed to build trust and rapport with the public — without telling community groups or their members what it is doing.
The proof is in the FBI’s own documents. Today, the ACLU issued our latest Eye on the FBI Alert as part of our Mapping the FBI campaign. The alert highlights FBI documents from San Francisco and Sacramento showing that the FBI is systematically storing in intelligence files memos containing the names, identifying information, and opinions of people who attend FBI outreach programs; the expressive activities of community groups; the names and positions of group leaders; and the racial, ethnic, and national origin of group members. A few examples:
- After a 2008 meeting with a Pakistani community group, an FBI agent recorded the group leaders’ names and identified them with the First Amendment-protected activities of the group — and sent this information to an intelligence file.
- After attending a Ramadan Iftar dinner in 2008, an FBI agent collected and documented individuals’ contact information and their First Amendment-protected opinions and associations, and “disseminated” this information “outside the FBI,” presumably to other law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
Big Brother has been very busy. But, he has also been very foolish. By using community outreach programs to gather intelligence, the FBI is jeopardizing the trust and rapport with community groups and the public that is essential to effective law enforcement in a democratic society.
The FBI records described above and others also violate the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from compiling records about individuals’ First Amendment-protected activities in federal databases, absent special circumstances that don’t exist here.
These protections exist for good reason. The Privacy Act was passed in1974 in response to revelations that the FBI was engaged in pervasive and abusive data collection about people involved in peaceful civil rights and anti-war groups simply because of what they thought and believed, or the people with whom they associated. The FBI records we’ve identified open the door to this happening again. And Congress also expressly passed the Privacy Act to prevent government records about people that are obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for another without their consent. Yet, this is exactly what the FBI is doing now.
It’s time for Big Brother to come clean. We are calling on the FBI to stop using community outreach to gather intelligence and to be honest with community organizations about the information it gathers during outreach meetings. It should also purge all illegally collected information. And the Department of Justice Inspector General should investigate Privacy Act violations within the FBI’s San Francisco and Sacramento Divisions, and initiate a broader audit of FBI practices nationwide.
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Mapping the FBI: Documents Show Widespread Racial and Religious Profiling by Government
03 months ago
Yesterday, the ACLU unveiled a new initiative — Mapping the FBI — that exposes the ways in which vastly expanded FBI investigative authority has resulted in the unconstitutional investigation of American communities and individuals based on who they are and what they believe.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests in 31 states and Washington, D.C. (enforced by lawsuits in Michigan, New Jersey and California), ACLU and its affiliates uncovered and analyzed thousands of FBI documents. These documents reveal that the FBI is gathering intelligence on and mapping communities based on the association of a certain race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion with the propensity to commit various crimes.
In response, the FBI issued a statement claiming that its activities are "intended to address specific threats, not particular communities" and to "better understand the communities that are potential victims of the threats." But, the FBI’s own documents show that this simply isn’t true.
Nothing in the 2009 Detroit FBI memorandum that we published yesterday suggests that the FBI opened a data collection and intelligence gathering initiative directed towards Muslims and Middle Eastern communities in Michigan to protect themfrom threats. Instead, the memorandum squarely associates these communities with the "international terrorist" threat itself. It observes that "many" terrorist organizations "originate in the Middle-East and Southeast Asia" and then claims—without a single piece of evidence to back it up —that the "large Middle-Eastern and Muslim population" in Michigan makes the state "prime territory for attempted radicalization and recruitment by these terrorist groups."
Two FBI memoranda from San Francisco concerning Chinese and Russian crime syndicates have them same problem. They make no mention of seeking to protect Chinese and Russian communities from the problem of organized crime. Instead, they document the opening of an FBI investigation involving mapping these minority groups based only on the observations that Russian and Chinese organized crime syndicates exist in the area, and that "San Francisco domain is home to one of the largest ethnic Chinese populations outside of mainland China" and "has a sizeable Russian population."
And, although heavily redacted, nothing in the FBI intelligence memorandum purporting to identify the "Black Separatist Threat" in Georgia suggests that its use of statistics about increases among "black/African-American populations in Georgia" is to identify victims rather than potential targets for FBI investigations.
So based on their own documents, the FBI’s claim that it is mapping and gathering intelligence on minority communities to "better understand the communities that are potential victims of the threats" is disingenuous at best. The FBI is engaging in classic and illegal profiling on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, and religion on a scale impacting entire communities. Its assertion that the racial mapping program is like a police chief putting pushpins on a map to identify high-crime areas makes no sense; the "pins" in the FBI program don’t map crimes, they map innocent people based on nothing but their race, ethnicity, religion or national origin and stereotypes broadly linking these groups to threats. Big difference.
Together, we can fight back. In the upcoming weeks, the ACLU will continue publishing thousands of documents from FBI field offices around the country and issuing ACLU "Eye on the FBI" alerts highlighting how the bureau’s own documents show patterns of misconduct and abuse. You can join us by seeing how we’re tracking FBI activity in your state, and by telling Attorney General Eric Holder that you don’t want the FBI to map you or your community.
Read more about the ACLU’s "Mapping the FBI" initiative at New York Times, Associated Press, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and TPM Muckraker.
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Biased Counterterrorism Trainings: Far More than One Bad Apple
04 months ago
On Wednesday, yet another report confirmed the use of factually incorrect and bigoted training materials on Islam and Muslims — this time by the Department of Justice. Wired published a 2010 PowerPoint presentation created for the U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which teaches that "Islam is convinced of the superiority of its culture; and obsessed with the inferiority of its power" and that "No Major Muslim group has ever renounced the doctrine of jihad of the sword." It also includes a slide from a briefing by an FBI intelligence analyst notorious for his anti-Islam views, which claims that today, "Civilians, Juries, Lawyers, Media, Academia, and Charities" are engaged in a "Civilizational Jihad" in the United States. The article also reports that anti-Islam training materials are used in military intelligence schools, an online university geared towards people seeking jobs in intelligence, and the Army’s center at Fort Leavenworth.
This expose echoes recent reporting about anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias in numerous FBI trainings, including a 2009 power point employing stereotypes of the "Arabic mind" obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU of Northern California and Asian Law Caucus. Yet, biased training materials are only the tip of the iceberg; federal intelligence reports from as early as 2006 also contain similarly erroneous information or bigoted views.
These reports confirm what the ACLU has suspected: training materials and intelligence reports reflecting an anti-Muslim and anti-Arab viewpoint are not the result of isolated bad apples. They have been used by federal authorities for years — despite their factual flaws and lack of empirical support — painting millions of Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians with the broad brush of terrorism.
Yet, biased and inaccurate trainings and intelligence reports are inappropriate and inherently counterproductive. They drive a wedge between the government and minority communities and result in biased policing, a hostile workplace for Arab and Muslim-American law enforcement personnel, and more broadly, an environment in which entire communities are wrongly treated with suspicion and subjected to unequal application of the law.
In response to these revelations, the FBI and Department of Justice have recently called for reviews of their counterterrorism training materials referencing religion and culture. This is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. The ACLU and other civil rights and civil liberties groups issued a letter earlier this week urging the FBI to identify and withdraw both training materials and intelligence products that are factually inaccurate or contain assertions or analysis based on racial, ethnic or religious bias or political ideology. The DOJ should do the same. And both agencies should issue revised guidance clearly stating that religious practices and political advocacy are protected activities under the First Amendment, and are not indicators of future violence.
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Homeland Security Investigates Questioning of Muslims at the Border
09 months ago
In February 2010, Lawrence Ho sought to return home to the United States after attending a conference in Canada. At the border crossing at Rainbow Bridge in New York, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers asked Mr. Ho, an American Muslim convert, "When did you become a Muslim?", "Which mosques do you attend?" and "How often do you attend the mosque?"
Last August, Hassan Shibly, a law student at the University at Buffalo Law School, sought to re-enter the United States at JFK airport with his wife and 7-month-old son after a trip abroad to visit family and perform a religious pilgrimage. Before they would let him come home, CBP officers asked him "Do you visit any Islamist extremist websites?"; "Are you part of any Islamic tribes?"; "Have you ever been to a madrassah studied Islam full-time?"; "Do you attend a particular mosque?" "How many gods prophets do you believe in?"
These stories, of ACLU clients, are not isolated tales. Over the past several years, at ports, land border crossings, and international airports across the country, U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are Muslim who are perceived to be Muslim have been targeted by CBP officers for questioning about deeply personal beliefs, associations and religious practices protected by the First Amendment.
In December 2010, the ACLU and Muslim Advocates called for an investigation into this practice, and into the troubling experiences of five U.S. citizens, including Mr. Ho and Mr. Shibly, whom CBP officers subjected to invasive questioning. And last week, in response, we received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) stating that it is opening an investigation into the problem and our clients’ complaints.
CRCL’s investigation is an important step in the right direction. Questioning individuals about their protected religious and political beliefs, associations, and religious practices (like charitable giving) may infringe upon rights guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law — rights that U.S. citizens do not surrender at the border.
CRCL’s investigation should be thorough and should answer the questions we raised in our December 2010 letter: Our clients — and all Americans — deserve a clarification of CBP policy on questioning about constitutionally protected religious and political beliefs and activities. They deserve to know how information they provide is handled, and whether it is shared with other government agencies. Our clients also deserve a clear statement that their civil rights and civil liberties were violated when they were questioned in this invasive manner without reasonable suspicion that they had done anything wrong.
A fair investigation should lead to a simple and clear message: CBP officers should not question U.S. citizens legal residents about their constitutionally protected beliefs, associations, activities without a reasonable suspicion based on credible evidence that the individual has engaged in criminal activity, and without a connection between such questions and the suspected activity. We’re hopeful that CRCL will reach the right result.
Think your rights were violated while traveling? Tell us your story.
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A Happy Ending, So Far
01 year ago
Last week, we got some good news in the case of Adnan Tikvesa, an airline employee whose security clearance was unexpectedly suspended by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) without any reason or reasonable opportunity for him to defend himself – leading Delta to suspend him without pay. After eight months of limbo, Mr. Tikvesa was finally permitted to return to work at Delta Airlines at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport. His co-workers welcomed him back with a party.
Last week, we got some The suspension happened in November 2009. This March, the ACLU and the ACLU of Georgia appealed the TSA’s decision to suspend Adnan’s security clearance without telling him why and called on the agency to restore due process by telling him the reasons for the decision and giving him a real opportunity to respond. In May, the TSA finally reversed the suspension.
While Mr. Tikvesa is better off because of TSA’s reversal and Delta’s recent decision to reinstate him, the fundamental problems with TSA’s process have not gone away. TSA has never provided a reason for the agency’s initial decision to revoke Adnan’s security clearance or, for that matter, its reversal of that decision. Mr. Tikvesa is relieved to have his job back, but he remains confused as to why TSA took away his clearance in the first place.
We should all be troubled. Even though Adnan’s story has a happy ending, so far, we cannot determine whether there are now safeguards in place to protect Adnan (or anyone else) against arbitrary security clearance revocations. Our appeal on Adnan’s behalf highlighted the lack of due process in TSA’s suspension and appeals process, but TSA has given no indication that it will act differently in the future by sharing the reasons for its security clearance decisions. Without that information, an individual’s hands are tied—he has no way to correct misinformation or to address the basis of a decision by TSA to suspend his security clearance in the first place.
We urge TSA to provide due process by refraining from suspending security clearances without affording the basis for such decisions or a meaningful way for people to defend themselves.