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Rumpus Book ClubNYPD/CIA Scandalous Surveillance
“A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government.”
The NYPD is involved in a surveillance scandal, reaching far beyond their jurisdiction for the sake of spying, working in conjunction with the CIA (which is pointedly not supposed to be spying domestically). The city council and the federal government have been kept out of the loop (though that’s where the NYPD’s funding comes from).
This surveillance is going on at bookstores and bars–apparently most public spaces are fair game. They’ve even hired informants to observe mosques, cab-drivers, food-cart vendors and more. This is pretty horrendous news and brings to mind city-sponsored racial profiling. Still they claim to have “disrupted terrorist plots and put several would-be killers in prison.”
August 25th, 2011 at 10:58 am
I saw this on Democracy Now! this morning. Very good coverage. They talked with Matt Apuzzo, co-author of the AP story, and a rep from CAIR, a Muslim civil rights group, about the FBI’s use of paid informants. Pretty crazy. Here is the show’s website: http://www.democracynow.org.