NEW YORK: Activists of three major civil s last week expressed concern at the “ever-increasing powers of the government in curbing the civil liberties of its citizens.” They cited the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s move to spy on mosques and the proposed changes to New York Police Department (NYPD) spy restraints moved by the Bloomberg administration as the latest examples of it.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Monica Tarazi, New York director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Dalia Hashad, American Civil Liberties Union’s Arab, Muslim and South Asian advocate, spoke of the various steps being taken by the Bush administration “overtly and covertly to spy on its citizens in the guise of the war on terrorism.” They were speaking at a ‘Press Club’ titled ‘Spying 101: The FBI’s New Scrutiny of Mosques and Proposed Changes to NYPD Spy Restraints,’ by the Independent Press Association, New York (IPA-NY), at New York Foundation on Feb. 7. Also present at the Press Club was IPA-NY director Abby Scher.
Lieberman said the government has “phenomenally expanded” its powers to spy on its citizens. All this is despite the “existence of the Fourth Amendment,” she said. “The Fourth Amendment protects us. So the government cannot conduct searches unless it has warrants. And it cannot get warrants unless it has enough charges,” she said, and added that all this is under threat now.
Referring to the “sneak and peek” searches, Lieberman said the government has now extended this power to include spying on attorneys as well. “What we should understand is that the government now has the right to examine an individual’s financial, medical, travel and library records, all in the name of terrorism,” she said. In short, the government now has access to our lives, she said.
“What we should understand is that the government now has the right to examine an individual’s financial, medical, travel and library records, all in the name of terrorism... In short, the government now has access to our lives.
----- Donna Lieberman, executive director, New York Civil Liberties Union
Speaking about moves by the New York Police Department, Lieberman said the Bloomberg administration had asked a federal judge in November 2002 to scrap the ‘Handschu Agreement,’ a court order that was issued in 1985 that limited spying by the NYPD.
According to her, a key provision of the ‘Handschu Agreement’ was that the NYPD can investigate political activity only if “specific information has been received by the police department that a person or group engaged in political activity is engaged in or is about to engage in or has threatened to engage in conduct which constitutes a crime.”
Now, the city wants to “gut the agreement, claiming it compromises the police department’s ability to fight terrorism,” said Lieberman.
Monica Tarazi of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee referred to the recent FBI order to its filed directors which included creating a demographic profile and monitoring of the mosques in the area. “The underlying assumption is that Arabs and Muslims are deeply threatening and suspicious,” she said.
“All this further antagonizes the Arab and Muslim communities from the law enforcement agencies,” Tarazi said. The ADC has written to the FBI on the issue and expects to have a meeting with FBI Director Robert Mueller along with other organizations soon, she added.
Dalia Hashad of the ACLU said the recent order of the FBI on mosques is “a witch hunt and an attack on the First Amendment. She said there are about 7,000 mosques in the U.S. and that the recent steps by the government and the FBI has “ensured that attendance in mosques has dropped.”
With regard to the order on mosques, Hashad said “the FBI is going to set very specific numeric goals.” According to her, the FBI will link job performance with the number of mosques spied on or and number of Arabs and Muslims rounded up.
“There are 7-9 million law-abiding Muslims in the country, and all of them are being targeted. Terrorism is a crime, and it can be solved only by a legitimate criminal investigation, not by a witch hunt,” she said.
