Democratic Primaries
Related: About this forum'We're Supposed To Do That': Bloomberg Defends NYPD's Spying Of Muslims After 9/11
In an interview that aired Thursday on PBS NewsHour, Bloomberg explained the New York Police Department's secret monitoring Muslims as an intelligence-gathering tactic that was part of a larger effort to keep America safe.
"We sent to some officers into some mosques to listen to the sermon that the imam gave," Bloomberg said. "We were very careful. And the authorities that looked at us said, yes you complied with the law. But we had every intention of going every place we could legally to get as much information to protect this country. We had just lost 3,000 people at 9/11. Of course we're supposed to do that."
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Civil liberties advocates swiftly condemned Bloomberg's comments.
"The NYPD literally mapped our communities across three states, causing systemic self-censoring, distrust of any interaction with the government, and untold harm to our communities," said Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry. "One's ethnicity or faith is not grounds for law enforcement scrutiny."
Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, also criticized Bloomberg's defense of the spying activity.
"This is an insulting attempt to rewrite the history of an unconstitutional surveillance program that left Muslims, particularly in communities of color, devastated," Shamsi said. "It took brave Muslims and their supporters to go to court before the NYPD finally agreed to reforms to safeguard communities in New York and beyond. And no court ever said that the NYPD's discriminatory surveillance program under Bloomberg was lawful."
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/27/810181314/we-re-supposed-to-do-that-bloomberg-defends-nypd-s-spying-of-muslims-after-9-11?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
elleng
(130,974 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
But why do you say that? Do you think he comes off well on this subject?
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
jcmaine72
(1,773 posts)...at age 69. He can't possibly be held responsible for something that he said, did, and wholeheartedly supported so many lifetimes ago. Besides, he's grown, nay, evolved so much since then, right?
What we really should be perpetually outraged about is not Mike Bloomberg's well-documented and recent history of racism, sexism, Islamophobia and Classcism, but what commie shenanigans Bernie Sanders may have been up to way back in 1949 inside Miss Crabtree's 4th grade class. I betcha he chewed a lot of Big Red chewing gum when the teacher wasn't looking. Bolshevik!
Do I really need to insert a sarcasm thingy here?
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
Bernie does a thing with a boombox - OMG HAIR ON FIRE OUTRAGE!!!
Bloomberg mass surveillance and systematic civil rights violations - ho hum whatever
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)We are the party of civil liberties and Bloomberg is taunting us with his backwards views.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided