With CIA help, NYPD moves covertly in Muslim areas

[Billy Burnett]

With CIA help, NYPD moves covertly in Muslim areas
http://news.yahoo.com/cia-help-nypd-moves-covertly-muslim-areas-090019915.html


Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has become one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The operations have benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying.

The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which has given NYPD more than $1.6 billion since 9/11, is told exactly what's going on.

[MADem]

1. This is how we do it now. Brave new world, and all that.

Go out in public, and you'll be surveilled. I'm sure people would say "What the hell was the NYPD doin'--going for donuts?" if another terrorist incident hit NYC.

What I find interesting, further down in the story, is that the NYPD officers (insisting on staying anonymous because they didn't want to associate themselves with revealing security techniques) nonetheless asserted no wrongdoing and said that their actions were 'appropriate.'



The NYPD denied that it trolls ethnic neighborhoods and said it only follows leads. Police operations have disrupted terrorist plots and put several would-be killers in prison.

"The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there's not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. "And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard." AP's investigation is based on documents and interviews with more than 40 current and former New York Police Department and federal officials. Many were directly involved in planning and carrying out these secret operations for the department. Though most said the tactics were appropriate and made the city safer, many insisted on anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak with reporters about security matters.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

3. Total waste of time ...

The would-be culprits could hatch their plans in another city, or another state. That's also not counting the fact that not all would-be "terrorists" look like your traditional 20-40 year old Arab male.

[suegeo]

5. The unit goes where it wants.

The unit goes where it wants: other states, overseas, even.

On edit:
SNIP
NYPD's intelligence operations do not stop at the city line, as the undercover operation in New Jersey made clear.

The department has gotten some of its officers deputized as federal marshals, allowing them to work out of state. But often, there's no specific jurisdiction at all. Cohen's undercover squad, the Special Services Unit, operates in places such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, officials said. They can't make arrests and, if something goes wrong - a shooting or a car accident, for instance - the officers could be personally liable. But the NYPD has decided it's worth the risk, a former police official said.
END SNIP

I agree with this guy, also quoted in the article
"At the end of the day, it's pure and simple a rogue domestic surveillance operation," said Christopher Dunn, a New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer involved in the convention lawsuit.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

6. Thank you ...

That'll teach me to actually read the entire thing. I was just so disgusted with the excerpt, I didn't bother.

Thanks for pointing that out. So, it's even more grotesque!

[MADem]

8. I'm trying to figure out why an anarchist, fantastic or otherwise, can really

complain when agencies do things that might be sketchy in terms of law. I mean, fuck the rules, right? You can't gripe when others feel the same way.

[saras]

11. Aside from having the power and causal relationships backwards, you're right on

Anarchists are often anarchists because they are aware that, in reality, the middle class refuses to control the wealthy and powerful. So, if anarchy is already the reality for the upper classes, they reason, why shouldn't it be the reality for everyone? Obviously, of the two systems, it's better to imitate the rich than the middle class, especially when the middle class is failing.

What anarchists object to is agencies (being authoritarian and NOT anarchist) going around and behaving like individuals, who wouldn't be a serious problem (nor would they live long) if they behaved the way authorities do.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

13. That's not what philosophical anarchism is about.

"Anarchy is order!" - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Anarchism is a form of socialism with some central tenets (all anarchist schools of thought are under the socialist umbrella), but the central tenets no matter the school are:

Abolition of capitalism and the state (we consider the two inseparable).
Solidarity with all oppressed people.
No hierarchical structures in politics and economics.
Economic democracy based on the Labor Theory of Value.

So, in a hypothetical anarchic society, local communes would be federated based on labor being in control of its own product. Government in its political sense would be done away with, but in its abstract sense, society (with each individual) would govern itself/themselves.

Society would be non-hierarchical and completely democratic. No master-slave scenario would exist. No capitalist to steal your surplus value as profit - everyone contributing for the benefit of society.

"The individual is nothing without society; society is nothing without the individual." - unattributed

Now, there are differing theories between the schools of thought on how to achieve an anarchic society. The main schools of thought are:

Individualist (Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker)
Mutualist (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon)
Collectivist (Mikhail Bakunin)
Communist (Peter Kropotkin)
Syndicalist (Errico Malatesta)

There are other more recent variants such as "Green Anarchism" or "Feminist Anarchism"

If you'd like to know more, just let me know and I'll provide some material.

There's a vast misconception among people when it comes to anarchism. People thinking it means "chaos" or "disorder" when we really strive for a more harmonious society free from coercion and oppressive institutionalized structures.

[MADem]

14. Unfortunately, most self-declared anarchists I've met are not nearly so complex.

They just want to do what they want, and fuck shit up. There may be other strains, as you've pointed out, but the ones I have met could best be described as selfish, mean and self-indulgent.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

16. Then they are not anarchists ...

If all they want to do is "fuck shit up" for no other sake than to "fuck shit up," then they are nihilists, not anarchists.

The following historical anarchists (or libertarian socialists) didn't just "fuck shit up," did they?

Leo Tolstoy
Ernest Hemingway
George Orwell
Henry David Thoreau
Bertrand Russell
William Godwin
Howard Zinn
Noam Chomsky
Ralph Waldo Emerson



Here's a free online book by Daniel Guerin about the theory of anarchism, and way to achieve a society in practice:

Anarchism: From Theory to Practice

[MADem]

18. Try telling THEM that--they'll f you up if you do!

Seriously!

[Fantastic Anarchist]

19. I've been known to get my own digs in.

;)

There are differing tactics and strategies employed by anarchists. Some are peaceful (Tolstoy), while some are violent (Bakunin) - and some somewhere in between. Some believe in violent acts only in self-defense, and some believe in "propaganda by the deed," i.e. violent acts to achieve recognition to the cause. There's no catch-all regarding the tactics employed, and some tactics are interchangeable depending on the situation.

Myself, I tend to violence only to defend myself. I'm pro-peace, but I'm not a pacifist.

[WAFS]

17. My experiences match yours in this instance. n/t

[MADem]

7. Like the NYPD is an island unto itself...

I'd bet a donut or a cruller that our CIA friends are training other agencies across our land, too.

And whose to say those youthful "Arab male" descriptors are the only "demographics" used? There are a lot of John Lindh types hanging about America's mosques, to say nothing of Adam Ghadans.

Don't assume....

[demosincebirth]

2. If it catches crimminals, I'm for it.

[suegeo]

4. I have a problem with this: no oversight of their activity.

The biggest problem is no oversight of the program by elected civilians. They have no checks and balances. Nobody has any way to know if they are doing something wrong or framing someone for crimes they did not commit.

Also, they put out no-bid contracts on work. Room for corruption.

And, they operate where they want: not just limited to New York. They go where they want: within the USA and internationally.

They are monitoring people's reading habits and sermons at religious institutions. Anything deemed radical (who defines this? what is the definition?) they put you under watch. Freedom of speech? Freedom of religion? Eh.

[MADem]

9. Well, police do report to the mayor, generally.

Hopefully this unit does as well.

[saras]

10. Their job is to see than any potentially progressive Muslims are marginalized

If you can isolate them from society, you can radicalize them, maybe even talk some mentally disabled adults into doing something dumb thay you can smear a whole bunch of them for.

Liberalism is the best defense against religious extremism, but I can't really picture the CIA working for that.

[leveymg]

12. This goes back to the NYPD-BOSS ("Red Squad") operation against Malcolm X.

Here's a decent short article on that with links: http://www.truthmove.org/content/malcolm-x/

[Necronomiconomics]

15. With CIA/SEC help, NYPD moves covertly in Banking areas ... wait what

Sorry, we all know MUCH MORE damage was done to the U.S. by Muslims