Less than 72 hours ago, I published these two posts within this community: “‘Unleashed and Unaccountable,’ ACLU Calls On U.S. Gov't to Rein In Power of FBI (Updated!)” and “FBI will soon have equivalent of 20 pcs of intel on every American–and they share this broadly.” Tonight, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is, once again, tirelessly reporting upon the institutionalized insanity that’s pervasive within our surveillance state’s “Suspicious Activity Reporting” (SAR) efforts (i.e.: the “If You See Something Say Something” campaign).
From the AP, via The NY Times…
Group Says Domestic Spying Goes Too Far
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York Times
September 20, 2013 at 12:39 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO — Two men of Middle Eastern descent were reported buying pallets of water at a grocery store. A police sergeant reported concern about a doctor "who is very unfriendly." And photographers of all races and nationalities have been reported taking snapshots of post offices, bridges, dams and other structures.
The American Civil Liberties Union and several other groups released 1,800 "suspicious activity reports" Thursday, saying they show the inner-workings of a domestic surveillance program that is sweeping up innocent Americans and forever placing their names in a counterterrorism database…
Bold type is diarist’s emphasis.
The AP tells us that our federal government “…created a multibillion-dollar information-sharing program meant to put local, state and federal officials together to analyze intelligence at sites called fusion centers.”
Instead, according to a Senate report the Government Accountability Office and now the ACLU, the program has duplicated the work of other agencies, has appeared rudderless and hasn't directly been responsible for any terror-related prosecutions. According to the GAO, the government maintains 77 fusion centers throughout the country and their operations are funded by federal and local sources.
As you’ll read about it in greater detail, via clicking upon the links to the articles in this post, the ACLU’s Sacramento office filed a California Public Record Acts request and obtained roughly 1,700 suspicious activity reports. In conjunction with a court case filed by the ACLU on behalf of
“photographers who say they are being harassed by Southern California law officials” in Los Angeles, the organization gained access to another 100 SARs.
…The documents do not appear to show valuable counterterrorism intelligence…
From Reuters…
ACLU faults 'suspicious activity' reporting by law enforcement
By Steve Gorman
Reuters
LOS ANGELES | Thu Sep 19, 2013 10:05pm EDT
(Reuters) - A newly disclosed trove of "suspicious activity reports" filed by police under a federal domestic intelligence network shows a program rife with ethnic profiling and useless tips that subject innocent Americans to counterterrorism scrutiny, a civil liberties group said on Thursday.
The suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and the dozens of state and regional surveillance-collection hubs, called fusion centers, where those reports are submitted and analyzed, was established by Congress in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.
The idea was to foster greater vigilance, cooperation and sharing of information among all levels of law enforcement to guard against future attacks. Even the public was encouraged to help with such slogans as "If you see something, say something."
But hundreds of report summaries obtained under a public records request from two fusion centers in California reveal rampant privacy violations based on racial and religious bias, the American Civil Liberties Union said…
And, directly from
the ACLU…
The Government is Spying on You: ACLU Releases New Evidence of Overly Broad Surveillance of Everyday Activities
By Julia Harumi Mass, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California & Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:15am (9/19/13)
This was originally posted by the ACLU of Northern California.
For years, we at the ACLU have been warning that the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative – a vast information sharing program that encourages the collection and sharing of "suspicious activity" among private parties and local, state and federal law enforcement – would lead to violations of our privacy, racial and religious profiling, and interference with constitutionally-protected activities. Today, we're proving ourselves right by unveiling actual Suspicious Activity Report summaries obtained from California fusion centers (post-9/11 intergovernmental surveillance hubs). We are also joined by 26 other organizations in calling on the Justice Department, FBI and two other agencies responsible for Suspicious Activity Reporting to adopt stricter standards so that individuals' innocent activity will cease being reported, shared and maintained for decades in anti-terrorism databases.
Here are some examples of real Suspicious Activity Reports ("SARs") from the Central California Intelligence Center and the Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center we are making public today:
• "Suspicious ME [Middle Eastern] Males Buy Several Large Pallets of Water"
• "I was called out to the above address regarding a male who was taking photographs of the [name of facility blacked out] [in Commerce, California]. The male stated, he is an artist and enjoys photographing building[s] in industrial areas … [and] stated he is a professor at San Diego State private college, and takes the photos for his art class."
• A sergeant from the Elk Grove Police Department reported "on a suspicious individual in his neighborhood"; the sergeant had "long been concerned about a residence in his neighborhood occupied by a Middle Eastern male adult physician who is very unfriendly"
• "Demonstration Against Law Enforcement Use of Excessive Force": "Reporting party received an e-mail that describes a scheduled protest by an unknown number of individuals on July 7, 2012. The information indicates the protestors are concerned about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers."
Do these sound like suspicious activities reasonably indicative of a terrorist threat? Important leads our intelligence agencies should follow up on? We're not the only ones who don't think so. A Senate subcommittee reviewed a year of similar intelligence reporting from state and local authorities identified and "dozens of problematic or useless" reports "potentially violating civil liberties protections." A report, co-authored by Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael Downing, found that SARs have "flooded fusion centers, law enforcement, and other security entities with white noise." Also, as the ACLU notes in a report released this week on post-9/11 FBI abuses, SARs generated from state and local police and public tips – many reflecting religious, racial, ethnic, and political bias – end up in federal counterterrorism databases. The documents from California confirm this.
So why are police submitting reports (sometimes received from community members, private security guards and via anonymous tips) about such innocuous conduct for inclusion in anti-terrorism databases? Because under the NSI and related programs, everyone – our neighbors, public employees, storekeepers – are encouraged to help. "If you see something, say something," says the Department of Homeland Security. The "Functional Standard" for Suspicious Activity Reporting defines "suspicious activity" to include many activities that are not only lawful, but protected by the First Amendment. Even worse, the FBI encourages fusion centers not to limit themselves to the Functional Standard and instead to report "all potentially terrorism-related activity." With such a broad and vague standard, no wonder we are seeing innocent activities reported as "suspicious," especially when they involve community groups against whom we still see significant governmental bias.
The good news? The agencies that run NSI are working on revising the Functional Standard, so now is the time to call on those agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, to adopt stricter standards for suspicious activity reporting. They should agree that one standard exists for Suspicious Activity Reporting, that reports must be supported by reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and that constitutionally protected activities like photography and videography be eliminated from the list of inherently suspicious activities.The letter we are submitting today makes those demands. You can get more information and join the campaign to protect our privacy and constitutional rights and to demand smarter intelligence here.
Here’s a link to another ACLU piece on this ongoing travesty, from much earlier in the year: “
More About Suspicious Activity Reporting.”
As I’ve noted in many posts and comments throughout the community over the past couple of years, the rise of our surveillance state is as much about the suppression of legal, social activism (especially via our country's domestic Fusion Center network) as it is about “terrorism.” Apparently, that was an understatement. The level of Orwellian overreach in America is much more far-gone than that; since tonight we’re learning that all it takes for one to gain a permanent place on a government watch list (per the AP story, above) is a phone call from a fellow citizen.
But, not to worry! Since we're now being reassured by statements from government officials, as noted within the reports linked above, that they're taking care of this information leak/propaganda problem!
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