FBI: No Probable Cause Required For Surveillance

[cory777]

Source: Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, AUg 30, 2010 (IPS) - The bitter controversy over the building of a Muslim community centre and mosque near the site of the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, is sparking new fears of government snooping on Islamic holy places - which it now claims it can do without a warrant.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), and the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper, are suing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in San Francisco over the agency’s failure to respond to a five-month-old request for information on its investigation of Bay Area Muslim groups.

The groups are seeking details of any surveillance the FBI has carried out since 2005 on area mosques and Islamic centres, as well as information on the recruitment of Muslim school children into the agency's Junior Agent Program.

Julia Harumi Mass, Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, told IPS, "The FBI should focus its resources on targets for whom it has specific facts that support a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, rather than using undercover informants to spy on people in their houses of worship."

Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52660

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Breaking Uncensored News http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[hedgehog]

1. If the FBI can't show probable cause, then why is it wasting money putting

people under surveillance? There are Catholics who demonstrate against the School of the Americas and who have broken into nuclear missile sites. Does the FBI surveil all the Catholic Masses and K of C meetings?

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Clearly you should be under surveillance for asking that question!

[No Elephants]

13. Probably already is.

[rfranklin]

2. They are using the Soviet Union techniques we were warned about...

in the 1950's when we were waging the "Cold War." Ironic or what?

[hedgehog]

4. I think at one point, just about every Eaast German was assigned to spy on another East German!

[Blandocyte]

17. Indeed

I remember when I was a little kid, my mom told me that we should be grateful we lived in the U.S. where we had freedom. She explained that in some countries the government wouldn't let you choose what religion you practice and in some countries the government would spy on you, and maybe even make you spy on your neighbors. She, of course, cited "Russia" as the worst offender.

I wonder if the Tea Baggers who want to "take our country back" would be willing to take it back to those times when the 4th amendment meant what the founding fathers wrote it to mean.

[superconnected]

5. There we go! America - the gov that watches the people not the people that watches the gov

for abuses.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Did the FBI really say "no probably cause required"? That's illegal.

If the FBI believes that Muslim communities in themselves are dangerous, then that is their "probable cause" much like the Red scare, when being a communist was "probable cause."

The FBI is dumb sometimes, but surely they are not that dumb. They are part of the DOJ which is up to its eyeballs in lawyers.

[superconnected]

7. Where is the ACLU?

I haven't heard a peep from them as this has been happening. They used to be all over this stuff!

[Angry Dragon]

8. It is in the OP

[superconnected]

11. Thanks!

[No Elephants]

14. The ACLU has been VERY busy, as has Amnesty--and both depend on donations

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FP_about_accomplishments

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FJ_donationhome



http://www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/history

http://www.amnesty.org/en/donate

[Fearless]

9. 'Scuse me while I erase that unreasonable search and seisure thingy...

and all of the legislation and judicial precedence since.

[Odin2005]

10. More Creeping Fascism.

[Capitalocracy]

12. Creeping?

Fascism is on the march!

[defendandprotect]

15. k n r

[Festivito]

16. Depends on how secure they feel about their definition of secure./nt