donnay
09-06-2011, 09:54 AM
Docs: NYPD eyed 250-plus mosques, student groups
http://news.yahoo.com/docs-nypd-eyed-250-plus-mosques-student-groups-070526384.html
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department collected intelligence on more than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in and around New York, often using undercover officers and informants to canvass the Islamic population of America's largest city, according to officials and confidential, internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The documents, many marked "secret," highlight how the past decade's hunt for terrorists also put huge numbers of innocent people under scrutiny as they went about their daily lives in mosques, businesses and social groups.
An Associated Press investigation last month revealed that a secret squad known as the Demographics Unit sent teams of undercover officers to help key tabs on the area's Muslim communities. The recent documents are the first to quantify that effort.
Since the 2001 attacks, the police department has built one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, one that operates far outside the city limits and maintains a list of "ancestries of interest" that it uses to focus its clandestine efforts. That effort has benefited from federal money and an unusually close relationship with the CIA, one that at times blurred the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering.
http://news.yahoo.com/docs-nypd-eyed-250-plus-mosques-student-groups-070526384.html
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department collected intelligence on more than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in and around New York, often using undercover officers and informants to canvass the Islamic population of America's largest city, according to officials and confidential, internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The documents, many marked "secret," highlight how the past decade's hunt for terrorists also put huge numbers of innocent people under scrutiny as they went about their daily lives in mosques, businesses and social groups.
An Associated Press investigation last month revealed that a secret squad known as the Demographics Unit sent teams of undercover officers to help key tabs on the area's Muslim communities. The recent documents are the first to quantify that effort.
Since the 2001 attacks, the police department has built one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, one that operates far outside the city limits and maintains a list of "ancestries of interest" that it uses to focus its clandestine efforts. That effort has benefited from federal money and an unusually close relationship with the CIA, one that at times blurred the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering.