Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On

Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans — including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers — under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies. From the article: "The individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called 'FISA recap.' Under that law, the Justice Department must convince a judge with the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause to believe that American targets are not only agents of an international terrorist organization or other foreign power, but also 'are or may be' engaged in or abetting espionage, sabotage, or terrorism. The authorizations must be renewed by the court, usually every 90 days for U.S. citizens. ... The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishments."

Comments

Probable cause

[qbast]

Apparently being Muslim is good enough for probable cause. So much for freedom of religion.

Re:Probable cause

[MRe_nl]

Unless, of course, you work for a multinational, are a serving member of the armed forces, you have traveled there and made friends, your forefathers came from the region, you still have family there, or lovers, you like to watch the news and have an inkling of an interest in international politics, history or economy it is indeed incredibly unlikely as an American citizen to be involved with anything happening in the Middle East.

Re:Probable cause

[thaylin]

So it is ok to profile people because they may be lying about who and what they are? Sounds like a police state to me.

Re:Probable cause

[TubeSteak]

What a Muslim American Said to Defend His Patriotism
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/what-a-muslim-american-said-to-defend-his-patriotism/374137/

-"You should be active in your community. And I have done that. The fact that I was surveilled in spite of doing all thatâ"it just goes to show you the hysteria that everybody feels."
-"I've never given a speech where I've said any ill feelings toward the United States."
-"I was a very conservative, Reagan-loving Republican."
-"I watch sports. I watch football. My kids are all raised here. My kids at that time went to Catholic school. It isn't as if I was raising them in a different way ..."

Gill correctly perceives that we'll all know what he means when he invokes the characteristics he possesses that would seem to make him less suspicious. The fact that most people internalize these judgments to some degree illustrates how chilling effects work: Americans, especially those who belong to minority groups, formulate a sense of what speech and actions will cast suspicion on or away from them.

Chilling Effects.

Re:Probable cause

[mjm1231]

freedom of religion IS the seperation clause.

Re:Probable cause

[Jawnn]

Yes, it does include a freedom "from" religion clause. If you take the time to learn anything about the framers of the Constitution, you'll know that they were dead-set against allowing anything invoking divine authority to creep into the system of law and government which they were creating. Not all of them, but most, and that wisdom, thankfully, carried the day.

Re:Probable cause

[DrJimbo]

After Ghandi got control of India he ordered _many_ killings in the future 'Pakistan' and 'Bangladesh'. Non violence is for when you don't have the power.

You mean when he personally visited the riot-prone areas to stop the massacres:

Gandhi suggested an agreement which required the Congress and Muslim League to cooperate and attain independence under a provisional government, thereafter, the question of partition could be resolved by a plebiscite in the districts with a Muslim majority. When Jinnah called for Direct Action, on 16 August 1946, Gandhi was infuriated and personally visited the most riot-prone areas to stop the massacres. He made strong efforts to unite the Indian Hindus, Muslims, and Christians and struggled for the emancipation of the "untouchables" in Hindu society.

Read the reasons given for his assassination:

Godse felt that it was Gandhi's fast (announced in the second week of January) which had forced the cabinet to reverse it's earlier recent decision not to give the cash balance of Rs. 55 crores to Pakistan on 13 January 1948.

[...] He also felt that Gandhi had not protested against these atrocities being suffered in Pakistan and instead resorted to fasts.

[...] In Godse's own words during his final deposition in the court during the trial, "...it was not so much the Gandhian Ahimsa teachings that were opposed to by me and my group, but Gandhiji, while advocating his views, always showed or evinced a bias for Muslims, prejudicial and detrimental to the Hindu Community and its interests.

If Gandhi had been ordering murders in addition to his fasts and prayers and actions to stop them, I would imagine this would have been added to the list of reasons given for his assassination.

Re:Probable cause

[jc42]

I have nothing to hide, except the pron from my wife (she found it already) so why would I care what the FBI does? They aren't going to act on any of this unless these people actually plan to do something criminal and in that case, they should.

If you think you have nothing to hide, you should probably spend a bit of time studying the history of the FBI. Leading an exemplary life has never been a protection from them, if they suspect you may be part of whatever conspiracy is popular at the time. A few decades ago, it was Communists, and having no connection to any Communist organization was never protection from them or their colleagues in organizations like HUAC. It's quite clear that the "anti-terrorist" push nowadays is no more concerned with whether you have anything to hide; if they need a scapegoat and you're handy (perhaps because your name is vaguely like some name on one of their lists), they'll go after you and make your life a hell on Earth.

Having "nothing to hide" is one of the most naive misconceptions going around, and has been for at least a century. Dig into the history of the FBI and assorted other similar organizations. Google can find a lot of it for you. Then come back and tell us again whether you have anything to hide.

(And they probably already have a copy of your pron collection, added to their own. ;-)

Civil Rights Activists

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's a good thing they are monitoring civil rights activists because the last thing we want in America is civil liberties and rights. Civil rights and freedoms are unAmerican and have no business here.

Why yes, I do watch Fox News. why do you ask?

They're not a corporation

[HangingChad]

Until they incorporate they're not entitled to free speech or religious exemptions.

Law Enforcement has been doing this forever.

[timrod]

Back in the 50s and 60s, when the Civil Rights Movement was starting to pick up, the FBI had files on most of the major civil rights leaders, even those that advocated purely peaceful resistance. I recall reading an interview with a high-ranking FBI official at the time who said that J. Edgar Hoover was particularly proud of the file he had on Martin Luther King. They tracked relationships between civil rights groups, and tried to watch them all. I'm fairly certain that there were also secret wiretaps done on some of the people they were tracking, though I don't remember if that was the case with MLK or not.

If you look on the list, the agency responsible for maintaining the surveillance against the Muslim-Americans targeted in this case is the FBI. They haven't changed much since 1960, and it shows.

Re:Law Enforcement has been doing this forever.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If memory serves, the ostensible logic was that civil rights groups were pawns of International Communism(because clearly only sinister foreign influences could have given the negro the crazy idea that certain aspects of American life were less than ideal) and thus a terrifying internal threat. That, and Hoover just didn't feel alive if he wasn't wiretapping somebody.

No Warrant?

[weilawei]

Under the heading “Nationality,” the list designates 202 email addresses as belonging to “U.S. persons,” 1,782 as belonging to “non-U.S. persons,” and 5,501 as “unknown” or simply blank. The Intercept identified the five Americans placed under surveillance from their email addresses.

It is unclear whether the government obtained any legal permission to monitor the Americans on the list. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment for this story. During the course of multiple conversations with The Intercept, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence urged against publication of any surveillance targets. “Except in exceptional circumstances,” they argued, surveillance directly targeting Americans is conducted only with court-approved warrants. Last week, anonymous officials told another news outlet that the government did not have a FISA warrant against at least one of the individuals named here during the timeframe covered by the spreadsheet.

So, for all the idiots arguing that we have FISA to make sure mass surveillance isn't abused: it looks like they've decided to skip that step entirely.

Re:i remember when

[disposable60]

That's just pre-9/11 thinking.
Everything's different now - we got the National Security State we always dreamed of. Better, even!

Incorporate

[tekrat]

Every American should incorporate themselves. It's the only way to guarantee you have rights. If you are a closely held corporation, your religious rights cannot be infringed, your property cannot be confiscated, you can commit heinous crimes and only face a fine (no jail time for CEOs); and furthermore, NSA "spying" can be sued over as industrial espionage or as copyright violations under intellectual property rights laws.

Basically you have way more rights as a corporation. If you're an individual or "citizen", you're screwed.

About that....

[dfenstrate]

Every American should incorporate themselves. It's the only way to guarantee you have rights. If you are a closely held corporation, your religious rights cannot be infringed, your property cannot be confiscated, you can commit heinous crimes and only face a fine (no jail time for CEOs); and furthermore, NSA "spying" can be sued over as industrial espionage or as copyright violations under intellectual property rights laws.

Basically you have way more rights as a corporation. If you're an individual or "citizen", you're screwed.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're someone who hates the recent hobby lobby decision; nonetheless, the opinion delivered by Alito directly addresses this 'corporations are treated like people and it's wrong!!!' outrage perpetuated by the left.

"As we will show, Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA’s definition of “persons.” But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings. A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another. When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people. For example, extending Fourth Amendment protection to corporations protects the privacy interests of employees and others associated with the company. Protecting corporations from government seizure of their property without just compensation protects all those who have a stake in the corporations’ financial well-being. And protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies.

In holding that Conestoga, as a “secular, for-profit corporation,” lacks RFRA protection, the Third Circuit wrote as follows: “General business corporations do not, separate and apart from the actions or belief systems of their individual owners or employees, exercise religion. They do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously-motivated actions separate and apart from the intention and direction of their individual actors.” 724 F. 3d, at 385 (emphasis added).

All of this is true—but quite beside the point. Corporations, “separate and apart from” the human beings who own, run, and are employed by them, cannot do anything at all."

Re:About that....

[thaylin]

That was bs justifications. You dont need to give corporations 4th amendment rights to protect people, because the people individually have those rights for example.