Shahid Buttar, executive director, leads BORDC and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution (PCC) as we raise awareness about the impacts of national security policies on civil liberties and privacy interests. Previously Counsel to Muslim Advocates’ Program to Combat Racial & Religious Profiling, Buttar has long advocated in defense of the Constitution. A 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, he served as Professor Lawrence Lessig’s Constitutional Law Teaching Assistant and as Executive Editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Based in Washington, DC, from 2003 to 2008, Buttar also served the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy as Associate Director for Communications & Outreach.
As a musician, Shahid has performed around the world for audiences as large as 50,000. His debut CD, Get Outta Your Chair, was released in 2008 and features music from the funk, blues, hip-hop, house, drum 'n bass, and South Asian fusion traditions, including Bumpin’ in My SUV and the Baghdad Blues.
A comprehensive list of Shahid’s prior publications, as well as his music, is available at his website (shahidbuttar.com). His most recent political commentary is available at the Huffington Post.
The proposed Muslim cultural center in lower Manhattan, two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, has sparked a debate largely fueled by charged, Islamophobic rhetoric that profoundly threatens not only the Constitution, but also US national security. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently argued that,
authorities had the right to bar the mosque construction because it was akin to the “Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.”
“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” Gingrich said Monday on Fox News.
Especially for someone with a background in history, Gingrich appears remarkably ignorant. As President Bush declared at the time, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were perpetrated by violent extremists who happened to be Muslim, not by Islam itself. Then and now, US foreign policy and domestic counter-terrorism officials—as well as presidents from both major political parties—have reiterated the need to build positive relationships with Muslims both in America and abroad.
Corey Saylor of the Council on American-Islamic Relations made just this point on Countdown with Keith Olbermann earlier this week, noting that that the man characterized by Gingrich as a “triumphalist Islamist” has actually facilitated FBI outreach to Muslim communities for a decade, and has even traveled on behalf of the US government as an informal ambassador to Muslim countries:
Columnist Robert Wright agrees that “Bin Laden would love to be able to say that in America you can build a church or synagogue anywhere you want, but not a mosque. That fits perfectly with his recruiting pitch—that America has declared war on Islam.” Ali Soufan, a former FBI supervisory special agent, agrees:
There are many reasons for supporting the Muslim community’s right to build a cultural center and mosque on private property, not least of all the First Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion. But from a national security perspective, our leaders need to understand that no one is likely to be happier with the opposition to building a mosque than Osama Bin Laden. His next video script has just written itself….
When demagogues appear to be equating Islam with terrorism, it’s making young Muslims unsure about their place in the country. It bolsters the message that radicalizers are selling: That the war is against Islam, and Muslims are not welcome in America.
The rhetoric of these “demagogues” also offend principles as deeply American as the First Amendment, which includes the Establishment Clause explicitly prohibiting an official state religion, as well as the Free Exercise Clause ensuring religious rights to all faiths, minority or majority. According to Georgetown University’s John Esposito, who recently wrote to condemn “viral fear mongering” by politicians fanning the flames of religious intolerance, “Efforts to demonize Islam and Muslims have become a political football that now threatens the First Amendment rights and freedoms not only of Muslims, but indeed of all Americans.”
On Monday, August 16, the Hartford Common Council held a public hearing on a groundbreaking proposed ordinance. The bill, introduced by Councilor Luis Cotto, would raise civil rights above the federal floor by limiting law enforcement powers and imposing transparency into potential racial and ethnic profiling. Then, last night, the Council’s Quality of Life and Public Safety Committee held a meeting to discuss details of the ordinance, and ultimately decided to postpone its recommendation in order to invite further review.
A diverse range of advocates encouraged the Council on Monday to adopt the ordinance. For instance, community member Sarah Ferah suggested that “it seems absurd that I should be more scared of the police than the bad guys,” while Mongi Dhaouadi from the Council on American-Islamic Relations shared the story of a community member threatened with arrest simply for being named “Muhammad.”
A representative of the ACLU explained that while the state’s Penn Act already prohibits profiling, it has not been adequately enforced, and also noted that law enforcement officials around the country have spoken out against profiling and confirmed concerns that local immigration enforcement undermines public safety.
Even some opponents of the ordinance, such as a Mr. Clark who testified against it, conceded that “racial profiling is a problem.” Others, such as a former pastor, agreed with concerns about police accountability while suggesting that Cotto’s ordinance was an imperfect vehicle to address the issue.
The various voices raising concerns reflected the diversity of groups impacted by profiling. LaResse Harvey of A Better Way Foundation, for instance, explained that over 80 percent of Hartford’s population is non-white. She also shared written testimony from 17-year-old Simo Anderson, who noted that nearly 20 percent of the city’s population was born in a foreign country. Even members of the demographic majority have been impacted, as explained by a college student who introduced himself as “a strange victim of racial profiling,” on account of being “a white man with long hair and a funny beard” presumed by police to be selling drugs while working at a community center.
Tuesday’s meeting more heavily emphasized voices from the Hartford Police Department (HPD), whose chief, Daryl K. Roberts, reiterated concerns that the proposed ordinance would limit the department’s efforts to ensure public safety. Noting that the ordinance would restrict HPD’s participation in the Connecticut fusion center and the local Joint Terrorism Task Force, for example, he drew attention to federal grants that the city could lose by declining to participate. He also emphasized the legitimacy of intelligence collection, explaining how proposed limits would impede legitimate efforts to retain information, for instance, about the medical needs of people injured in accidents.
I spoke with Chief Roberts after Tuesday’s hearing, and was impressed by his willingness to thoughtfully address the community’s concerns. While insisting that HPD does not tolerate profiling when brought to its attention, the chief acknowledged that profiling may sometimes occur and invited further dialog. We at BORDC look forward to continuing to work with the Hartford Common Council as it explores opportunities to ensure police accountability and protect civil rights.
Last week marked the eighth anniversary of memos written by Justice Department lawyers to authorize cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees. The Bush administration’s abuses were the beginning of a dismal chapter in American history. This unhappy anniversary offers a sad reminder that this chapter remains open.
To restore executive accountability, the Obama administration must direct the Defense Department to disclose its evidence of torture, and allow the Attorney General to enforce the law equally by prosecuting up the chain of command.
To its credit, the Obama administration has repudiated “coercive interrogation” methods, taking a step forward from the abject illegality of its predecessor. This improvement, however, belies an enduring commitment to many of Bush and Cheney’s abuses, including pervasive surveillance, arbitrary detention, and executive secrecy.
Yesterday, Huffington Post published COINTELPRO 2.0, our analysis of FBI abuses in the wake of last week’s oversight hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Among the most astounding parts of the hearing was Director Mueller’s admission that the Bureau’s infiltration activities systematically offend the Fourth Amendment.
Civil rights advocates had known for some time that, since the Bush administration issued new rules in 2008, the Bureau has claimed the right to initiate Assessments without evidence of wrongdoing. Last week’s hearing was the Bureau’s first admission on the record that it entirely disregards the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for individualized suspicion.
The 2008 Mukasey Guidelines hold that race may serve as a factor justifying scrutiny, and even grants individual agents discretion to use intrusive investigatory methods without any evidence suggesting that a crime has been committed. This week, Mueller mistakenly claimed before the Senate that FBI agents must at least have a suspicion of wrongdoing before beginning surveillance — but later conceded that, in fact, FBI surveillance is not limited even by suspicion.
This bears repetition: the FBI currently conducts monitoring and surveillance operations based on neither evidence nor suspicion. Think about that for a moment.
Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the most constitutionally offensive provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, just one day before it was set to go into effect.
Copycat laws modeled on Arizona’s have been introduced in more than a dozen states. This victory for civil rights in Arizona–which remains at risk on appeal–is hardly the end of the struggle to stop racial profiling and other law enforcement excesses.
As SB 1070 demonstrates, one of the most powerful tools in struggles over civil rights is legislative change at the local level. City and state officeholders are more accessible than their federal counterparts and have more influence over the legislatures in which they serve. We at the Bill of Rights Defense Committee have developed a strategy for stopping racial profiling city by city and town by town, and but we can’t put it into action without your help.
Help us defend the Constitution, restore the Fourth Amendment, and stop profiling and government spying.
Yesterday, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee submitted a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of 46 organizations. The letter raises concerns about the 2008 FBI Guidelines promoted by then-Attorney General Mukasey.
UPDATE: While news from today’s hearing was dominated by questions about how widely FBI agents had cheated on tests about their spying powers, Senators Leahy and Durbin also pressed FBI Director Mueller about racial and religious profiling under the 2008 Mukasey Guidelines. The FBI director reportedly erred when claiming that agents are currently allowed to initiate surveillance based only on suspicion of wrongdoing, and conceded in a note after the hearing that FBI surveillance is limited neither by evidence nor by suspicion.
The coalition letter organized by BORDC reads, in part:
We write to request further congressional oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) operations pursuant to the 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines, which were implemented over congressional objections and threaten the constitutional rights of all Americans. In the wake of the Washington Post series exposing the secrecy and unaccountability of our nation’s intelligence establishment, the Senate Judiciary Committee has a responsibility to seek transparency into FBI operations and restore the Bureau’s accountability.
The second story in Dana Priest and William Arkin’s Top Secret America series examines the role of private contractors in the national security and intelligence establishment. “National Security Inc.” reveals a culture of careerism that has, essentially, capitalized on our nation’s fear in the wake of 9/11 to generate massive profits—drawn from taxpayer dollars—for private defense contractors.
According to The Washington Post:
What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest—and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns.
Through the federal budget process, the George W. Bush administration and Congress made it much easier for the CIA and other agencies involved in counterterrorism to hire more contractors than civil servants. They did this to limit the size of the permanent workforce, to hire employees more quickly than the sluggish federal process allows and because they thought—wrongly, it turned out—that contractors would be less expensive.
Contractors can offer more money—often twice as much—to experienced federal employees than the government is allowed to pay them. And because competition among firms for people with security clearances is so great, corporations offer such perks as BMWs and $15,000 signing bonuses, as Raytheon did in June for software developers with top-level clearances.
The idea that the government would save money on a contract workforce “is a false economy,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official and now president of his own intelligence training academy.
The Washington Post today released Top Secret America, a major expose of government surveillance operations. Involving dozens of journalists and two years of research, the project also includes a database of government agencies and private contractors engaged in collecting and analyzing domestic intelligence.
The first article in the series, “A hidden world, growing beyond control,” reveals secrecy and waste pervading massive redundancy, a disturbing lack of coordination among overlapping federal agencies, apparent profiteering, and outright counter-productivity.
This is not exactly President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” which emerged with the Cold War and centered on building nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union. This is a national security enterprise with a more amorphous mission: defeating transnational violent extremists.
Much of the information about this mission is classified. That is the reason it is so difficult to gauge the success and identify the problems of Top Secret America, including whether money is being spent wisely. The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, 21/2 times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn’t include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs.
I testified before the Council of the District of Columbia earlier this evening on a bill that would essentially prevent the Metropolitan Police Department from considering participation in the Secure Communities program crafted by ICE. In my testimony, I wrote:
[T]the Secure Communities (“S-COMM”) program promoted by the Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency (“ICE”), like the other 12 immigration programs included within the “ICE ACCESS” umbrella, is an invitation to racial profiling and the Council is right to oppose it through Bill 18-795. The Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector general has already documented pervasive profiling under ICE’s 287(g) program. Given the programs’ shared aims and common institutional source, there is no reason to presume that S-COMM will respect the law given documented patterns of abuse by ICE and local partner agencies that facilitate its efforts around the country.
The question before this Council does not pertain only to the rights of immigrants. Rather, declining to collaborate with ICE will ensure the civil rights of all DC residents, including US citizens. The presumption of innocence is a bedrock American commitment. It does not permit abrogation to satisfy political whims.
Yet the presumption of innocence will be dramatically curtailed without the legislation sought by advocates for affected communities. The S-COMM program, which this bill will prevent the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) from considering for implementation here in DC, would allow ICE access to arrestees in DC prior to their conviction (i.e., on the unilateral authority of a police officer, without any judicial check or balance).
Arrestees who are never charged with an offense, perhaps because the evidence does not support prosecution, or perhaps was collected illegally, would remain subject to summary deportation. Pre-conviction penalties violate the norms of our justice system as a matter of principle, and invite pretextual arrests as a matter of practice.
I also encouraged DC to consider further reforms to provide enforceable limits to stop and prevent potential profiling and other excesses by the Metropolitan Police Department, within–but also beyond–the specific immigration context.
The US Social Forum kicked off yesterday in Detroit, and has already offered eye-opening experiences galore. Bringing together 15,000 people from across the country and coordinating roughly 1,000 separate workshops spanning a wide variety of compelling issues, the Social Forum promises something for everyone. For my part, I’ve found it positively scintillating.
In partnership with the Defending Dissent Foundation, Emma and I helped facilitate a workshop this morning on “Tools to Fight the Surveillance State.” We shared analysis about how government spying has grown even worse than the sum of its various parts, including the PATRIOT Act, the NSA’s unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping scheme, the FBI’s infiltration of activist and religious networks under the 2008 Mukasey guidelines, and the integration of state and local police through SARs, fusion centers, and 287(g) local immigration enforcement programs. In addition to learning a great deal about the struggles encountered by activists around the country, we also identified a number of potential coalition partners for our local campaigns seeking legislative limits on law enforcement authorities, as well as several potential collaborators on our FOIA campaign seeking transparency into fusion centers.
A second workshop hosted by the Rights Working Group offered an opportunity to discuss racial profiling issues, and the opportunities they offer to bring communities together across demographic and ideological divisions. One especially interesting notion to me was the tension between responses to Arizona emphasizing comprehensive immigration reform, on the one hand, while resigning solutions to stop profiling as it impacts various communities of color, on the other. Beyond simply talking about “black-brown tension,” we even had a live opportunity to talk some attendees through some of the concerns underlying that tension, which was a useful experience to share with other organizers.
After completing our workshops, I enjoyed a chance to catch up with former DC housemates, colleagues from the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, longtime mentors, and a small army of activists I’ve never had a chance to meet before. A fascinating conversation with arts professor Dan Wang from Chicago offered an inspiring finish to a wonderful day.
I’m looking very forward to tomorrow. The various events I’ve witnessed here have all been inspiring, as well as informative—and finding partners with whom to collaborate seems as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel. While I’m excited about the chance to address the National South Asian Bar Association’s conference in Boston this weekend, I must confess feeling a bit sad about needing to leave Detroit Friday morning.
Copycat laws modeled on Arizona’s have been introduced in more than a dozen states. This victory for civil rights in Arizona–which remains at risk on appeal–is hardly the end of the struggle to stop racial profiling and other law enforcement excesses.
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