5/9, Peter Van Buren, Salon, The government whistleblower who wouldn’t be silenced

5/9, Brian Bennett and Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times, Intelligence report identified vulnerability before Boston bombing

5/9, Alicia A. Caldwell and Eileen Sullivan, Salon, Boston police commissioner: We need more cameras

5/9, Hazel Dukes, Amsterdam News (NY), NAACP condemns Quinn’s support of stop-and-frisk

5/9, Barbara Ross, Daily News (NY), Judge backs NYPD’s refusal to detail its surveillance of Muslim community under Freedom of Information Law

5/9, VIDEO, Huffington Post, FBI Planning To Revise Wiretapping Laws

5/8, Laurie Jo Reynolds and Stephen F. Eisenman , Creative Time Reports, TruthOut, Tamms Is Torture: The Campaign to Close an Illinois Supermax Prison

5/8, Scott Thistle, Bangor (ME) Daily News, Bill to allow police to use drones without search warrant heads to Maine Senate

5/7, Erin Durkin, Daily News (NY), On Muslim Surveillance, Bloomberg Questions Mayoral Candidates’ Intelligence

5/7, Charlie Savage, New York Times, U.S. Weighs Wide Overhaul of Wiretap Laws

5/7, Staff, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, After Boston, Little Change in Views of Islam and Violence

5/6, John Knefel, Rolling Stone Magazine, Everything You’ve Been Told About Radicalization Is Wrong

• 4/23, Tom Keane, Boston Globe, Surveillance and privacy
• 4/22, Jason Leopold, TruthOut, Inmates Rising: Worsening Gitmo Mass Hunger Strike in Prisoners’ Own Words
• 4/22, Jerry Markon, Sari Horwitz and Jenna Johnson, Washington Post, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev charged with using ‘weapon of mass destruction’
• 4/22, Matthew J. Belvedere, CNBC, ‘Islamophobia’ Concern Hinders Officers: Former CIA Head
• 4/22, Editor, New York Times, Criminal Complaint Against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
• 4/22, Kevin Cirilli, Politico, 10 facts about enemy combatants
• 4/22, Tracie Hunte, WNYC, NYPD Commissioner Calls for More Surveillance Cameras
• 4/21, Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic, ‘We Don’t Cower in Fear’: Reconsidering the Boston Lockdown

• 4/9, Joseph Menn, Reuters, Exclusive: Homeland Security deputy to quit; defended civilian Internet role
• 4/9, Bloomberg News, Newsday, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act gains personal data controls to win Obama support
• 4/8, Janet Napolitano, Politico, Cyber education key to security
• 4/8, Angela Woodall, Mercury News, Homeland Security anti-terror money in Bay Area funds drones, surveillance and emergency equipment
• 4/8, Natasha Lennard, Salon, EFF and ACLU team up against CISPA
• 4/8, Ken Hanly, Digital Journal, Op-Ed: UN High Commisionner claims Guantanamo violates international law
• 4/8, Brendan Sasso and Jennifer Martinez, The Hill, Privacy groups skeptical of CISPA changes
• 4/7, Christopher Robbins, Gothamist, Ray Kelly Changed “Nothing” About How NYPD Spies On Muslims

On Saturday, March 23, 150 people filled St. Catherine of Genoa Church in Brooklyn to mourn the death of Kimani Gray.  Outside, police surveyed the scene from the street and from rooftop. On the night of March 9 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, sixteen year-old Kimani Gray was walking home from a birthday party when he was shot and killed by two plainclothes policemen.   Many witnesses say that Gray “pleaded for his life” as the police fired eleven shots, seven of which hit him.

While Gray was simply returning from a birthday party with friends, the police no doubt “saw a gang,” rashly taking stock of the age, gender and race of the boys before them.  Some reports have argued that Gray allegedly pulled a .38 revolver on the officers (without firing), but at least one witness has denied that Gray drew any weapon.  Gray’s possible weapon possession has raised questions about his potential gang affiliation.  Any possession of firearms or gang affiliation on Gray’s part is irrelevant, though, and only detracts from the conversation—The tragedy of Gray’s murder, above all else, speaks to the unnecessary and dangerous militarization and surveillance of American ghettos.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk programs, communities of color like East Flatbush have been subject to near-constant surveillance.  Rosa Squillacote of the Police Reform Organizing Project in New York City commented in the wake of Gray’s death, saying that as young men of color, they fear that “if [they] go outside, [they're] being watched.”  Her comment was specifically in response to stop-and-frisk programs, which operate on a racial bias (87% of those stopped by the NYPD in 2011 were black or Latino and weapons were found in less than 0.02% of those cases), but it applies to a broader state of living in New York City as well.

There exists a long history of police surveillance and profiling in lower-income, majority non-white neighborhoods in New York City.  This was evidenced in the nights following Gray’s death, when reporters noted scores of police surveilling his East Flatbush home.  Mere days after his death, the neighborhood was overrun: “Walking east along Church Avenue from Nostrand last Thursday afternoon, The Observer counted two police officers on every corner.”  Those police were allegedly there to manage the protests after Gray’s murder, but a similar scene would likely have greeted any passerby before Gray’s death.

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• 4/3, Editor, Charlotte (NC) Observer, State bill on drones would protect citizen privacy
• 4/2, Declan McCullagh, CNET, ‘Aaron’s Law’ rewrite backfires, reformers now on defensive
• 4/2, John Knefel, Rolling Stone Magazine, Symbols of Bush-era Lawlessness Flourish Under Obama
• 4/2, David Sirota, Salon, Suddenly, NYPD doesn’t love surveillance anymore
• 4/2, Evan Perez and Devlin Barrett, Wall Street Journal, Border Drones Fall Short of Target
• 4/2, Spencer Ackerman, Wired, Budget Cuts Are Set to Hit U.S. Military’s Drone Fleet

The following update issued by the Center for Constitutional Rights was written by Director of Education and Outreach, Annette Warren Dickerson on April 1, 2013. Updates on the stop-and-frisk trial are available online throughout the proceedings.

The second week of the historic Floyd v. City of New York trial challenging the constitutionality of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program featured a shortened court schedule because the week was bookended by religious holidays. It was only fitting, therefore, that the week ended with faith leaders from a broad cross-section of the city’s many faith communities packing the courtroom and speaking about the negative impacts of stop and frisk on their communities.

In court, the bulk of the week’s testimony was from police officers and supervisors who had been involved in the illegal stops of our plaintiffs and witnesses. Skillful questioning by CCR and co-counsel lawyers laid bare contradictions in their stories, showed that the reasons they now cite for stops weren’t cited at the time, and revealed that supervisors failed to meaningfully review stops throughout the entire NYPD chain to ensure they were lawful.

One officer, Luis Pichardo, said that he was under direct pressure to make numbers — five summonses per tour, and specific numbers of stops and arrests — at the time he stopped CCR’s plaintiff Deon Dennis. Other officers had testified to the existence of quotas in week one, but Pichardo’s admission was particularly significant because he was a hostile witness.

One of the most significant developments of the week centered on a piece of evidence not actually introduced yet. On March 5, the NYPD’s chief of patrol issued a memo, “effective immediately,” requiring all officers to include an elaboration of the circumstances and factors involved in a stop in their paperwork. As it happens, this was the day after CCR filed its remedies brief in the case, which includes exactly this suggested revision of the UF 250 form in its list of injunctive reliefs sought. The city sought to introduce this memo into evidence. The judge indicated that it could not be introduced at this time because there was no officer present in court who could testify to it, but indicated that it would be in evidence once properly admitted.

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• 3/28, Ryan Gallagher, Slate, Feds Accused of Hiding Information From Judges About Covert Cellphone Tracking Tool
• 3/28, Joshua Kopstein, The Verge, Why Mayor Bloomberg’s vision of a drone-filled city doesn’t fly
• 3/28, Kelsey D. Atherton, PopSci, FBI Wants To Spy On Your Online Chats As They Happen
• 3/28, Glenn Greenwald, Guardian (UK), The fun-filled ocean resort at Guantánamo Bay
• 3/28, Ewen MacAskill, Guardian (UK), CIA names woman to head clandestine operations amid torture controversy
• 3/27, Ajinur Setiwaldi, The Oklahoma Daily, Coalition fights discrimination against Sikh religion
• 3/27, The Editorial Board, New York Times, Monitoring New York City’s Police

Last year, the Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing that New York City Police Department (NYPD) has spied on Muslim Americans, as well as their non-Muslim clients, customers and classmates over a decade both across the greater New York area and even well beyond its jurisdiction.

Today, impacted communities are continuing to respond. A lawsuit has been brought against the NYPD on behalf of Muslims in New Jersey, but has been delayed in court as lawyers for the city have asked the court to dismiss the case before examining evidence.

Further, on March 11, a coalition of Muslim groups, including the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC) and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR), delivered a report of the devastating consequences that spying has had on the people it targets.

The report is based on interviews with 57 American Muslims in the city and reveals that the spying, far from being secret, was fairly well known and has created a “pervasive climate of fear and suspicion.” The report details the impact on nearly every aspect of everyday life, from religious life to freedom of speech to relationships with law enforcement to forming friendships. The report concludes with a request to the NYPD to end its surveillance program and for the City Council to establish more oversight of the police.

One young woman said, “Even if we know we have rights, we know they don’t apply equally to everyone.”

The police have defended themselves by claiming that they were acting within constitutional limits. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly outlined the principle of the surveillance program, which is, “In its effort to anticipate or prevent unlawful activity, including terrorist acts, the NYPD must, at times, initiate investigations in advance of unlawful conduct.”

Yet the head of the NYPD Intelligence unit admitted under testimony that the surveillance program had not produced any terrorism or criminal leads during his six year tenure. The intelligence department has reportedly cost the city $1 billion since 2001.

Despite these assaults on their rights, community members remain resilient. The recently-formed New York City Muslim Club is eschewing other organizations’ ban on talking politics. The club is out to participate in the next mayoral race, and is also campaigning for recognition of Muslim holidays in public school calendars. The club, as well as a separate AL Jazeera estimate, claims that as many as 10 percent of the city’s population is Muslim.

Last week, a historic trial challenging the NYPD’s practice of stopping and frisking almost exclusively people of color in New York City got underway.  Allies of Communities United for Police Reform packed the courtroom and hundreds filled overflow rooms to watch the realities of life under the NYPD in their neighborhoods and city be brought to light in federal court.

The trial was, as described by plaintiff’s attorney Darius Charney, 14 years in the making, with its roots in challenges to the police department’s policies after the shooting of Amadou Diallo.

On Monday March 18, both sides presented their opening arguments, with the plaintiffs laying out the evidence to come showing that the NYPD has engaged in a longstanding pattern and practice of unconstitutional and race-based stops.

The central legal claims of the plaintiffs are (1) that the NYPD has a policy or practice of stopping people without the reasonable suspicion that the Fourth Amendment requires and (2) that the NYPD stops people on the basis of race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI.

The evidence supporting these claims is too voluminous to cover here, but several particular pieces stood out. In a meeting with NY State Senator Eric Adams, NYPD Police Chief Ray Kelly said the stop and frisk policy was designed to make young black and latino men afraid that they would be stopped wherever they left their buildings, so that “they would leave their guns at home.”

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