When a senior White House national
security official traveled to New York City recently to praise that
city’s police department, he stoked the embers of a controversy
between the Administration and the Arab American and American Muslim
communities. The official’s words, quoted by the Associated Press
(AP), “I have full confidence that the New York Police
Department is doing things consistent with the law” and his
terming the department’s work a “success” were especially
troubling coming as they did on the heels of the communities’
entreaties to the White House to either open a civil rights
investigation into the NYPD’s surveillance program, or at the very
least to express concern at the program’s invasive over-reach.

Having the CIA team up with the NYPD to
establish a domestic spying operation using undercover police
officers and civilian “snitches,” who were suborned into
service with threats of deportation or imprisonment, is bad enough,
but a review of the fruits of all of this questionable activity also
raises serious questions about the wastefulness of the entire effort.

Since the AP’s initial revelations of
the NYPD/CIA collaboration, less than one year ago, there has been
some discussion of the degree to which the NYPD has made a mockery of
the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights and has broken trust
with New York’s Arab and Muslim communities. What has not received
sufficient attention is just how intrusive and at times pointless and
inconsequential much of this program has been.

Some examples from the NYPD internal
documents made public by the AP read more like reports prepared by
the Syrian Mukhabarat (secret police). But what also comes through
quite clearly are how downright silly much of the spying operation
has been, more reminiscent, at times, of “the gang that couldn’t
shoot straight.” Among the most alarming observations are those
found in the “Locations of Interest Reports” that were
compiled on New York’s Egyptian and Syrian communities. Produced by
the NYPD “Intelligence Division-Demographic Unit,” the
publications are stamped “SECRET” and have the following
warning printed in bold red type on the cover:

“The information contained in this
document is NYPD secret. No portion of this document can be copied or
distributed without the exclusive permission of the Police
Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence”.

While all this build up makes the
publications sound serious and important, an examination of their
“top secret” content tells a different story.

Both reports begin with an overview
establishing that their purpose is to provide “the maximum
ability to gauge the general sentiment…and the greatest insight
into the general activity of the community.” The reports then
proceed to “map” the areas of the city where the community
in question lives and their “locations of interest”—these
being defined as “locations individuals may frequent to search
for ethnic companionship” or “hangouts…for listening to
neighborhood gossip.”

After pages of demographic charts on
Arab Americans, in general, and Egyptians, in particular (taken
verbatim from a section of the Arab American Institute website), the
reports go on to print pages of photos of every “location of
interest” frequented by not just Egyptians and Syrians, but
Lebanese, Palestinians, Yemenis, Moroccans, Algerians, and
“Caucasians”(!).

Included in the report on each of these
locations is such revealing information as: whether al Jazeera TV is
watched at the location; whether Halal food is served; whether
underage “Caucasians” were seen smoking at the
establishment; and conversations overheard (including one I mentioned
in an earlier column, where “Rasha, working in the travel agency
recommended the Royal Jordanian Airlines!”).

These “locations of interest”
books are not the only NYPD documents released by the AP that are
filled with disturbing and shallow observations. Among the other
questionable NYPD reports is the “Radicalization in the West:
The Homegrown Threat,” a study by NYPD “Senior Intelligence
Analysts.” In an effort to create a profile of Muslims who become
radicalized, the analysts lay out four phases in the process. The
first, “Pre-radicalization” includes individuals who share
the following characteristics: male, under 35, residents and citizens
of Western democracies, middle class, educated, recent converts,
living “unremarkable” lives with “little, if any,
criminal history.” What is so obviously troubling with this
“profile,” which is supposed to guide the NYPD’s work, is the
fact that it includes almost all young Muslim males in the U.S.
Helpful to law enforcement? Certainly not. Intimidating to Muslim
Americans? Absolutely. As the great Latino leader U.S. Ambassador
Raul Yzaguirre once said in criticizing ethnic profiling: “when
you are looking for a needle in a haystack, don’t keep adding more
hay to the stack.”

The fundamental questions that should be asked, not just by the Administration, but by all Americans, are: “where do we draw the line that separates the rights of persons from the over-reach of law enforcement”; and “at what point do we conclude that the NYPD (with CIA collusion) has crossed the line and violated constitutionally protected freedoms and civil rights?”

It is not clear to me how anyone could
review the NYPD materials and conclude that the tactics of massive
surveillance and ethnic and religious profiling employed have not
crossed that line or that they have in any way contributed to making
New Yorkers “safe.” What they have done is waste precious law
enforcement resources. And as an exercise in heavy-handed police
power, they have compromised the very security and basic rights of
New York’s large Arab immigrant communities.

All this should have been taken into
consideration before the White House official lavished praise on the
NYPD dismissing the concerns of the Arab and Muslim communities.

(Note: as for the reports’ “SECRET”
designation and warnings about their “official police use only,”
I can conclude that these were intended merely to spare the NYPD the
embarrassment of having them read by the public). 

Washington
Watch is
a weekly column written by AAI President James Zogby, author of Arab
Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters.
The
views expressed within this column do not necessarily reflect those
of the Arab American Institute. For more, visit the AAI website here.