Monitoring of Muslim students sparks outrage

Posted by admin on February 22, 2012 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

1329895691 65 Monitoring of Muslim students sparks outrage

Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed. Detectives trawled Muslim student websites every day and, although professors and students had not been accused of any wrongdoing, their names were recorded in reports prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Yale President Richard Levin said the university’s police department did not participate in any monitoring by NYPD and was unaware of it.

“I am writing to state, in the strongest possible terms, that police surveillance based on religion, nationality, or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community, and the United States,” Levin said in a statement Monday.

A 2006 report explained that officers from the NYPD’s Cyber Intelligence unit visited the websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student associations as a “daily routine.” The universities included Yale; Columbia; Penn; Syracuse; Rutgers; New York University; Clarkson University; the State University of New York campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Stony Brook and Potsdam, N.Y.; Queens College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College and La Guardia Community College.

An NYPD spokesman said police wanted to get a better handle on what was occurring at student associations. He cited 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations, or MSAs.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said police monitored student websites and collected publicly available information, but did so only between 2006 and 2007.

“Students who advertised events or sent emails about regular events should not be worried about a ‘terrorism file’ being kept on them. NYPD only investigated persons who we had reasonable suspicion to believe might be involved in unlawful activities,” Browne said.

Faisal Hamid, a Muslim student leader at Yale, challenged the NYPD’s justification.

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