The Fourth Amendment and NYPD Surveillance - Essay Example

The Fourth Amendment and NYPD Surveillance The New York Police Department (NYDP) has been monitoring college of Muslim origin, not only in New York, but also across colleges like the University of Pennsylvania and Yale, which are beyond the limits of their city. Via the use of local authorities, they have monitored professors everywhere, even making use of agents to spy on students on such issues as the number of times they say their prayers. This began after 9/11 and has continued unabated for a while, hidden away from the public with covert help from the CIA and the FBI, until the associated press exposed it in a series of articles. Surveillance has also included such activities as monitoring websites frequented by Muslim students. A reason used by the NYPD has included permeation of Muslim communities in New York by extremist Muslims. The premise of this paper is to study the various facets of this surveillance, its benefits, and its criticisms and counter criticisms. In addition, this paper also discusses whether NYPD Surveillance has failed to uphold the U.S. constitution, particularly the fourth amendment. Since terrorists attacked New York on September 11th of 2001, the most aggressive intelligence agency, at least domestically, has been the NYPD (Tutt, 2012). The Demographics unit, a secret unit formed by the NYPD, has sent officers in ordinary clothes, mostly of Arab descent, into Muslim populated neighbourhoods to catalogue Muslim congregations in grocery stores, restaurants, travel agencies & also to photograph their places of worship. These officers acted via spying on businesses, eavesdropping on conversations, all the while filing reports daily on the various ethnic backgrounds of clientele, owners, and whatever they happened to overhear (Tutt, 2012). This program was based on no criminal activity neither did it stop at the boundaries of New York City. The goal revolved around the complete comprehension of communities professing Islam in New York, as well as around it. Their aim was to identify problematic areas explicitly, while working to prevent any further attacks. Student organizations formed by Muslims were not spared either, including their prayer groups. Names of professors and students were included by the officers in their files, even where no criminal allegations could be defined. Those allies of Islam who had supported mayor Bloomberg in denouncing of terrorism were themselves also victims of this NYPD monitoring (Tutt, 2012). Muslims who changed names to sound more American, or took on names that sounded more Arabic, were catalogued in the secret police files. License plate numbers at mosques were photographed and recorded, with their occupants pictured and filmed as they arrived for worship. Inside the mosques, undercover officials and informants aided the police in building files on sermons, even those that were irrelevant and innocuous (Tutt, 2012). The surveillance was kept under wraps for a long while, aided in no small part by the secrecy surrounding the unit. This secrecy was crucial for the uninterrupted work carried out by the NYPD. The “scandal” only came to light through the exposes printed by the associated press, which shocked the Muslim community, not only in New York, but also around the country & the world. There was an outpouring of anger, with hundreds of protesters gathering outside Fordham Law School to protest a speech by the commissioner of police, Raymond Kelly, where he was defending the controversial operation (Press, A, 2012). Numerous articles in various news papers also criticized the NYPD for what they called new age racism. Criticism of the NYPD surveillance has been savage and unrelenting. The white paper, authored by the NYPD, titled Radicalization in the West: the Home Grown Threat, was recently exposed and has been especially ravaged by columnists (Tutt, 2012). Some of its criticism has to do with perceived myths that are believed to have constituted the basis for the entire counter-terrorism philosophy, which they believe led to the civil liberties of Muslims being abused. The first myth has to do with the belief that New York’s Muslim communities have been infiltrated by extremists. The NYPD states, with a community of Muslims that is diverse, with approximately 40% being born outside the US, extremists have perpetuated the seeds of radical Islam, which have penetrated the Muslim communities in the city. However, any such claim has been viewed with a lot of disdain. This claim is extreme in a wild way. This community is described in the context of socioeconomic and racial diversity, which has integrated admirably into American society. The Muslim community was responsible for an incredible 40% of all individuals turned over to the authorities on suspicious terrorism related issues. Opinion polls published recently have shown that a majority of Muslims see counterterrorism as a national duty that they are obligated to support (Tutt, 2012). In fact, they believe this more so than Americans who are non-Muslims. The fact, that 105 of all foiled terrorism activities in the U.S. were masterminded by individuals and groups not affiliated to Islam shows a discrepancy in the NYPD’s report when compared to 49 by Muslims. Another myth has to do with the assertion that religiosity level has anything to do with radicalization and support for terrorist activity. This is a veritable miscalculation, which labels Islam of Jihadi-Salafi leaning as an ideology that is a supporter of terrorism. The white paper’s failure to define what they suspect this sect to be is quite telling, seeing as it takes to exaggerating what the meaning of Salafi Islam is. Salafi Muslims in the US and Europe, or at least the majority of them, are unfavorable to the use of violence, being a noticeably peaceful group (Tutt, 2012). The NSA found no link between religiosity and radicalization in a project to find any link between the two funded by the federal government. The paper also supports the myth that Muslim profiling is necessary and possible. The very nature of vast differences in age, ethnicity, motivations and ideologies among Muslims makes this impossible. It is also wrong, on top of being a nonsensical venture. The paper also alludes to the fact that there is no need to need to consult leaders and citizens who profess Islam in the effort against terror. The paper lacks any framework for the involvement of grassroots Muslims as partners in the “war” (Tutt, 2012). This is not realistic since they are possibly the exact in everyday contact with these suspected terrorists. The New York Civil Liberties Union is also extremely skeptical about the project. They claim that, while the NYPD has the right and authority to follow any terrorist activity links, these leads should not be used as a means of carrying out surveillance in a wholesale manner on Muslims and their entire communities (Press, A, 2012). Muslims in New York have also claimed that the policies endorsed by Kelly are racist and discriminatory, and Kelly should be honorable enough to step down as police commissioner. Some claimed to be shocked that personalities like Kelly, who had the respect and trust of New York residents as a protector and leader was, in fact, acting to destroy one of the communities in the same city. They demanded for his resignation as well as an overhaul of the entire NYPD. Governor Chris Christie, of New Jersey, also joined the chorus of dissent by claiming that Kelly was an all seeing and all knowing commissioner whose incursions into Newark spoke volumes of his ignorance. Christie voiced out his concern that the NYPD felt unaccountable to anyone, and were kings of their own Universe (Carusso, 2012). Officials from New Jersey also raised the issue with their New York counterparts after the leaks on the project. Newark mayor summed up the critical feeling among the Muslim communities in New Jersey when he said that Muslims in his city were staying away from Mosques in fear, adding that his community had been put on a chill, with the anguish and pain being real (Press, A, 2012). Despite all these negative reactions to the NYPD’s surveillance, there has been support for the project. One of the most vocal supporters of the surveillance program has been the man himself, Ray Kelly. He has declared that the program is essential for the safety of New York, adding that the strategy adopted by the NYPD had been grossly misinterpreted & misrepresented (Moore, 2012). Kelly added that the vibe he was getting seemed to indicate that some were of the opinion that gathering intelligence was wrong when terrorism was the crime. According to him, similar methods were used to nab human traffickers, drug dealers and gang leaders. A broad knowledge base was vital, in the investigation of terrorism. Moreover, reconnaissance was a necessity since the department wanted to infiltrate dangerous groups. Kelly was also quick to refer protesters to the Handschu guidelines that make it legal for the NYPD to visit survey public places, search online, and even map neighborhoods (Moore, 2012). He defended the program by citing British intelligence reports that showed Muslim students in universities as having been involved in the 2006 acts of terror. Columnists have also come out in support of the program, with Michael Walsh claiming that it is not racist, nor discriminatory to note with prudence, that Muslim religiosity heavily categorized the hijackers that carried out the 9/11 attack, adding that the notorious Fort Hood killer, Major Hassan, was used by Jihadists as a tool for motivation (Walsh, 2012). Walsh contends that the NYPD is simply doing their work, with legal backing. The events of 9/11 forced the NYPD to transform into a combination shop of cops ranging from paramilitary to intelligence services with a global presence, thus it had to modernize and device better and more effective tactics to deal with jihadists who did not play by the same media rules. Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor, has also come out in defense of the New York Police Department’s gathering of intelligence, terming it as legal, while invasive of other people’s privacy (Carusso, 2012). With all these arguments and counter arguments, the main question and the one whose answer should give us the legal status of the program is whether the program contravenes the 4th amendment of the US constitution. The fourth amendment is a part of the constitutional bill of rights guarding against unreasonable seizures and searches, while requiring warrants to be sanctioned by courts of law, and being held up by showing probable cause. In 1968, the Supreme court, in its decision on the Terry vs. Ohio case, ruled that the detention of a man’s person and his subsequent search in the absence of a warrant, was not a violation of his fourth amendment rights, if the officer was acting on the reasonable belief grounded on suspicions that were objective. For example, that the man was holding a weapon, or was dangerous. This procedure, however, was used for racial profiling over the years, first with brown and black people and more recently with Arab people, especially after 9/11 (Siggins, 2002). The violation of privacy is a direct affront to the 4th amendment at face value. However, it is necessary to understand that the target group, which is Muslim University students, was an integral part of the 9/11 attacks on US soil and thus the police have probable cause. It is also worth noting that the New York Police Department has not been accused of seizures, only of surveillance of high risk groups. Thus, the fourth amendment has not been breached in this case by the New York Police Department. In conclusion, while this surveillance is legal, it should be more efficient and less controversial, particularly if the surveillance is as on all Americans, and not on one group. This is classic racial profiling, and it breeds animosity and resentment, which could lead to more attacks if these target groups feel that they live in a xenophobic environment. References Carusso D. B. (2012). Rep Peter King Condemns Chris Christies NYPD Criticism, Bloomberg Defends Surveillance. The New York Huffington Post, pp. 2-3. MooreT. (2012, March 03). Kelly defends spying as essential safety strategy. New York Daily News, pp. 2-3. Press A. (2012, March 03). NYPD chief defends monitoring of Muslims students. Newsday, pp. 3-4. Press A. (2012, 02 08). NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast. USA Today, pp. 4-5. Siggins P. (2002, March 12). Santa Clara University Journal. Racial Profiling in an Age of Terrorism, pp. 3-4. Tutt D. (2012, February 24). 4 Myths That Led to the NYPD Attack on Muslim Civil Liberties. The Huffington post , pp. 6-8. Walsh M. A. (2012, February 19). Looking for Jihad in all the right places. New York Post, pp. 3-4. Read More