NSA spying on prominent American Muslims should trouble us all

http://blogs.detroitnews.com/politics/2014/07/10/nsa-spying-prominent-american-muslims-trouble-us/

JUL 10, 2014, 10:30 AM

NSA spying on prominent American Muslims should trouble us all

• BY DAWUD WALID

Journalists Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain just released a story based on the Snowden leaks that the National Security Agency (NSA), in conjunction with the FBI, has been spying on thousands of law-abiding Americans, including a former Senior Policy Advisor for Homeland Security under the Bush administration, a criminal defense attorney and a prominent civil rights leader.

This piece, differing from other stories about pervasive NSA surveillance, shows for the first time five American faces who were targeted, all five being American Muslims. One of them, Nihad Awad, is the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which I am of course affiliated with.

I’d like to point out three issues regarding these new revelations that should disturb all Americans.

First, all five men appear to have been targeted for their political positions or activism in the Muslim community, not due to credible national security concerns, which is supposed to be the NSA’s scope.

Keep in mind that after years of intrusive surveillance, the government did not bring even a single criminal charge against any of those five. Hence, the Greenwald – Hussain story described them as being Americans who continue to maintain “highly public, outwardly exemplary lives.” If there were any doubts before, this can happened to any American, since it happened to them.

Second, the leaked documents also show that racism is clearly in play in how some senior intelligence analysts view the Muslim community. This is clear given NSA officials used an example to instruct agents on how to properly record Muslims under surveillance in their files under the title of “Mohammed Raghead.”

In response, a White House spokesperson said that the usage of the slur is “unacceptable and inconsistent with the country’s core values.”

Condemning the use of slurs and seeking to eliminate their usage in official government programs is fine and dandy. My major concern pertains to the pervasive spying of the American Muslim community and its leadership, which is informed upon in part due to bias, not just using slurs in official government databases.

Last, such surveillance has a basic chilling effect on citizens’ religious practice and political engagement.

As in the era of former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover during the 1960s and early 1970s, activists’ intimate communications are being captured by government.

History shows that our intelligence services have used embarrassing moments in the leaders’ personal lives as a form of blackmail.

This tactic was used against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pertaining to his extra-marital relations. More recently, an informant in California named Craig Monteilh used pillow talk with Muslim women on behalf of the FBI.

People may fear not getting involved in religious organizations or in forms of political dissent out of fear that a personal indiscretion could be used against them by their own government. This did not happen in the case of the five Muslims in the highlight in the story, but easily could have given different circumstances.

The KGB-style surveillance informed by the political and religious persuasions of American citizens must end. I hope that these recent revelations with spark more discussions by the public and in Congressional hearings, which leads to true NSA and FBI surveillance reform.

Perhaps this all may be sorted out in federal court, given that these five men have what appears to be strong legal standing to bring forth a lawsuit.

Time to act on President Carter’s NSA fears

MAR 26, 2014, 12:00 PM

Dawud Walid: Time to act on President Carter’s NSA fears

• BY DAWUD WALID

America has perhaps hit an all-time low for its citizens pertaining to intrusive surveillance and lack of privacy from the federal government.

A sad commentary of this was shown Sunday on “Meet the Press” in an interview with Andrea Mitchell and former President Jimmy Carter. Carter stated that our intelligence services are abusing their authorities. Other former and current elected officials have said the same. This is not a shocking statement.

What is shocking, however, is that Carter stated that he sends snail mail abroad to his foreign contacts out of fear that he’s under surveillance. Within this context, he voiced concerns about National Security Agency (NSA) potentially spying on him, “Because I believe if I send an email it will be monitored.” That a former Commander in Chief believes that the Obama administration is monitoring his communications sounds like something out of the Soviet Union.

Even former presidents don’t feel safe. No wonder Carter said last July that “America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.”

Adding on to this, Facebook founder and head Mark Zuckerberg recently voiced his concerns about the NSA using fake Facebook websites to not only intercept social media traffic but also to infect users’ computers with bugs to monitor their activities. We’re in an Orwellian era in which everyone from former presidents, corporate leaders, journalists, human rights activists to college student groups need data encryption to protect themselves, not from online mafia and pirates but from the United States federal government.

Congress must restore the U.S. Constitution by placing restrictions on the executive branch’s ability to monitor citizens and legal residents, without probable cause, in the name of national security. Hopefully, the Amash-Conyers Amendment, a bill aimed at curtailing bulk phone record collection by the NSA, which failed to pass last year by only 15 votes, can be reintroduced.

If we don’t want Big Brother snooping on our personal conversations and infecting our laptops with spyware in the meantime, I guess we all need data encryption or to send our communications via snail mail.

Obama must reform invasive NSA snooping in 2014

http://blogs.detroitnews.com/politics/2013/12/31/obama-must-reform-nsa-guidelines-2014/

Dec 31, 2013, 2:29 pm

Dawud Walid: Obama must reform invasive NSA snooping in 2014

• By Dawud Walid

2013 was perhaps the bumpiest of President Barack Obama’s time in office. Hearings over the Benghazi tragedy, the Egyptian coup regime thumbing its nose at America, a failed attempt to pressure the al-Assad regime in Syria, the temporary federal government shutdown and glitches in rolling out the Affordable Care Act are highlights of why 2013 has been rocky for the president. Perhaps the most troublesome of all, though, was the revelations regarding the pervasive collection of information of law-abiding Americans by the NSA.

Starting in 2014, it would be in our country’s long term civil liberties’ interests for President Obama to scale back the amount of NSA surveillance instead having the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decide.

A review group handpicked by Obama to study the NSA’s widespread snooping recently concluded that meta-data collected “was not essential to preventing [terrorism] attacks.” This jibes with the ACLU’s conclusion that there is “no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records has provided intelligence of any value that could not have been gathered through less intrusive means.”

Former constitutional law professor Obama has continued George W. Bush-era policies that have not only trampled on the 4th Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. These policies are not making us any safer. In fact, due to the sheer amount of data being collected, which cannot be probably evaluated, mass spying may actually come at a harm to national security. Such leaves the doors open for credible threats to slip through the cracks, such as the Boston Marathon bombing.

Benjamin Franklin famously waxed that, “He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.” In order to save our democratic way of life and to regain our credibility in the world when discussing liberty, my 2014 wish is to see President Obama return the NSA back to only being as intrusive as it was after President Richard Nixon.

My wish, however, may not come true, leaving the NSA’s spying to be continued or scaled back eventually by the Supreme Court.

NSA snooping erodes American values

My discussion on yesterday’s “Hard Knock Radio” Pacifica Radio from California with DJ Davey D.

***

http://blogs.detroitnews.com/politics/2013/06/11/broad-nsa-snooping-erodes-american-values/

JUN 11, 2013, 9:30 AM 

NSA snooping erodes American value

BY DAWUD WALID

Recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI have been involved in widespread collection of Verizon customers phone records – as well as communications from nine internet providers – has sent shockwaves across the country.Programs which started under the guise of counterterrorism during the Bush administration have mushroomed past simple information gathering on potential threats to mass collection of data on citizens.

“You can’t have 100 percent security, and then have 100 percent privacy,”  says President Obama, a defender and advancer of such programs, in defending broad government snooping. He also used the word “inconvenience” regarding the government having access to our private e-mails, pictures and Skype conversations.

The primary characteristic that separates free societies from totalitarian ones is that citizens need not worry if their governments are monitoring their every move without predication of criminal behavior.

The framers of the Constitution had foresight in this matter.

The Fourth Amendment was written to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures unless probable causes exist.  It’s this principle of freedom that differentiates our legal framework from other nations.  Sadly, we are witnessing a steady erosion of these freedoms in the name of security.

Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, says a single attack was thwarted due to this obtuse collection of phone records.  I wish Rogers would share this information, so we can access the validity of this statement.  The fundamental question is: Are we as Americans willing to live in the land of the Orwellian in the name of feeling more secure?  East Germany was a very secure country from extremist attacks, and North Korea is likewise today.  No one that I know, however, is willing to live in such conditions for the sake of feeling secure.

Congressman Justin Amash, R-Michigan, wrote a bipartisan Congressional member letter to the heads of the NSA and FBI seeking questions regarding this broad information gathering given that the legal statute for such is confined to foreign intelligence purposes, not domestic.  Amash and other Congressmen should push for hearings into the scope and legality of such activities by the NSA and FBI.

“Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security,”  Benjamin Franklin famously stated.

We have real threats that face our nation, but the erosion of our freedoms is a greater threat to our national soul than any enemy, foreign or domestic.

I hope that our discussions on this issue in the coming weeks can be focused on the nature of contemporary government surveillance and the costs both fiscally and constitutionally to our republic.  Long conversations about NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden – and if certain papers should have released info on NSA and FBI mass data collection – are distractions from the real issues.