Stretching the “T” word
The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an investigation and fair game for surveillance.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at least a dozen “terrorism enterprise investigations” into mosques, according to interviews and confidential police documents. The TEI, as it is known, is a police tool intended to help investigate terrorist cells and the like.
Many TEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to continue even though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic organization with operating as a terrorism enterprise.
The documents show in detail how, in its hunt for terrorists, the NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put information about them in secret police files. As a tactic, opening an enterprise investigation on a mosque is so potentially invasive that while the NYPD conducted at least a dozen, the FBI never did one, according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials.
I get why New York was especially paranoid after 9/11. Obviously. But this was never a
particularly rational idea — it’s a waste of resources, focuses on way too many people and misses completely the fact that they would have gotten the same information from decent American Muslims in the mosques if they got wind of any terrorist activity. Clearly, they felt that all Muslims are potential terrorists and will stick together in the event of a plot unfolding around them. That’s the way authoritarians look at their fellow citizens.
This idea that you can use the “T” word to justify skirting the constitution is the most pernicious outcome of that horrible day. Power once given is very hard to take back and I don’t know what it’s going to take to make it happen. The security state has institutionalized not just a series of unconstitutional policies, but a way of looking at the world that is essentially undemocratic and, frankly, paranoid. The people are going to have a rough row to hoe to turn that around.
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