NYPD spying program aimed at Muslims

It is really worth looking at this document for a sense of how insidious it is when the government spies on and compiles files about innocent citizens. The report contains numerous maps identifying the locations of all mosques in Newark. It contains photographs of those mosques and other Islamic groups and even schools, including ones in private homes, accompanied by identifying information and other notes suggesting some sort of nefarious intent (“aggressive counter-surveillance observed,” which presumably means that someone from the mosque was watching police agents spy on them). The report even includes maps and active surveillance of halal shops, Middle Eastern groceries, and restaurants where Muslims gather.

…there are two odious aspects of the Surveillance State specifically highlighted by the NYPD’s program here.

First, Muslims generally — and, increasingly, American Muslims — are branded with virtually official non-person status under the law. On Monday, I wrote about the way in which core tyrannical powers — arbitrary detention, limitless spying, due-process-free assassinations — have become normalized in the U.S., Israel and its Western allies, but it is almost always Muslims who are the target of these abuses. Every serious episode of civil liberties assaults in American history was driven by the full-scale demonization of one specific group. There are still plenty of groups who perform that function, but there is no question that Muslims are the prime target now.

Second, this perfectly illustrates what I have often described as the one-way mirror dynamic of the American Surveillance State: it isn’t merely that the State knows more and more about the private activities of citizens, but worse, that happens at exactly the same time that citizens know less and less about the activities of the State. At exactly the same time that the Surveillance State has exploded into a sprawling, ubiquitous, unaccountable apparatus, the U.S. Government and its various agencies have erected an increasingly impenetrable wall of secrecy behind which it operates. This imbalance grows inexorably. That’s the essential expression of the American Surveillance State: we can and will know everything about what you do, and you will know virtually nothing about what we do.

More here.