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July 28, 2010

Groups: FBI Surveillance Program Invites Racial Profiling
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FBI Director Robert Mueller is testifying on Capitol Hill today and may
face questioning about a controversial FBI domestic surveillance program
that collects racial and ethnic data. The American Civil Liberties Union
and the group Muslim Advocates have criticized the program, saying it
invites unconstitutional racial profiling by law enforcement.

Farhana Khera, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates: "Based on what
we’ve seen, there’s a section that deals with what’s called geomapping,
or the gathering of racial and ethnic data about racial and ethnic
communities across the country, that’s really just deeply disturbing and
would really be an unprecedented abuse of FBI resources to basically
gather all sorts of information about racial and ethnic communities that
goes beyond just what you might think of as demographic information
about where people live to include information about financial
transactions, about charitable giving activities, about their vacations,
the jobs they hold, things of that nature. And this is all not without
any kind of basis that these particular individuals they’re collecting
information on are engaging in any kind of criminal activity. It’s just
a generalized 'get to know' all of these communities and collect
information on them."



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