Don’t give the President an “Internet Kill Switch”

On June 10, 2010, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and his cosponsors Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. This bill, which would give the president power to restrict or shut down the Internet during emergencies, threatens civil liberties, including the right to free speech. The unprecedented bill is Congress’s most comprehensive piece of legislation concerning cybersecurity during a national crisis.

Greg Nojeim, the senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security, and Technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology, spearheaded a campaign to amend the bill. Because of his efforts, 23 organizations signed on to a letter calling for changes to the bill. The signatories concerns include the bill’s scope, the preservation of free speech, the extent of information sharing, privacy, and transparency. [1] The diverse signatories include the National Lawyers Guild, the Citizens’ Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Political Research Associates.

An amendment to the bill has since been proposed that addresses several of these concerns. It limits the extent to which the president can obstruct Internet usage and changes the original indefinite period of executive privilege to a maximum of 120 days before the president must seek congressional approval. [2]

The bill creates a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would control access to any aspect of the Internet that it deemed “covered critical infrastructure” (CCI). Originally, it possessed the power to shut down all Internet access to civilians. However, the amendment narrows the definition of CCI to a “system or asset the destruction or disruption of which would cause national or regional catastrophic effects.” [3]

Despite the improvements to the bill, there is still reason for concern unless additional amendments are included. In a second letter, addressed to the cosponsors of the bill and the rest of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Nojeim applauded the senators for the modifications laid out in the amendment but urged them to go further. At a minimum, he said, Congress must explicitly delineate the power of the NCCC, especially regarding the extent to which it can “develop and coordinate emergency measures or actions necessary to preserve the reliable operation, and mitigate or remediate the consequences of potential disruption, of covered critical infrastructure.” [4]

This bill gives the president control over the lines of communication and potentially limits free speech during emergencies, just the times when peoples’ voices need to be heard. Like the word “terrorism,” “emergency” can be manipulated to justify measures that hamper social justice movements. In the name of national security, President Truman broke a steelworkers’ strike in 1952, during the Korean War. On a much smaller scale, during protests at the G-20 meetings in Pittsburg in 2009, police harassed and arrested Twitter users who were communicating with demonstrators – echoing Iran’s crackdown on the internet during popular protests in that same year. These incidents are a reminder of what’s at stake in the Cybersecurity Bill.

Political advocacy groups have an interest in keeping the Internet secure from malicious threats; however we must also be cautious about giving government too much power or control over public resources such as the Internet.


Sources
1. Nojeim, Gregory T., RE: Civil Liberties Issues in Cybersecurity Bill, see http://www.cdt.org/letter/civil-liberties-issues-cybersecurity-bill (accessed 1 July 2010). See also John Byrne, “Senators introduce bill that would allow US to disconnect the Internet,” The Raw Story (June 18, 2010), at http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0618/senators-introduce-bill-disconnect-internet/ (accessed July 1, 2010). For more on this issue, also see the Electronic Privacy Information Center at: http://epic.org/privacy/cybersecurity/
2. Open Congress, “Text of S. 3480 as Introduced in Senate: Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010,” (accessed 1 July 2010).
3. Nojeim, Gregory T., Regarding S. 3480, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, see http://www.cdt.org/letter/regarding-s-3480-protecting-cyberspace-national-asset-act (accessed 1 July 2010).
4. Nojeim, Regarding S. 3480.

Suspicious Activity Reporting To Be Linked Nationwide

Warning flags abound in recent report on pilot program

PRA says nationwide deployment is premature and invites civil liberties violations

The Department of Justice has quietly released the final report on a two-year pilot program on “Suspicious Activity Reporting.”

This program, the latest product of the domestic security overhaul following September 11, 2001 is cause for alarm, according to a recently published study Platform for Prejudice, by Political Research Associates (PRA). The study details how the Suspicious Activity Program involves enlisting law enforcement as intelligence officers by training police to report 1st Amendment protected activities like photography, taking notes, making diagrams, and “espousing extremist views.”

The SAR initiative is set to be operational nationwide in all 72 Fusion Center sites by September 2012. It will soon expand to 10 new sites in Alabama, Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, along with Dallas, Kansas City, and Savannah, announced program director Tom O’Reilly at a February 2010 conference.

The government’s official evaluation of the pilot program echoes the unease about effectiveness and legality raised in PRA’s Platform for Prejudice. According to the government’s report on the project, both quantitative and qualitative performance metrics for Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) data are lacking. According to the government report, “the majority of sites were unable to calculate the number of arrests and investigations resulting from SAR data.”

Only two sites out of the twelve reported the number of investigations that led to arrests or convictions in cases involving SAR reports with a supposed nexus to terrorism or other criminal activity. Plus, the legality of the program is difficult to ascertain where only four sites “completed the activities necessary to share SAR data with other sites and had their analysts regularly perform searches.” Other troubling observations from the report include:

• “Few sites were able to fully implement the SAR process and share data.” (p. 30)
• Only 4 sites out of 12 “completed the activities necessary to share SAR data with other sites and [had] their analysis regularly perform searches of ISE-SAR Shared Spaces” (p. 30).
• “Several sites had difficulty providing statistics on the total number of SARs received prior to being assessed as ISE-SARs.” (p. 30).
• “At the beginning of the [evaluation environment], there was not a clear agreement on what constituted a terrorism-related suspicious activity.” (p. 41)
• “The level of suspicion needed to classify terrorism-related information as an ISE-SAR (a report that gets shared nationwide) that would be shared with other law enforcement agencies was not clearly defined.” (p.42)
• The DOJ’s report recommends “A review concerning the SARs entered during the evaluation period to determine the consistence of determining the level of suspicion. (p.42)

Based on the sparse information and the confusion surrounding the level of suspicion, how could the federal government possibly conclude that this program is ready to go nationwide? What good is an “Evaluation Environment” that doesn’t evaluate? It’s time for Congress to exercise its oversight function to protect civil liberties and ensure that resources and tax dollars are not being wasted.

The police department of one of the twelve original program sites, made its apprehension clear. In assessing the SAR pilot program, the Boston Police Department suggests PRA’s concerns are warranted: “there seemed to be a disparate amount of SARs being entered between the agencies. B[oston] P[olice] D[epartment] wants to avoid the entry of information into the [information sharing environment] Shared Spaces that is not of value and prevent large volumes of information being ‘dumped’ into the system.” This could be the case in Florida, where the state fusion center reported collecting more than 5,700 suspicious activity reports from local police agencies, but only 12 were found to have a “potential nexus to terrorism.” (p .32).

Questions still linger regarding the lawfulness of the program. In Platform for Prejudice, PRA challenges the legality of this new information-sharing program because it lowers the threshold for domestic intelligence collection. Federal guidelines that were enacted after the COINTELPRO abuses of the 1960s and 1970s prohibit the collection and storing of intelligence if police do not reasonably suspect a crime is about to be committed. In direct contradiction to that law, Suspicious Activity Reporting programs call citizens to file reports on legal behaviors that “do not seem right.” The Final Report on the SAR Evaluation Environment candidly admits that domestic intelligence gathering may concern innocent persons:

The term “Involved Party (IP)” did not exist on the previous Investigative Report. It was added with the idea that when the SAR box is checked, the officer will write the report using the term “IP” instead of “suspect.” LAPD does not consider someone engaging in suspicious activity as a suspect but an IP, because, in reality, the suspicious activity may not be a crime; therefore, there would be no suspect.” (p. 19, fn. 17)

Platform for Prejudice documents numerous incidents where law-abiding people of “Middle Eastern appearance” received intimidating visits from cops or FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force agents simply because they videotaped a tourist attraction, rented a boat without fishing gear, engaged in religious practice, or took a picture with a friend at an airport. In one instance, Duane Kerzic was detained because he took pictures of trains at New York's Penn Station. It turns out he was participating in Amtrak's annual photography contest. The SAR Initiative threatens to clog intelligence pipelines with junk data derived from racial, ethnic, religious, and ideological bias.

“When taking photographs of landmark structures is defined as suspicious activity, police must decide whom to report among the thousands of people snapping pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge. Unsurprisingly, evidence indicates they are relying on the dominant racial and ethnic stereotypes about who might be a terrorist. This not only violates Constitutional protections, but erodes mutual trust and makes communities less safe,” said PRA Executive Director Tarso Luís Ramos.

Platform for Prejudice makes eleven recommendations to policy makers and social justice activists, including that Congress should hold hearings to evaluate the lawfulness and effectiveness of Suspicious Activity Reporting and order reforms prior to nationwide implementation. PRA’s study examines how Suspicious Activity Reporting programs and the Fusion Centers they operate from operate largely without public oversight and accountability.

Now is the time for an independent review, before the program is institutionalized at more and more Fusion Centers. There has been too much talk of transparency, and not enough sunlight and public accountability.

_________________

The Final Report issued by the Bureau of Justice Assistance can now be found at the NSI Program Management Office website, http://nsi.ncirc.gov/resources.aspx

News about the nationwide implementation of the SAR program can be found at:

· “U.S. to Offer Suspicious Activity Report Training Nationwide” (March 3, 2010) http://thecrimereport.org/2010/03/03/u-s-to-offer-suspicious-activity-report-training-nationwide/

· “The Rights Hands” (Feb. 24, 2010) http://www.ijis.org/EDblog/?p=269

· Corey McKenna, “Program Strengthens Suspicious Activity Reporting to Combat Terrorism,” Emergency Management (April 5, 2010) http://www.emergencymgmt.com/safety/Suspicious-Activity-Reporting-Terrorism.html

Pre-Emptive Prosecutions - Forum Explores Provocation to Get Terrorism Convictions

On March 25, 2010, a forum at NYU School of Law explored the role of agents provocateurs in several high-profile terrorism cases. Powerful testimony from the families and lawyers for defendants in several cases, raised an important question about each of the cases: would there have been a criminal act or plan if the FBI had not paid agent provocateurs to become involved? Was the FBI involved in capturing "homegrown terrorists" or were they making them?

Fran Korotzer, writing for Neft Left News, covered the forum, which was organized by the National Lawyers Guild, NYU Law ACLU, Middle Easter Law Students Association, and Law Students for Human Rights. According to Korotzer,

Many of those entrapped are very low income, under-educated men who live in marginalized communities and are ‘bribed’ with money, marijuana, and promises of help for whatever crisis they are facing. These cases are not isolated, they’re happening in large numbers all over the country. The people involved are from diverse backgrounds but they are united by abuses of due process.

Newburgh, New York - FBI informant targets schizophrenic

The first speakers were the mother and aunt of David McWilliams, one of the Newburgh 4, the young Muslim men were convicted of attempting to bomb synagogues with plastic explosives in the Bronx and plotting to shoot down planes from Stewart Airport with stinger missiles.

David McWilliams' mother, Elizabeth, said that her son was not the monster he was made out to be. According to Korotzer, Elizabeth explained the David was

promised money to help pay for medical treatment for his younger brother who is suffering with incurable cancer. Tears were flowing down her cheeks as she tried to speak. When his aunt, Alicia McWilliams spoke she presented a picture of a group of struggling, uneducated men trying to survive on the periphery of society. They had drug problems and one was schizophrenic. The FBI picked the most vulnerable county to establish their plot, one where there is “no jobs, no schooling” and “if you walk down Broadway you see it is drug infested.” “They didn’t send an agent to a mosque in Bushwick or Harlem because they would nave whooped his mother_ _.” Instead they’re “gonna pick some God damn fools and a person who can’t manage mental health.” According to McWilliams, those individuals couldn’t mastermind anything. These are who they chose to shoot missiles at planes and bomb synagogues in Riverdale? They never heard of Riverdale. “The boy is dyslexic.” “This boy is a petty crack dealer.” How did he go from that “to become a big national terrorist? He ain’t never even left New York.” He thought that the agent that entrapped him was “a good Muslim brother” who was going to get him a job and help pay doctor bills. McWilliams also pointed out that no family members were interrogated by the police or the FBI adding, they “didn’t need us when they had their own script.” She said that the families and communities that had been targeted had to stand together and let the government know that they “cannot target our families and drop a load of shit on us!”

The Department of Justice recently alluded to the Newburgh 4 case in its Final Report on the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (download here). The Bureau of Justice Assistance wrote:

An example of the success of the program is a report of suspicious activity that was provided by a business that was a recipient of the training:

In May of 2009, an employee noticed something unusual while working at a

self-storage facility. A group of suspicious-looking men had begun to meet

around an outdoor storage unit. They aroused suspicion because they met

frequently—as much as 20 or 30 times in the span of a few days. They were

also very careful to conceal their property by backing their SUV right up to the

storage unit door. The self-storage facility had been visited by local law

enforcement in the past and had been provided information on indicators and

warnings of suspicious activity as part of the New York State’s Operation

Safeguard outreach program.

The employee contacted the local police department to report the suspicious

activity observed. He also provided them with information on the vehicle and

renter. The police department ran checks and found that the New York FBI

Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) had an active investigation and the

individuals associated with the storage unit were currently under surveillance.

Two weeks after the employee’s report, the New York JTTF arrested four men

on a number of terrorism charges, including charges arising from a plot to

detonate explosives near a synagogue and to shoot military planes with

Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles. The employee’s information

demonstrated the effectiveness of the Operation Safeguard efforts to

help prevent terrorist attacks in New York State.

(Final Report, ISE-SAR EE, p. 69). In the example above, the DOJ cites a report of suspicious activity that likely involved its own paid informant. Thus, not only does the government use these prosecutions to stir up fear of "homegrown extremism," but they are used to justify broadening domestic surveillance programs.

Fort Dix - Two Provocateurs with Records

Writes Korotzer,

The next speakers were 12 year old Leijla Duka, daughter of one of the Ft. Dix 5 (NJ) and her uncle, the youngest of the Duka brothers. The Ft. Dix 5 were convicted of conspiring to attack military personnel at Ft. Dix and kill as many as possible. Leijla and her uncle said that their family members were set-up by 2 Muslim agent provocateurs, Mahmoud Omar and Besnik Bakalli.

Both men had been convicted of serious crimes and were willing to act as agents in return for leniency and money. It all started, they explained, with a family vacation in the Poconos when a family member made a video recording of the young men on a shooting range, shooting and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, God is great. After the vacation the recording was brought to a Circuit City store to be duplicated so that everyone involved could have a copy. The clerk was suspicious when he viewed the video and notified the police who contacted the FBI.

[The FBI] sent in Omar who approached one of the men, befriended him, and convinced him to download terrorist videos. All of the videos watched were at the agent’s request and then he tried to persuade him to involve his friends, the other 4.

When [Omar] didn’t do so the other agent, Bakalli, an ethnic Albanian like the Dukas was brought in. The agents told the men that their Muslim brothers were being murdered overseas and that they should be ashamed of themselves because they were doing nothing to help them. A lot of money was being flashed around by the agents and weapons were offered for sale. Some of the men bought weapons so, they said, they wouldn’t have to wait to shoot at the shooting range. One, who worked at a pizza shop, showed the agent a map of Ft. Dix (used for pizza delivery) when the agent asked for one. Duka said that for a conspiracy case 2 or more defendants have to agree to a plot involving someplace or someone. That never happened in this case. The government admitted that there was no evidence that the defendants ever discussed the plot with each other. All 5 were arrested and at trial the judge said that millions had been spent on the case and “the lack of evidence doesn’t concern me.” Duka also explained that all of the jury members were either in the army or had family members in the army. Since they were personally involved in some way they should have been excluded. The prosecution showed frightening jihad films. All were convicted with some getting sentences of life plus 30 years.

Project Salam

Next, the forum heard from three lawyers: Lynne Jackson from Project Salam, Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims (www.projectsalam.org), and Kathy Manley and Steve Downs who defended Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain from Albany, NY.

According to Korotzer's report,

The agent provocateur in that case was the same person that was involved in the Newburgh 4 case, but using a different name this time. He was facing a prison sentence for selling fake drivers licenses, there was 25 civil suits pending against him, and there was the possibility of him being deported to Pakistan where it is believed that he was wanted for murder. The FBI was primarily interested in Yassin Aref, a local imam who spoke against the war and for Palestinian rights. Mohammad Hossain was collateral damage.

The plot, as it was explained, was to get the men involved in purchasing a surface to air missile with money laundered through Hossain’s pizza business. That would be used to shoot down a plane with the Pakistani UN ambassador on it. Hossain needed a loan which was offered by the agent, and Aref, the imam, was asked to witness the loan, as is a Muslim custom.

The money used for the $5,000 loan supposedly came from money that was earned by selling weapons to terrorists. There is no evidence that the men, especially Aref, knew anything about where the money came from or of the missile plot, but the fact of Aref witnessing the loan tied him to terrorists. Both were arrested, convicted, and got 15 year prison sentences.

This case was also recently portrayed in a documentary film called Waiting for Mercy, selected for best documentary at the Ballston Spa Film Festival. (see trailer)

Other speakers at the forum provided powerful testimony on the Holy Land Foundation case and the use of secret evidence in the case of Fahad Hashmi. These stories challenge conventional wisdom and propaganda surrounding many terrorism prosecutions.

In their totality, they raise important questions about pre-emptive policing - the notion that the law enforcement should intervene in Americans' affairs before a criminal act occurs. While these cases demonstrate that people can be enticed to commit or plan illegal acts, such an approach can have devastating consequences for the communities who feel they have been targeted by the government. Ultimately, "pre-emption" erodes mutual trust and undermines security.

Muslims Feel Targeted by FBI, Question Contact on Campus

According to students at the University of Texas-Dallas, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation approached them on campus and at work to inquire about their beliefs and affiliations. Without a reasonable suspicion that individuals were involved in illegal activity, such tracking is not only unconstitutional, but ultimately counterproductive.

In an April 11, 2010 article in the UTD Mercury, political science senior Boma Danesh describes how FBI agents questioned him, asking him to identity radical UTD students, radical preachers, and asking him about his political views. Danesh is a member of Muslim Students for Justice, an off-campus group that hosts pro-Palestine and Malcolm X-influenced events. The FBI denied investigating anyone solely for First Amendment activities not because of their ethnicity, nationality or religious affiliation. Nevertheless, other Muslim students expressed the feeling that they were targeted based on their religion.

Although the FBI repeatedly stresses its desire to build positive, strong relationships with Muslim and Arab-American communities, singling out Muslim students on campus for questioning sends a different message.

In related news, a University of Michigan study published in the American Journal of Public Health in February 2010 found that one quarter of Detroit-area Arab Americans reported personal or familial abuse because of race, ethnicity, or religion since 9/11, leading to higher odds of adverse health effects. According to the study, entitled "Association of Perceived Abuse and Discrimination after Sept. 11, 2001 with Psychological Distress," the American Muslim population is estimated at approximately 5.4 million people, consisting of African Americans, South Asians, and Arabs. In addition, up to 2.5 million non-Muslim Arabs reside in the United States. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found a 1600% increase in hate crimes directed against these populations in the year after the events of September 11. According to the researchers,

given that perceived discrimination is strongly tied to mental health outcomes and that mental health often predicts happiness in Arab populations, these findings provide the strongest indication of the negative impact of perceived post-September 11 abuse and discrimination on respondents' well-being.

Adverse health effects are just one negative outcome of discrimination and abuse. A recent study by Political Research Associates (Platform for Prejudice) examines how the new nationwide "suspicious activity reporting initiative" invites racial or religious profiling and erodes community trust and safety. This report builds on prior reports by the American Immigration Policy Institute (download here) and the ACLU and Rights Working Group (download here) about the persistence of racial profiling and its deleterious impacts on American communities.

TIPS Reduce: LAPD to expand iWatch Program

The Los Angeles Police Department encourages the public to spy on neighbors and file suspicious activity reports about innocent (non-criminal) activities that seem out of place through its "iWatch" program. A new report by Political Research Associates explains how such programs practically invite racial, ethnic, and religious profiling that not only harms individuals who get singled out, but is ultimately counter-productive in terms of combatting terrorism. This program violates existing rules on domestic intelligence collection because tips need not relate to a crime, but can be something that "raises suspicion."

In a recent article in Emergency Management, public information director for the LAPD Mary Grady discusses how the iWatch program will be expanded in April 2010 by translating literature and public service announcements into Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mandarin. According to Grady, the iWatch program has generated several dozen reports from the public so far. It is unclear whether individuals named in such reports are adequately protected from false reports.

Neighbors as Spies: Public Reporting Through iWATCH

iWATCH, a civilian program launched by the LAPD in October 2009, supplements LAPD Special Order No. 11, which orders police officers to report suspicious behaviors that might be indicative of terrorism, including "taking pictures with no aesthetic value."

“Law enforcement cannot be everywhere and see everything,” notes the LAPD’s blog, “iWATCH adds another tool to assist an agency’s predictive and analytical capability by educating community members about specific behaviors and activities that they should report.”

iWATCH was developed under the direction of LAPD Commander McNamara, and can be used in any community anywhere in the United States. Miami and Boston have similar See Something, Say Something campaigns. iWATCH lists nine types of suspicious behavior the public should look for, assuring tipsters, “this service is truly anonymous.” William Bratton described iWATCH as “the 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch.” In an NPR interview, Bratton provided this rationale:

Any street cop will tell you that crime prevention occurs best at the local level and terrorist-related crime prevention is no different. The problem has always been that individuals have varying thresholds at which they feel compelled to notify authorities when the activity is not overtly terrorist related. The iWATCH program is a giant leap toward overcoming this problem and literally provides millions of new eyes and ears in the terrorism prevention effort.

iWATCH, then, encourages the public to file a report even if people are not convinced that witnessed behavior is criminal. “Let the experts decide,” cajoles a Public Service Announcement.

In this interview, Former Chief Bratton appeared dismissive of concerns that iWATCH would invite racial profiling, saying, “No, I think we’re a more mature society than that.” (query: was the LAPD Rampart Division simple being immature when it generated one of the largest scandals involving documented police misconduct, including convictions of police officers for unprovoked shootings and beatings, planting of evidence, framing suspects, perjury, and subsequent cover-ups in the late 1990s?)

iWATCH is disturbingly similar to the controversial TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System), an initiative created by the Bush administration to recruit one million volunteers in 10 cities across the country. TIPS encouraged volunteers to report suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related. TIPS came under intense criticism by various news media outlets in July 2002 for providing the United States with a higher percentage of citizen spies. According to an editorial in the Washington Post:

Americans should not be subjecting themselves to law enforcement scrutiny merely by having cable lines installed, mail delivered or meters read. Police cannot routinely enter people’s houses without either permission or a warrant. They should not be using utility workers to conduct surveillance they could not lawfully conduct themselves.

TIPS was officially canceled in 2002 when Congress enacted the Homeland Security Act. However, iWATCH seems to be virtually identical to the failed TIPS program. Residents and store owners should report incidents that demonstrate reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, such as purchasing large amounts of explosive chemicals. But the language of iWatch -- encouraging untrained people to report vague occurrences that "just don't seem right" -- deserves to meet the same fate as TIPS.

Recipe for Profiling: Boston Transit Police Study the "Legal Wing of Jihad in America"

Why are Boston Transit Police Studying Islam?

While reading the February/March 2010 issue of the industry magazine Counter Terrorist (a publication of Security Solutions International), I came across a troubling advertisement.

On May 10-12, 2010, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is sponsoring a three-day seminar in Florida that takes participants through the “formative phases of the Islamic religion” and the branches and ideologies of Islam to help them “really understand how extremism is organized in Radical Islam.”

The MBTA is promoting a discriminatory seminar, led by SSI Security Solutions International, which raises concerns about whether such training is counter-productive, promotes racial and religious profiling, and makes local residents less safe. Why is the cash-strapped MBTA using limited funds to study the political or religious motives of potential terrorists? Is this the best way to keep T riders safe? How will this training affect religious and ethnic/racial bias among intelligence officials and the police?

The course content, according to the advertisement, includes “Arab naming conventions,” “Women in Islam and Female Suicide Bombers,” and “The Legal wing of Jihad in America.” Of what concern is the LEGAL wing of [alleged] jihad in America to the Boston’s transit police since it is, by that definition, legal?

This course promotes thinly-disguised Islamophobia that harkens back to McCarthyistic witch hunts for communist front organizations. It has nothing to do with effective law enforcement. Indoctrinating metro Boston law enforcement with these inflammatory views is a recipe for racial, ethnic, religious, and political profiling. Unquestionably, courses of this nature will lead law enforcement attendees to subject individuals to increased scrutiny (and possibly illegal searches) based on their appearance and beliefs, rather than conduct. Law enforcement resources are better spent protecting infrastructure and observing criminal conduct, not studying (or tracking) peoples’ religious belief systems and political motivations.

Security Solutions International is a Miami-based company founded in 2004 [1] that bills itself as a frontline defense against the threat of “radical Islam” and prime provider of “homeland security training” to a range of clients, including local police forces, corporations, and federal agencies. [2] Employing alarmist rhetoric about Islamic groups’ purported existential threat to the United States in the “war on terror,” SSI’s website encourages “first Responders and interested members of the concerned public to help Security Solutions International fight the war on terror. Radical Islam has an agenda and wants to destroy our country. As part of our mission, we are dedicated to keeping you informed about the enemy and developments in this global conflict.”[3]

According to the bio of SSI’s CEO, Solomon Bradman, he formerly managed “Diplomat Trading, a multi-million dollar exporter of Electronic Equipment specializing in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. He has a Bachelor's degree from Thomas Edison State College in Aviation. His management and administrative training and experience began while running the fixed base operation at Marathon Airport back in 1984 where he eventually ended up manager, chief pilot, and head flight instructor until moving to Denver to pursue a pilot position with Rocky Mountain Airways. … Over the last three years his responsibilities as CEO of SSI have required his experience and full attention to Administration, Marketing, Sales, Product Development and Public Relations, including being a spokesperson for SSI and appearing on news casts on NBC, CBS, and ABC commenting on SSI programs and security issues. He also provides articles on Aviation-related security issues to top publications such as Business Aviation, Helicopter Monthly and others.” [4]

SSI lists two products that are presumably provided to people who sign up to be SSI “Patriot Partners”: the Counter Terrorist newsletter, an SSI publication that claims to keep readers “up-to-date with developments, technologies, successes and … failures in the global struggle against Islamofascism”; and “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West,” a controversial film described as “hate propaganda” by some critics and distributed by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit organization closely linked to both the U.S. and Israeli right-wing. [5]

Among the activities SSI advertises on its website are a training course for law enforcement agencies that is entitled “The Islamic Jihadist Threat” and a Department of Homeland Security-funded training program in Israel for U.S. clients. According to SSI’s website, this course is a two-day program “designed to give First Responders a deep understanding of the terror mindset and an explanation of the reasons for the Global Jihad as well as practical tips for Law Enforcement in detecting, preventing and responding to acts of terror.” Course topics include “Where does the hatred come from?- Arab naming conventions - Jihad - The Five Pillars of Islam - Ramadan - Domestic Terror groups - International Terror groups - Understanding the culture of Jihad.”[6]

The course has been harshly criticized. In 2008, for example, the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued that SSI’s training at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission promoted stereotypes that could lead to prejudicial profiling of Muslims. A CAIR representative told the Seattle Times, “Most police officers don’t have a basic grounding in Islam, so before you teach them about Islam, how can you teach them about radical Islam? It just makes you nervous because when a law-enforcement person pulls someone over, when they see a Muslim person or someone who appears Muslim to them—all this information they just learned kicks in.”[7]

In August 2009, Political Research Associates attended a two-hour presentation by Long Beach, California, Police Detective Ebrahim Ashabi, SSI’s purported expert on Islamic culture. Det. Ashabi says he is trying to help law enforcement “gain a better understanding of how terrorists think and why they are terrorists.” He offered an explanation of the political and social origins of Islam, the Spread of Islam, Prophet Muhammad, Ottoman Empire, The Crusades, the Muslim brotherhood, Hezbollah, and the long-term goals of terrorism. Such lessons are counter-productive; by suggesting that violent terrorism finds its roots in the Islamic religion, SSI is legitimizing claims by terrorist organizations that their acts are justified by faith, when in fact they are distorting Islam for their own political aims.

Det. Ashabi provided a window into the mindset of some counter terrorism specialists who believe that there are no good Muslims, only bad ones. Ashabi contends that the Muslim Brotherhood aims “to destroy Western civilization from within, through subversive means, legal, political and non-terrorist means, and by changing laws and U.S. constitution. He cited several examples of Islamic “infiltration,” such as the July 29, 2009 arrest of 7 men in North Carolina charged with terrorist conspiracy to wage an Islamic holy war overseas; the Holy Land Foundation case (wherein individuals were accused of giving aid to a group with ties to Hamas that was not on the U.S. government’s list of forbidden charities); and the shooting of police deputy in Fresno by a Kashmir group.

However, with those criminal cases, Ashabi lumps in “on-going threats of lawsuits against police and other law enforcement agencies that offer counter terrorism and race awareness training programs (alleging racial, religious profiling) as means of intimidating police departments to stop training programs.” He cited the July 2009 case (above) of the Seattle Police Department taking criticism from CAIR over its race awareness program. PRA’s investigator, Mary Fischer, observed, “It’s Ashabi’s belief that CAIR is a serious threat to U.S. safety and that the organization continues to permeate all facets of our society in effort to undermine it. One strategy it seeks to use--nominate Muslim sympathizers to political office and law enforcement ranks to then gain access to computer databases.”

So, the MBTA is sponsoring a seminar which views as suspect Muslim-Americans’ participation in the democratic political process. We need to tell MBTA officials that the public does not approve of this religious prejudice. This is not the first time that MBTA has partnered with SSI. In August 2009, PRA requested records related to a similar course held in Massachusetts last year, but the MBTA failed to supply the requested materials. No law enforcement agency should not be lending its name or funds to SSI, whose aim is to stir up suspicion of all Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian persons, or to get rich trying.

* UPDATE: In response to community concerns, the MBTA canceled its sponsorship of the seminar run by Security Solutions International on March 31, 2010.

Sources

1. Market Wire, “Miami Becomes the Homeland Security Capital of the USA during the UASI National Conference April 10th-April 13th,” April 5, 2007.
2. See Security Solutions International website.
3. SSI, “Patriot Partners,” (accessed September 28, 2009)
4. SSI, “Corporate Officers,” (accessed September 28, 2009)
5. SSI, “Patriot Partners,” (accessed September 28, 2009)
6. SSI, “The Islamic Jihadist Threat,” (accessed October 1, 2009)
7. Janet I. Tu, “Does Course on Islam Give law Enforcers Wrong Idea?” Seattle Times, May 26, 2008.

Information for this posting also comes from Right Web, a project of Political Research Associates, http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/bradman_solomon

Misplaced Priorities in U.S. Counter-terror Strategy

The recent attempted bombing of NWA Flight 253 in Detroit underscores the fact that the main terrorist threat to U.S. persons is from foreign terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Every official review of U.S. intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attack concluded that bureaucratic cultures at the CIA and FBI impeded effective information sharing and analysis. Here again, U.S. intelligence agencies failed to share information regarding live tips and leads that should have triggered not only a secondary screening at Amsterdam’s airport, but more importantly, a full assessment of the threat posed by the 23-year old Umar Farouk Abduulmutallab.

The development of a vast network of urban and state intelligence fusion centers is one illustration of how the U.S. intelligence enterprise has lost its way since 9/11. Domestic “extremism” (however loosely defined) has supplanted focused and sustained investigation of foreign threats as the highest counterterrorism priority. Data-mining, biometric identification, fusion centers, and beat cops as “force multipliers,” now take center stage in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Instead, the focus should be on improving foreign intelligence capacities and enhancing the coordination and performance of the Terrorism Screening Center, Transportation Security Agency, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is they relate to identifying suspected or known terrorists.

You can’t do it all. Choices have to be made. But senior U.S. officials – particularly from the Department of Homeland Security and its 22 member agencies – have taken their eyes off the ball (foreign terrorism), in favor of peering into Americans’ everyday activities. They have dispersed limited resources across the entire nation to protect vast numbers of potential (but unlikely) targets, instead of focusing on the most likely target of foreign attack: airliners. As one senior TSA official tells PRA, the lack of focus “is disgraceful, criminal, and very, very sad. But there is simply no will at the top to change the systems’ problems.”

These bureaucratic decisions steer antiterrorism grant funding to thousands of police agencies to buttress local budgets and domestic surveillance capacities, while neglecting the hard work of foreign intelligence analysis and investigations. While it has been important to improve emergency interoperability and response capacity at the local level, the push to develop local and state-based intelligence capacities does more harm to civil liberties and political freedom than it does to keep us safe.

At home, we need a sensible law enforcement approach to terrorism, rather than a pre-emptive intelligence model that undermines community trust, privacy, and political freedom. The intelligence paradigm, in the hands of domestic authorities, inevitably treads upon constitutional rights. Witness, for example, the recent spying by a military employee of anti-war activists in Washington state. A lawsuit filed on January 10, 2010 by National Lawyers Guild attorney Larry Hildes on behalf of members of Port Military Resistance, asserts that a force protection employee infiltrated the peace organization, tried to disrupt activities, and used his position as listserv administrator to channel private information to multiple policing agencies. The Fort Lewis episode illustrates how national security can be manipulated to justify interfering with free speech. We must insist that counterterrorism resources are directed at Al Qaeda, not dissenters and American communities.