The AP is continuing its excellent investigative series on the joint NYPD/CIA's "Demographic Unit," which operates in the northeast and targets the Muslim community in a supposed anti-terrorism effort, with a new report on the profiling of innocent Americans.

NEW YORK -- The New York Police Department put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The documents describe in extraordinary detail a secret program intended to catalog life inside Muslim neighborhoods as people immigrated, got jobs, became citizens and started businesses. The documents undercut the NYPD's claim that its officers only follow leads when investigating terrorism.

It started with one group, Moroccans, but the documents show police intended to build intelligence files on other ethnicities.[...]

To prevent attacks, police monitored the path that generations of immigrants followed: getting an apartment, learning English, finding work, assimilating into the culture. Activities such as haircuts and gym workouts were transformed from mundane daily routines into police data points.

They called this one the "Moroccan Initiative." So much for the American melting pot. Here's a group of immigrants coming to the country legally, working to participate in and contribute to American society, becoming American citizens. These citizens are suspects not because of any activity, but because of their ethnicity. Welcome to the U.S.

The CIA says it's conducting an investigation into whether its participation in the NYPD's efforts is illegal (which racial profiling supposedly is). Given that it's the CIA we're talking about, don't expect to see the results of that investigation fully released. Both President Obama and Michael Bloomberg need to be forthcoming about this operation. They need to come clean and they need to end it.

Update:

Indeed.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/g_UTLdPz_Z8/-NYPD-CIA-racially-profiled-innocent-US-citizens-in-intelligence effort

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