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<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <b><small><small><a
href="http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/25/fbis-creepy-intiative-to-turn-imams-into"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/25/fbis-creepy-intiative-to-turn-imams-into">http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/25/fbis-creepy-intiative-to-turn-imams-into</a></a></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">FBI's Creepy Intiative to Turn Imams Into
Informants</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Shikha Dalmia | April
25, 2016</div>
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<p>Protecting civil liberties has never been the FBI's
strong suit. But its new Shared Responsibility
Committees program, which it is quietly beta testing
now, is downright Orwellian.</p>
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<p>The FBI bills this program as a collaborative effort
with Muslim communities to rescue individuals on the
road to radicalization. In reality, it is just another
questionable informant program that will further
alienate Muslim communities and hurt counter-terrorism
efforts.</p>
<p>America's Muslim communities are already under massive
surveillance. There is, for example, the FBI's <a
href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants">informant
program</a>, which has grown 10-fold, from 1,500
before the 9/11 attacks to 15,000 informants now. And
that's only its official, listed informants. The feds
also have a network of unofficial and largely
unaccountable spies that is three times bigger.</p>
<aside class="ad"> </aside>
<p>Many of these informants are desperate people in legal
or financial trouble whom the FBI has blackmailed or
coerced into enlisting. They spy on mosques and identify
vulnerable and often mentally disturbed individuals who
might be enticed into committing acts of terrorism.
Indeed, a 2014 Human Rights Watch <a
href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/07/21/illusion-justice/human-rights-abuses-us-terrorism-prosecutions">report</a>
found that many of the sexy terrorist plots that the FBI
claims to have uncovered since 9/11 would never have
materialized without the active material support and
inducement of the agency itself.</p>
<p>And then there's the program of "voluntary interviews"
that CUNY School of Law's <a
href="http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/immigration/clear.html">CLEAR</a>
project (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability &
Responsibility) has been documenting. It <a
href="http://www.thenation.com/article/wheres-outrage-when-fbi-targets-muslims/">works
like this</a>: FBI agents, without a warrant or court
order, accost ordinary Muslims in their homes, colleges,
neighborhoods or near their workplace—settings
calculated to cause maximum embarrassment—and demand
that these Muslims accompany the feds to headquarters
for a "chat." Once at headquarters, agents pepper their
frightened and confused subjects with questions such as
"Do you hate Israel?" and "How often do you call your
mother in Yemen?" Sometimes the FBI asks these Muslims
to become informants. More often, agents are simply
fishing for signs of radicalization.</p>
<p>Such traumatizing encounters, which CLEAR maintains are
rampant, have a hugely chilling effect on
Muslim-American communities, prompting Muslims who have
endured them (and even those who haven't) to delete
their social media accounts, withdraw from active
participation in their mosques, and otherwise disengage
to avoid raising any red flags. Indeed, the NYPD's
discontinued Muslim surveillance program that generated
outrage because of its aggressive tactics is nothing <a
href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants">compared</a>
to what the FBI still does on a daily basis.</p>
<p>Given this backdrop, it's hard not to laugh at the
FBI's claims that its new Shared Responsibility
Committees program is just a friendly effort to
"empower" Muslim communities.</p>
<p>The program, which the FBI claims to be piloting in
unnamed communities, would sign up community leaders,
imams, mental health professionals, and teachers into
committees, <a
href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/muslim-american-surveillance-fbi-spying-213773">notes</a>
Georgetown University Law School's Arjun Sethi, whom the
FBI asked for input. It would refer individuals it has
flagged by unspecified means as "at risk" of going
jihadi to the relevant committee, who would contact them
and conduct a series of meetings. The committee would
offer the FBI its recommendations—whether to drop or
continue the investigation or arrange therapy—which the
FBI would be free to reject. The whole time that the
committee is doing its work, the FBI could
simultaneously be conducting its own criminal
investigation. Worse, although the FBI doesn't have to
disclose its findings to the committee, it would be free
to seize the committee's notes and proceedings and also
subpoena its members to testify against the suspect.</p>
<p>The FBI claims that this program will help channel
social services early toward individuals showing signs
of radicalization and keep them out of jail. That might
be a more credible claim if the program was administered
by health or other civilian agencies. Instead, given the
FBI's involvement, it seems like a naked attempt to
erode protections for privileged communication. It'll
expand and entrench—even institutionalize—the FBI's
network of confidential informants in the
Muslim-American community, Sethi worries. Or, to put it
more bluntly, it'll turn civilian professionals into
Stasi-like snitches.</p>
<p>Indeed, the upshot of SRC won't be early help for "at
risk" young Muslims at all. It'll be to inflame them
against all authority figures, breeding suspicion and
alienation in Muslim communities. This is exactly what
is <a
href="http://www.wbur.org/npr/457599126/is-a-british-program-spotting-radicals-or-alienating-muslims">happening</a>
with a similar British program called Channel that
actually inspired SRC, although Britain, chillingly, is
going one step further and <a
href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-law-targeting-extremism-in-schools-draws-criticism-from-muslim-groups-1435755146">legally
requiring</a> all public sector workers, including
preschool teachers, to report anyone showing signs of
radicalization or even just alienation (which would
pretty much cover all teenagers).</p>
<p>This isn't the FBI's first attempt to flag prospective
"terrorists." Last year, it unveiled an even more
ham-handed effort called "Don't be a Puppet"—kind of
like a DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Effort) for
terrorism. The program's purpose was to help school kids
resist terrorist inclinations and help identify peers
showing signs of them. It consisted of an interactive <a
href="https://cve.fbi.gov/whatis/?state=blameSection1">video
game</a> meant to alert kids to the twisted logic of
terrorists. Among the telltale signs of incipient
jihadism, according to the game, are beliefs such as "an
enemy is responsible for this injustice" and "we must
defend our traditions"—never mind that both those
statements describe the victims of terrorism just as
well as the perpetrators. An outcry by Muslim civil
rights groups forced the FBI to can its plans to
introduce this game into public school classrooms, but
the new SRC initiative shows that it clearly hasn't
given up on preemption efforts based on some rather
dubious notions about how early jihadis behave.</p>
<p>One reason why America has avoided the fate of
Molenbeek, the lawless Brussels neighborhood that has
become a hotbed of jihadist activity, is that far from
being radicalized, American Muslims are actually very
assimilated and remarkably cooperative with law
enforcement. For example, in Muslim-dominated Dearborn,
Michigan, near where I live, <a
href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/fbi-muslim-outreach-terrorism-213765">twice</a>
in the last few years fathers have turned in their own
sons who seemed to be falling prey to radical
propaganda.</p>
<p>Squandering the goodwill of Muslim Americans through
ill-advised programs that make them feel even more
targeted than they already are won't make America more
safe—just less free and fair.</p>
<p><em>This column <a
href="http://theweek.com/articles/617941/how-fbis-orwellian-antiterror-programs-are-making-less-safe">originally
appearead</a> in The Week.</em></p>
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