Privacy, What Privacy?

   A disturbing editorial in the New York times posted today, March 4th. A discussion on freedom, but not in the sense one might think. People are not being kept against their will but instead they are being watched like caged animals. Fellow citizens are being targeted for their skin color, and religious preference rather than who they are as a people. 

Mayor Bloomberg and the New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are just two of the many East Coast political powers who pledged to toughen up the security on counter terrorism programs after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and assist other federal law enforcement agencies to divert any future disasters from happening. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the man who once defended the idea of constructing a Muslim mosque just miles from ground zero has apparently turned over a new leaf and is now justifying the new surveillance program that has gone too far. 

According to the Times article they have managed to tail law-abiding Muslim-Americans and somehow justify spying on them. They have frightened this large group into hiding for fear of being recorded while praying, or holding political conversations with their fellow Muslim-Americans. The Associated Press has reported numerous articles of different cases where the Muslim neighborhoods and their people are being profiled. They have cases in which the N.Y.P.D. has embedded undercover agents to actually tally how many times a Muslim group will pray within one day and report it back to the government.  The writer of the editorial is passionate in his description of all the many ways the various legal groups target these poor people. The way the Mayor insists that all actions the Associated Press reported them doing were completely within the constitutional rights and considered legal. 

 

This article speaks to all Muslim-Americans and anyone who believe in freedom; clearly the author was angry and trying to reach the humanity side to his readers. The profiling done in cases like these is appalling as mentioned in the article it isn’t the first time, remember the 70’s and those protestors against the Vietnam war? This won’t be the last time either. I appreciated the follow up to the article and the statement issued last week by “Attorney General Eric Holder that the Justice Department is beginning to review complaints about the N.Y.P.D.’s surveillance of Muslim and Arab communities to determine whether a full civil rights investigation is warranted.” Somehow this makes me feel as if justice will be served.