The New York Civil Liberties Union, which has long been involved in challenging NYPD surveillance practices, today called for a federal investigation in response to news reports that the Justice Department had found the department was seeking permission for unlawful surveillance.
“The NYPD has gone too far, even for the Bush Administration,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “Given the NYPD’s long record of surveillance abuse, which has often been targeted at New Yorkers’ lawful political activities, it’s time for a serious investigation by the Justice Department into NYPD surveillance practices. If the Bush Administration is not prepared to undertake this, we’re confident the Obama Administration will.”
The NYPD has a history spying on law-abiding New Yorkers. The NYCLU first challenged the department’s creation and maintenance of political dossiers on activists and its use of undercover and surveillance techniques to monitor political activities in 1971, with the Handschu v. Special Services Division case. That case continues decades later as the NYPD routinely introduces new forms of political surveillance.
The NYCLU also successfully uncovered a nationwide police surveillance operation in the lead up to the 2004 Republican National Convention. In that operation, teams of undercover police officers traveled to cities across the country to conduct covert observations of people who planned to legally protest at the convention, attended meetings of political groups and posing as sympathizers or fellow activists. The NYPD and New York City are right now appealing a court order requiring the production of hundreds of files created during that operation.
According to news reports today, United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused to approve new NYPD requests to conduct surveillance operations.
“Our police department too often disregards the law when it comes to watching New Yorkers,” Lieberman said. “The question that must now be answered is, what was the department proposing in these applications? Who does the NYPD want to spy on this time? The NYPD should come clean and disclose how many surveillance orders it applied for, as well as how many were granted.”
The NYCLU and its parent organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit in July challenging the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives the government broad authority to conduct physical searches and electronic surveillance without criminal probable cause. In other words, it allows the government to conduct the most intrusive kinds of surveillance without complying with the usual requirements of the Fourth Amendment,” said Jameel Jaffer director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “Apparently the NYPD believes that even the exceedingly lax standards of FISA are too onerous.”
