My jaw is hanging open at this one.
I have my problems with the govt collecting all these phone records. But not at the idea of them examining records
with a warrant, but at the idea that the govt itself owns the database of records - an obvious temptation for abuse, quietly going in to
their own records without getting a warrant as the 4th amendment requires.
But now I hear that, even though they were going in and examining these records,
they deliberately didn't do it where a mosque was involved???
WHAT THE HELL?????
Did they also back off if they found a phone number they were chasing, led to a Catholic church, or Baptist, or a synagogue, or Mormon etc.?
As cynical as I am about what this administration does, I've never bought into the idea that they would deliberately REFUSE to investigate Islamic groups simply because they were Islamic groups. That would be a little like, during WWII, refusing to investigate Nazi-sympathizer groups simply because they were Nazi sympathizers, even as people with clear Nazi connections went around derailing trains and blowing things up.
Even the TSA, when it screens airline passengers, special-screens SOME middle-Eastern people speaking Arabic, and doesn't screen others, even as it special-screens some 80-year-old grandmothers and doesn't screen others. But has the TSA ever been ordered not to special-screen ANY middle-eastern-looking people, after the vast majority of hijackings, bombings etc. have been done by middle Eastern people?
The article mentions that a few Islamic groups (CAIR etc.) "pressured" the government to back off. Please, please tell me that the govt's response was, "Go take a hike, we treat everybody the same, including middle eastern people".
Please.
The implications of any other response, are too monstrous to be borne.
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Obama Restricts Spying In Mosques While Spying Everywhere Else - Investors.com
Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers
Posted 06/12/2013 06:34 PM ET
Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.
That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.
Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.
Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.
We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel's formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.
One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn't monitored, red flags didn't go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.
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