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Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain. GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project. Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

Alvin Ailey performer: Israeli security made me dance Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - Added 17m ago JERUSALEM - A performer with the famed American Alvin Ailey dance troupe on Tuesday said he was twice forced to perform steps for Israeli airport security officers to prove his identity before he was permitted to enter the country. Abdur-Rahim Jackson, an eight-year veteran of the African American dance ensemble, said he was singled out by Israel’s renowned airport security because he has a Muslim name. He called the experience embarrassing and said at one point, one of the officers even suggested he change...

Harvard University will launch an examination of the campus Police Department following long-running complaints that officers have unfairly treated black students and professors and, in an incident this month, a black high school student working at Harvard. President Drew Gilpin Faust announced yesterday that she has appointed an independent, six-member committee to review the diversity training, community outreach, and recruitment efforts of Harvard police, the first review of its kind in more than a decade. In recent weeks, black student and faculty leaders have been pressing the university to address what they view as racial profiling by the predominantly white...

A new program by the U.S. Department of Justice targeting Muslim men of Arab descent for surveillance is unconstitutional, civil rights groups say. The new terrorist profile, set to be unveiled as early as this week, is meant to keep tabs on such men who frequently travel abroad and maintain extensive international contacts, the Detroit News reported Monday. Under the measure, the men may be subject not only to stops at the U.S.-Canadian border, but also to wider investigations that could include electronic surveillance and detentions, whether or not they are suspected of wrongdoing, the newspaper said. What is dangerous...

The report to the city Police Commission is greeted with skepticism. 'This is not a racist department,' Chief Bratton says in defending the report. Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit -- a conclusion that left members of the department's oversight commission incredulous. It is at least the sixth consecutive year that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers have been dismissed, according to department documents reviewed by The Times. In 2007, the LAPD's Internal Affairs Group closed 320...

  The Antiwar Movement's Case for Preemption and Profiling   By Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, April 18, 2008 CODE PINK MAY HAVE UNWITTINGLY BECOME THE BEST EXPONENTS of the policies of preemption and profiling in the War on Terror. Last Tuesday, Sen. Joseph Biden ejected Code Pink protesters set to interrupt General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's testimony on the state of Iraq. Biden instructed security to eject "the people making noise," and the Capitol police quickly responded, expelling the full Code Pink delegation. The latter stood out from the Hill staffers and military attachés listening respectfully to...

NEW YORK - To the untrained eye, the man looked like any other traveler as he waited in line at Kennedy Airport. But something about the way he was acting caught the attention of two security screeners. For 16 minutes, they questioned him, scanned every inch of his body twice with a metal-detecting wand and emptied his carry-on bag onto a table. Out came a car stereo with wires dangling from it. The man was eventually found to have done nothing wrong — he said he had pulled the stereo out of his car because he was afraid it would...

JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) -- Israel's renowned airline security faced a legal challenge Wednesday from a civil rights group charging that its practice of ethnic profiling is racist because it singles out Arabs for tougher treatment. At a Supreme Court hearing, civil rights lawyers demanded an end to the policy, which they say violates Israeli law. Such profiling is illegal in the U.S., where passengers must be singled out for security checks on a random basis. But some terrorism experts say Israel's measures are effective precisely because they take ethnicity into account — and warn that equality at the airport could...

The FBI believes its agents still aren't sensitive enough to Muslims and their culture, so the bureau has extended by "a few weeks" its Islamic cultural "enrichment" training program, WND has learned. During a recent outreach event at a Washington-area mosque, FBI officials also reassured a large turnout of concerned Muslims that the bureau is not profiling Arabs and Muslims for terrorism, and has made investigating alleged "hate crimes" against them and other minorities "the second-highest priority in the criminal division of the FBI." Among the officials who attended the Feb. 8 "town hall meeting" at the large ADAMS Center...

Son got his first ticket. Policeman said he didn't stop at a stop sign. It was dark, not even street lights in this area, but he saw this difficult-to-tell action in the dark, when Nathan says he had come to a stop. He didn't argue though. But then he wanted to search the car. We've always told son not to agree to that, there is no reason. (actually, his former-cop dad told him don't agree to it) Dad is not in the picture, so I have to ask you all. This was his first traffic stop and he was nervous....

If a pair of Transportation Security Administration officers strolling by a Sea-Tac Airport ticket counter wish you happy holidays and ask where you're traveling, it might be more than just Christmas spirit. Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors. TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program -- called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) -- that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent. But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions -- a flash...

KEENE, N.H., Dec. 28 --Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich today accused Republican candidate Mike Huckabee of using the tragic assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to create anti-Pakistani fears in the U.S. and to advance his own discriminatory immigration policies. "I know I'm not running against Mike Huckabee," said Kucinich, who is campaigning in New Hampshire, "but his remarks were so outrageous and so representative of the scare tactics and fearmongering policies of the current Republican administration that someone on the Democratic side of this campaign needs to speak out." Kucinich added, "To be silent would be the worst...

Profiling opponents erroneously or deceitfully claim that Timothy McVeigh was not profiled because he was white. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19121920&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6 I am currently working on a four part series about crime and punishment ( or lack thereof) in America. It should be very enlightening and informative. Concurrently, I am working with the Bulletin to sponsor a symposium about this. I have inquired about the availability of Justices Scalia and Alito both of whom are from the Philadelphia area, as well as Joe Arpaio who worked with my father at DEA. If anyone can think of a good panel member let me know. It...

If a person of Hispanic origin rapes a woman and, in an attempt to catch this violent criminal, police publish a description identifying the suspect's general racial makeup, is that a "racist" thing to do? Apparently the folks at KMYL (1190 AM) in the metro Phoenix, Arizona area think it is. It appears that we cannot even discuss the basic appearance of a wanted criminal now without being "racist" about it all. The story comes to us from The East Valley Tribune, where the paper quotes the vice president for programming at KMYL as saying that calling a criminal an...

Sources inside American Airlines tell me that the airline has no intention of settling last week's lawsuit filed in U.S. district court. David Al-Watan, Talal Cholagh, Ali Alzerej, Hassan Alzerej, Hussein Alsalih and Mohammad Al-Saedy are seeking "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in damages for racial profiling. This 12-page police report explains why American Airlines should never pay these men a dime. It also explains why several names should be added to the 800,000+ name no-fly list — if they haven't been added already. Aviation security is a national security issue. There should be a zero tolerance policy in effect...

A group of Iraqi Pentagon contractors is suing American Airlines claiming racial discrimination for delaying its flight, but a police report shows that some of the men might have been intoxicated, behaved in a frightening and belligerent manner and scared one family off the plane. The captain of American Airlines Flight 590 from San Diego to Chicago delayed the Aug. 28 takeoff after crew members reported that they "did not feel safe..." The Iraqi men filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, where they live... The captain did not alert the passengers...

Six Iraqi natives announced in Detroit last week that they are suing American Airlines for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” because they were racially profiled, leaving at least one of the six feeling “violated.” Putting aside the inaccurate charge—racial profiling is defined as the practice of substituting skin color for evidence as grounds for suspicion by law enforcement officials; the men’s skin color was never an issue—the real question to be asked of this scenario is, are groups of Middle Eastern men purposefully behaving suspiciously in airports and on airplanes in an effort to cash in on America’s civil justice...

Lancaster, PA - Civil rights advocates criticized plans by the Police Department to map the county's Amish communities, calling it racial profiling. The LCPD's counterterrorism bureau plans to identify Amish enclaves in order to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to "violent, ideologically based extremism," said Deputy Chief Michael P. Drowning on Thursday. "We want to know where the Shakers, Quakers and Amish are so we can reach out to those communities," said Drowning, who heads the counterterrorism bureau. Downing said the plan is still in its early stages, but the LCPD wants to work with...

(AP) FREDERICK, Md. A man reportedly stopped by Frederick County sheriff's deputies for having too many air fresheners on his rearview mirror says he suspects the real reason he is that he is Hispanic. Mauricio Arellano told The Frederick News-Post that the deputies "found an excuse" to stop him and check his immigration status.

He might be a middle-aged white guy from the West, but Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) suddenly understands the travails of people stopped for "DWB": driving while black. In the course of his interview with Matt Lauer, aired last night and excerpted on this morning's "Today," Craig tried to play the profiling card. MATT LAUER: The fact that these motions seemed to replicate a well-established sequence of signals for soliciting anonymous sex, it's a coincidence?View video here. LARRY CRAIG: I now know that this cop, this officer [shades of "that woman, Ms. Lewinsky"?] is a profiler. He said looking into a...

PEORIA - What was supposed to be an opportunity to teach students a lesson - walking in the middle of the street is illegal and poses a risk to their safety - has swelled into a controversy denouncing police of racially profiling black youths. "When we issue citations we're trying to train children there are boundaries in society that you have to follow to have an orderly society," Peoria Police Chief Steven Settingsgaard told an audience of neighborhood activists, concerned residents, media and fellow police officers at a Friday morning news conference. "(People) have taken this opportunity and turned it...

<p>The law does some foolish things, it doesn't do crazy things, Floyd Abrams informed a "60 Minutes" audience Sunday. The First Amendment expert and champion of individual rights had in mind, specifically, the arguments of civil libertarians and others now objecting to airport security measures or other special scrutiny focusing on Arab male passengers. "It would be crazy," Mr. Abrams observed, "not to consider what people look like when we're looking for people who may be involved with hijackings."</p>

Civil liberties group calls on Arab sector to protest humiliating security screenings at Ben Gurion airport, shun national airline Roee Nahmias Published: 09.18.07, 17:54 / Israel News Israeli Arabs should boycott El Al, a new pressure group said in its first press conference Tuesday in Nazareth. The group, a subcommittee for Arab civil liberties in Israel, has been formed under the auspices of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee. The boycott call comes in protest of the screening process Israeli Arabs citizens are subjected to at Ben-Gurion airport. Aside from the airport issue, the new group said it wanted to fight...

Group calls New Rule A Form Of Racial Profiling (CBS) NEW YORK The new federal policy of checking hats when going through airport security is causing a serious controversy, with many now asking: Is it a necessary security measure or another act of racial profiling?

To the Islamists of CAIR: How dare you exploit Americans' tolerance to your fascism? Each now & then we are hit by another stunt of/by CAIR, be it defending the flying Imams that were chanting pro Bin Laden slogans, or catagorizing as "hate" an enraged understandable student in Pace university [regardless if one agrees with his particular expression of: flushing the Quran down the toilet] over Islamists' actions (by the infamous MSA Muslim Students Association' known for it's pro terrorism stand & hate mongering propaganda) against showing the 'Obsession' movie - that exposes Islamofascism & world Jihad.The Islamists know us...

Brussels, 3 July (AKI) - An airline passenger data recording system for the whole of the European Union is among new measures being prepared by the European Commission, justice and security commissioner Franco Frattini announced on Tuesday in Brussels. The plan will offer all member states the possibility to establish "national databases of passengers from across the world who fly through their airspace." Frattini is also drafting legislation that will make it a crime to post bomb-making instructions to the Internet, he said. The measures being drawn up follow a heightened security alert in Europe and other continents following last...

DES MOINES - Cecilia Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of Sunday is also a suspected terrorist. "This is not right," she told us. It's not right!" This past weekend she and several other chaperones took 37 middle school students to a Heritage Festival band competition in California. The trip included two days at Disneyland. During the stay she made sandwiches for the kids and was careful to pack the knives she used to prepare those sandwiches in her checked luggage. She says she even alerted security screeners that the...

US airport security check leaves Dr Dorit Zilberman distraught, after reportedly being humiliated only because of her nationality. 'My family perished in Europe's gas chambers, I never thought 65 years later I would be marked, isolated, and put in a gas chamber' Itamar Eichner Published: 06.03.07, 09:48 / Israel News An Israeli doctor who underwent tight security checks at San Francisco International claims that she was humiliated only because of her nationality. Dr Dorit Zilberman, a senior urologist at the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer who was visiting the United States for the first time for a professional...

Political correctness in a time of terror Steven Edwards, National Post Published: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 NEW YORK - The extent of our brainwashing by the politically correct has been exposed by follow-up reporting on the terror plot targeting a U.S. Army base. The teenaged clerk whose tip led to the arrests of six Muslim men on May 8 feared at first he would be accused of racism if he went to the authorities. Had he not overcome his initial PC reaction, the alleged plotters might well have gone undetected and succeeded in their supposed bid to kill as...

  The Mouse That (Finally) RoaredMay 24, 2007 First the French elect Nicolas Sarkozy and now a proposal to profile mosques...my God, is Europe finally starting to roar? That’s right, as America goes about defending itself with bright-bulb ideas like Compromise Immigration Legislation (Amnesty)...the European Union is actually doing something to defend its citizens from Islamic terrorists. Can you imagine that while the President and a vast majority of Congressional wimps protect America’s national security by: (1) flooding the U.S. with illegal aliens; (2) sacrificing the lives of brave American troops by waging politically correct “warfare” in Iraq and Afghanistan and (3) defending...

Rania Jubran is the first-ever Israeli Arab cadet, or diplomatic intern, in the Foreign Ministry, and she is also the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Salim Jubran. In mid-February, before boarding a flight to Barcelona, Jubran, 26, showed passenger security examiners at Ben-Gurion Airport her Foreign Ministry ID card, but it didn't help. They took her aside and told her to open her suitcases, which they tagged as a high security risk. Then the questioning got going in earnest. "At that point I asked to clarify the matter with the security officer in charge," she wrote to Prime Minister Ehud...

The following is an excerpt from the Sun Herald article published today: A vanload of 15 Latino immigrants was pulled over Monday morning on Interstate 10 by the Border Patrol in Harrison County and 10 of them were found to not have proper immigration documentation, according to witnesses....... Read the entire article. Then FREEP the poll!

The repercussions of an airline's decision to remove a group of imams from a commercial flight in Minneapolis could be heard in Congress this year, with civil rights groups pushing Democratic lawmakers to ban racial profiling. The incident happened in November, made national news and reinvigorated an old proposal that got little attention from the GOP. Now, a champion of the legislation, Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction on the issue. Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., who sponsored legislation to ban racial profiling in the...

Isn't one 9/11 enough? Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright seems to hope for more terrorist attacks. Wright has proposed this bill in the New York State Assembly: A00627 Summary: BILL NO A00627 SAME AS No same as SPONSOR Wright COSPNSR Robinson, Greene, McEneny, Rivera J, Lavelle, Gantt MLTSPNSR Boyland, Clark, Diaz L, Farrell, Gordon D, Heastie, Jacobs, John, Lopez V, Peoples, Peralta, Towns, Weinstein Add S837-r, Exec L Prohibits police officers from using racial and ethnic profiling; requires that a procedure be established for the taking and review of complaints against police officers for racial and ethnic profiling; allows an action...

PROVIDENCE -- Police would be prohibited from asking passengers of a car for identification after a traffic stop unless criminal activity is suspected, under an antiracial-profiling bill announced by state legislators yesterday. The bill also would require police to document in writing their grounds for searching a vehicle and would bar officers from asking about immigration status, except in certain circumstances. They said the legislation was in response to incidents last summer and fall they contend were racially motivated. In July, a state trooper stopped a van carrying Guatemalan nationals on Interstate 95 and temporarily detained the vehicle. The van,...

The Anti-Profiling Agenda By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | January 12, 2007 Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) has been named to the House Judiciary Committee. Ellison said in a statement: “I look forward to pursuing a progressive agenda in the committee, including the restoration of American citizen’s civil liberties that have come under increasing attack over the past six years.” The American citizens Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim congressman, has in mind are likely Muslims who charge that they have been subjected to unjust scrutiny and inconvenience in the aftermath of 9/11. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) shares this view: she has...

MIAMI -- Three Middle Eastern men who were arrested and later had charges against them dropped over a brief terrorism scare at the Port of Miami on Sunday said they were unfairly targeted because of their ethnicity and creed. Amar Al-Hadad said he was "humiliated, disrespected (and) treated real badly just because my name is an Arabic name and I'm a Muslim." The Iraqi-born Al-Hadad cried during the Monday news conference in which he described the way he, his brother, Hussain Al Hadad, and friend, Hassan El Sayed, were treated. "We were treated like animals," El Sayed said.

I married 14 years ago and just had my firstborn, a son, this past September. I met my wife in medical school. She was originally from Lithuania and when I met her she was on a H1-B visa working as an adjunct professor of internal medicine. She had made significant contributions to medical science and had been asked to lecture at med school for the year. That was 16 years ago in the afterglow of the world of Ronald Reagan. She became a naturalized US citizen in 1996. We've had a real love affair ever since but children did not...

On Dec. 1, a curious report on the grounded-imams incident at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport appeared on the website of the Iranian Quran News Agency. The report quoted extensively from Madhi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. The foundation is the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group," according to the Chicago Tribune. Bray's initial statement about the incident had an all-American, see-you-in-court ring. He demanded "large financial compensation for the imams," adding, "We want US Airways and any other airline displaying this type of behavior against Muslims to...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has issued a (call for complaints) of discrimination on the part of airlines by Muslims who travel to Mecca this year: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), citing what it called the "airport profiling" of six imams removed from a recent flight, yesterday said Muslims traveling this month to the holy site in Saudi Arabia need to be aware of their rights. "Given the increase in the number of complaints CAIR has received alleging airport profiling of American Muslims, we believe it is important that all those taking part in this year's hajj be aware...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is warning Muslims to be on the lookout for discrimination at airport security. Is it fair to subject American Muslims to extra security? Yes it’s fair. All is fair in wartime. O It’s not fair, but it is necessary. O It’s not only unfair, it’s downright un-American. O

WASHINGTON - For the past four years, without public notice, federal agents have assigned millions of Americans and other international travelers computer-generated scores assessing the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals. The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments. And the government intends to keep them on file for 40 years. Earlier in November, the government disclosed the existence and details of the Automated Targeting System (ATS) for the first time in the Federal Register. Privacy and civil liberties lawyers, congressional aides and even law enforcement officers said they thought the ATS had...

The Minneapolis Six Sabotage Airline Security By Janet Levy FrontPageMagazine.com | November 28, 2006 At the Minneapolis airport prior to the Thanksgiving holiday on Tuesday, Nov. 21, six imams who had been attending a conference of the North American Imams Federation were handcuffed and removed from U.S. Airways Flight 300 bound for Phoenix. The clerics were escorted off the plane at the request of the pilot after passengers expressed concern about the imams’ actions in the Minneapolis-St. Paul terminal and on the plane. According to airport spokesman Paul Hogan, the imams gathered in the boarding gate area and were “praying...

Spokesman for 6 Muslim clerics barred from US Airways flight One of six Muslim imams pulled from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last night by federal authorities is affiliated with a Hamas-linked organization and acknowledged a connection to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. Omar Shahin, who served as a spokesman for the clerics, is a representative of the Kind Hearts Organization, which had its assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury pending an investigation, notes Islam scholar Robert Spencer on his weblog JihadWatch Treasury spokesman Stuart Levey in February said KindHearts "is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and...

NEWARK, N.J. -- A New Jersey Muslim group is launching a nationwide effort to record complaints about Muslims being wrongfully detained or questioned at airports to determine where the worst problem areas are. The goal is not to file lawsuits, but to get to the source of problems and correct it, said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer for the American Muslim Union.

No quarter in dealing with terrorists By KARL WEINBERG COMMUNITY VOICE On the subject of how to treat terrorists once caught in our fight against Islamofascists, the mainstream media would have us believe that we are torturing the captives by using sleep deprivation, loud rock'n' roll music, female interrogators and such. Many Americans, including me, do not believe this is torture at all. Instead, we believe that much harsher treatment should be used to get information from these terrorists. While the U.S. Supreme Court, Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham have said these terrorists are covered under Common Article three...

TESTIMONY Subcommittee on Homeland Security (Senate Appropriations Committee) Publication Date: September 14, 2006 Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security regarding American and British laws for investigating and detaining suspected terrorists. I am a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2001 to 2003, I served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, where I worked on issues involving national security, foreign relations, and terrorism. My academic writing on these subjects can be found in two books, one published last...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6098959 [Paraphrasing selected text] How would you identify who is most likely to take the lives of innocent people? From this NPR report, "You use modern DATA MINING to identify those who are the highest risk." You see, it's essentially a needle in a haystack problem. Instead of focusing on the whole haystack on the theory that we'll equally expose all the 'needles' to this program, we're trying to identify the handful of key indicators that someone might commit such a terrible action. Things like (gasp!) their gender. Turns out, most are males... This is a million-dollar pilot program to...

Mogadishu 17, Sep. 06 ( Sh.M.Network) - Unidentified gunmen are reported to have raided Mogadishu’s SOS hospital and gunned down one of the foreign nuns in the hospital.Reliable sources say the nun, thought to be an Italian, is confirmed dead. A bodyguard of the nun instantly died after he was fatally shot by two men reportedly armed with handguns. Reports also indicate that the two assailants have been nabbed by armed guards within SOS hospital. Six other suspects have also arrested as one of the Islamic Courts leaders Sheik Yusuf Indho-adde told reporters. The motive of the attack remains unknown....

NEW DELHI: Strategic experts have warned that some of the recent security incidents in different parts of the world involving aircraft and airports could be 'testers' by terrorists. Though some of these airline security incidents could be results of 'genuine innocence' of first-time travellers, the experts have asked the airlines and aviation authorities not to ignore them as some of them could be terrorist probes with actual imminent threats. They have also pointed out that there have been about two dozen incidents since August, leading to flight diversions, emergency landings, escorting of civil aircraft by air force fighters and arrests...