Traitors in our midst? NYPD pays to bait Muslims into extremism

NYPD paid teenage informant THOUSANDS to 'bait' Muslims into talking about terrorism and jihads

• Police enticed Shamiur Rahman, 19, to help spy on Muslims for them
• He collected pictures of people at rallies, Muslim community talks, and interior shots of mosques
• Paid him up to $1,000-per-month
• NYPD denies widespread spying but CIA allegedly helped set program up

By ASSOCIATED PRESS/DAILYMAIL

October 23, 2012

A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to 'bait' Muslims into saying incriminating things as he lived a double life.

Shamuir Rahman (left) attended a Muslim
student group's talk, where he posed
for a photo with prominent but controversial
New York imam Siraj Wahhaj (right)

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent, was paid up to $1,000 per month for snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

He now denounces his work as an informant, saying police told him to embrace a strategy called 'create and capture.'

The strategy had him create a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD.

In addition to the monthly payments, Rahman also earned goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

'We need you to pretend to be one of them,' Rahman recalled the police telling him. 'It's street theater.'

Rahman, who said he plans to move to the Caribbean, said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was 'detrimental to the Constitution.'

After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, 'Steve,' and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques — known informally as 'mosque crawlers' — tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.
The programs were built with unprecedented help from the CIA.


Secrets: In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the NYPD activated and enlisted informants who could attend Muslim community events and mosques without being noticed

Police recruited Rahman in late January, after his third arrest on misdemeanor drug charges, which Rahman believed would lead to serious legal consequences.

An NYPD plainclothes officer approached him in a Queens jail and asked whether he wanted to turn his life around: the next month, Rahman said, he was on the NYPD's payroll.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not immediately return a message seeking comment about Tuesday. He has denied widespread NYPD spying, saying police only follow leads.
Rahman said he received little training and spied on 'everything and anyone.' He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams.

By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.

Rahman said he thought he was doing important work protecting New York City and considered himself a hero.

One of his earliest assignments was to spy on a February lecture at the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College in Manhattan. The speaker was Ali Abdul Karim, the head of security at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn.

The NYPD had been concerned about Karim for years and already had infiltrated the mosque, according to NYPD documents obtained by the AP.


Denials: Police officials, including commissioner Ray Kelly, denied widespread NYPD spying, saying police only follow leads

Rahman also was instructed to monitor the student group itself, though he wasn't told to target anyone specifically. His NYPD handler, Steve, told him to take pictures of people at the events, determine who belonged to the student association and identify its leadership.

Rahman attended the event with Karim and listened, ready to catch what he called a 'speaker's gaffe.' The NYPD was interested in buzz words such as 'jihad' and 'revolution,' he said. Any radical rhetoric, the NYPD told him, needed to be reported...

(click here to read the full article)

Secret NYPD cell operated in New Brunswick, NJ and gets flushed by 911 call ?!?

RT NEWS
July 25, 2012

“Really? In New Brunswick?” asks a baffled 911 operator as an alarmed caller reports an empty flat strewn with photos of terrorists and Muslim books. But when the FBI dashed to the scene, they find not a terrorist cell but a New York police hideout.

Nothing promised such a major embarrassment for the New York Police Department on a June day. Then the 911 telephone line of the New Brunswick Police rang. An alarmed resident of the New Jersey town was saying he had come across something very suspicious.

[...]

"There's computer hardware, software, you know, just lying around,” continued the caller. “There's pictures of terrorists. There's pictures of our neighboring building that they have."

"In New Brunswick?" the dispatcher asked – still seemingly unconvinced.

Though the two were talking back in 2009, the tape of the call has only this week been obtained from the New Brunswick Police Department, following a court action by the Associated Press.

The caller, Salil Sheth, had just been doing his job, conducting a routine inspection and had come across a flat which almost screamed 9/11. Rushing to the scene, the FBI found a small apartment with no furniture or clothes, but with two computers, dozens of black plastic boxes and piles of Muslim literature on the solitary table.

A closer look at apartment No.1076 caused eyebrows to be raised even higher. This was no terrorist cell, but a secret hideout of New York City Police Department detectives, who later proved to have been gathering intelligence on the Muslim community of New Brunswick. But the NYPD had not bothered to inform local officers and agents of the operation.

The materials found at the apartment showed New York officers had been using various techniques to spy on New Brunswick Muslims. They had infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes, kept tabs on student groups, including some at Rutgers University. This had enabled the officers to build databases on virtually anything...

(click here to read the full article on RT NEWS)

NSA whistleblowers: Government spying on every single American (RT NEWS)

RT NEWS
July 25, 2012

image credit: Reuters/Jason Reed

The TSA, DHS and countless other security agencies have been established to keep America safe from terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. How far beyond that does the feds’ reach really go, though?

The attacks September 11, 2001, were instrumental in enabling the US government to establish counterterrorism agencies to prevent future tragedies. Some officials say that they haven’t stopped there, though, and are spying on everyone in America — all in the name of national security.

Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the US government is granting itself surveillance powers far beyond what most Americans consider the proper role of the federal government.

In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency's respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.

The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.

In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”

These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.
“When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security,” Drake said.

Although Drake’s accusations seem astounding, they corroborate allegations made by Binney only a week earlier. Speaking at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City earlier this month, Binney addressed a room of thousands about the NSA’s domestic spying efforts. But in a candid interview with journalist Geoff Shively during HOPE, the ex-NSA official candidly revealed the full extent of the surveillance program.

“Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process,” Binney said.

Drake and Binney’s statements follow the revelation that law enforcement officers collected cell phone records on 1.3 million Americans in 2011. More news articles are emerging every day suggesting that the surveillance of Americans — off-the-radar and under wraps — is growing at an exponential rate.

Facebook NOW has facial recognition...now a bigger asset to the CIA and intelligence agencies

Facebook buys facial recognition startup Face.com
by Jennifer Van Grove
Reuters
June 19, 2012

Facebook has purchased facial recognition startup Face.com, the companies announced Monday morning.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint in
2011 against Facebook over their facial recognition capabilities.

“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat. “This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but previous reports pegged the acquisition price at between $80 million and $100 million. The deal, which is still pending, is expected to close within the coming weeks.

Founded in 2007, Face.com makes technology that can identify people in photos and even guess a person’s age. The company makes mobile-friendly products such as a developer API and an iOS camera application called KLIK that uses facial recognition technology to help users...

(click here to read the full article)

Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails (Democracy Now)

Democracynow.org
April 20, 2012


Published on Apr 20, 2012 by democracynow
http://youtu.be/hfS2Op9l3nk

DemocracyNow.org - National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens.

This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 1, 2, and 4. [includes rush transcript]


GUESTS:
William Binney, served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state."

Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher who has volunteered with WikiLeaks. He is a developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a network enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the internet.

Laura Poitras, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer. She is working on the third part of a trilogy of films about America post-9/11. The first film was My Country, My Country," and the second was The Oath.

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