Back in 2004, FBI Special Agent Bill Shute set out to prove a point. A self-described “visual learner,” Shute thought that if you took arrest data from court records and local police and dumped it into Microsoft mapping software, you could ostensibly target specific geographic areas to find informants who could give vital information to help solve cases. He called the effort Project Pinpoint.
According to Bureau, the program was hugely successful. That’s when the agency’s counterterrorism branch got involved. Deputy counterterrorism chief Willie Hulon told a congressional panel that same year of a massive FBI database called the Investigative Data Warehouse. The program extended the reach of Shute’s local effort by collecting and sharing maps with FBI agents across the country.
The program eventually evolved into an effort known as “geo-mapping” — a method to track Muslim communities, even when there’s no suspicion that a crime is being committed.
The news, as reported by Spencer Ackerman at Wired, is just the latest example of the FBI’s warrantless surveillance of Muslim American communities during the War on Terror. Back in September, Wired also uncovered that the FBI was distributing training materials to its agents that described Muslims as “violent” and “radical.” That news came on top of a report from Trevor Aaronson at Mother Jones that the FBI had long been using spies to concoct phony terror plots. Our own Asraa Mustafa reported for Colorlines.com that the Obama administration was now making it nearly impossible for people caught in the FBI’s traps to protect their rights through lawsuits.
The American Civil Liberties Union recently got hold of the FBI’s maps, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. As you can see below, the maps are heavily redacted. But, as Ackerman points out, “they represent the first public confirmation that the FBI compiles maps of businesses, community centers and religious institutions in ethnic enclaves around the United States.”
The FBI’s response? They “oppose racial and ethnic discrimination,” according to a recently issued press release. And, they claim, what they’re doing isn’t actually that bad. From the press release: “[j]ust as putting push pins on a map will allow a local police chief to see clearly where the highest crime areas are, combining data that is lawfully collected into one place allows connections to be identified that might otherwise go unnoticed.”
The Justice department has recently vowed to re-think their training methods and scrub themselves clean of Islamophobia. To put it lightly, that’s no easy task.
Reprinted with permission of Colorlines.com. Sign up to receive Colorlines Direct, a weekly email digest of key stories on Colorlines.com. You'll get award-winning news from our multi-racial team of writers covering hot topics and a broad range of issues from a racial justice perspective
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy