Buying Water Is Not A Suspicious Activity

[bobandtorey]

Have you ever attended a protest? Have you ever taken a photo of a bridge or subway car? Maybe you’ve been so bold as to endanger the lives of your fellow Americans by buying a large case of bottled water?

As innocuous as these activities may seem, they are actual reasons that people around the United States have appeared in the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) database.

Disturbing new information obtained by the ACLU of California confirms warnings the ACLU has made for years that if your day-to-day life has seemed suspicious to anyone at all, there’s a chance a record of your name and the offending activity may appear in the government’s massive national database of Suspicious Activity Reports. Under the NSI and related programs, everyone – our neighbors, public employees, storekeepers, local police – are encouraged to help spy on us.

For years these databases, operated by the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, and state and local law enforcement agencies, have collected reports from individual citizens and local law enforcement about the “suspicious” activities of other people in the name of anti-terrorism. And according to the GAO, of the more than 27,000 reports that have been shared (and many more that have been collected) to date, there’s no evidence that any have been used to thwart any kind of terrorist threat.

Instead, the documents obtained by ACLU through a public records request confirm that rampant racial, ethnic, and religious stereotyping is taking place.

The Suspicious Activity Report program violates our rights, leads to profiling of minority groups, and has been a colossal waste of law enforcement time and resources.

The good news is we have a chance to change this. The agencies that run NSI are right now working on revisions to the rules that govern what kind of reports are kept and for how long. If we act now, we can push the Department of Justice to ensure that Suspicious Activity Reports are supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and allow for us all to engage in constitutionally protected activities without being considered a terrorism suspect.

 

https://www.aclu.org/secure/stop-the-suspicion?ms=fb_acluaction_national_security_130919

[Celliach]

I might be able to see where a normal person buying up 1000s of gallons of water might raise some flags.  Still....I'm not sure it should raise a red flag.  We can thank post 9-11 paranoia for this.

[bobandtorey]

Thank you but IMHO we can't blame 9-11 on every thing as they do they have been using that sense 9-11 to take more of the Rights  that we have or had but i do see your point

[Wild Bill]

Thank you but IMHO we can't blame 9-11 on every thing as they do they have been using that sense 9-11 to take more of the Rights  that we have or had but i do see your point

 

We were attacked 12 years ago so now we can do anything we want to you forever.

[Celliach]

I didn't blame 9-11.  I blamed the paranoia that this country became addicted to after 9-11.

[bobandtorey]

I IMHO blame the Internet because of it we know more and for me more then i ever wanted to no sometimes

[Celliach]

I IMHO blame the Internet because of it we know more and for me more then i ever wanted to no sometimes

 

Exactly!

[Chauncy Gardner]

 

Have you ever attended a protest? Have you ever taken a photo of a bridge or subway car? Maybe you’ve been so bold as to endanger the lives of your fellow Americans by buying a large case of bottled water?

As innocuous as these activities may seem, they are actual reasons that people around the United States have appeared in the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) database.

Disturbing new information obtained by the ACLU of California confirms warnings the ACLU has made for years that if your day-to-day life has seemed suspicious to anyone at all, there’s a chance a record of your name and the offending activity may appear in the government’s massive national database of Suspicious Activity Reports. Under the NSI and related programs, everyone – our neighbors, public employees, storekeepers, local police – are encouraged to help spy on us.

For years these databases, operated by the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, and state and local law enforcement agencies, have collected reports from individual citizens and local law enforcement about the “suspicious” activities of other people in the name of anti-terrorism. And according to the GAO, of the more than 27,000 reports that have been shared (and many more that have been collected) to date, there’s no evidence that any have been used to thwart any kind of terrorist threat.

Instead, the documents obtained by ACLU through a public records request confirm that rampant racial, ethnic, and religious stereotyping is taking place.

The Suspicious Activity Report program violates our rights, leads to profiling of minority groups, and has been a colossal waste of law enforcement time and resources.

The good news is we have a chance to change this. The agencies that run NSI are right now working on revisions to the rules that govern what kind of reports are kept and for how long. If we act now, we can push the Department of Justice to ensure that Suspicious Activity Reports are supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and allow for us all to engage in constitutionally protected activities without being considered a terrorism suspect.

 

https://www.aclu.org/secure/stop-the-suspicion?ms=fb_acluaction_national_security_130919

 

 

This is sooo 20th century communism. I can't believe all the conservatives, who have traditionally been rabid anti-communists, fall for this BS.

[Celliach]

This is sooo 20th century communism. I can't believe all the conservatives, who have traditionally been rabid anti-communists, fall for this BS.

 

It's actually more like facism.

[Celliach]

I was just watching some of the reactions to the Kenyan mall shootings on Fax news.  it occurred to me that only those on the right and in the middle (like Obama) are the only ones calling for more security and more war against terrorists.