The Maine Civil Liberties Union has asked the FBI to turn over records related to the agency’s collection and use of race and ethnicity data in local communities.
The MCLU was one of 29 affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union that Tuesday filed Freedom of Information requests seeking details about how the FBI uses mapping computer software in gathering information.
“We have filed this request to ensure that the FBI is not targeting Mainers based on their race or ethnicity,” Shenna Bellows, executive director of the MCLU, said in press release issued Tuesday.
The FBI said Tuesday that its procedures were designed to ensure that its investigations don’t zero in on anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or the exercise of any other constitutional right. The agency also said that it equips agents with lawful and appropriate tools so the agency can transform itself into an intelligence-driven organization that investigates genuine criminal and national security threats.
The ACLU and its affiliates last year became concerned about how the FBI was gathering information when an edited version of the bureau’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide became public as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A less-censored version of the guide was made public in January in response to a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Muslim Advocates.
The manual was approved in December 2008, during the final days of the George W. Bush administration, and establishes policy that guides all of the FBI’s domestic operations, including counterterrorism, counterintelligence and cybercrime.
According to the ACLU, the FBI’s operations guide gives agents the authority to create maps of ethnic-oriented businesses, behavior, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations.
While some racial and ethnic data collection by some agencies might be helpful in lessening discrimination, the FBI’s attempt to collect and map demographic data using race-based criteria invites unconstitutional racial profiling by law enforcement, the MCLU said in the press release. The information being sought is how the FBI has implemented what is described in the operations guide, according to Bellows.
“Criminals can come from anywhere and have any color skin,” said Zachary Heiden, legal director for the MCLU. “FBI profiling of communities based on race and ethnicity not only contradicts our values, but it also undermines legitimate law enforcement concerns.”
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III spoke about how mapping technology could be used to fight crime in a November 2008 speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego, Calif. The speech was provided to the Bangor Daily News by the FBI’s press office in Washington, D.C., in response to a request for comment on the MCLU’s actions.
“The genius of mapping technology is that any crime data can be compared to any other investigative data set,” Mueller said. “And it is when we combine the FBI’s data with your data that we can view intelligence in a new light.
“It is one thing to suppose there might be a connection between firearms seizures, narcotics arrests, and shootings in a certain quadrant of your city,” he continued. “It is another thing to find out by seeing the connections on a computer screen.
“On the strategic level, visual mapping shows us our domain,” he said. “It reveals connections among our cases we might not otherwise see. And it helps us better manage our resources. On the tactical level, seeing crime problems and patterns on a map points us to doors we can knock on and persons who can give us informa-tion. Simply put, it gives us actionable intelligence.”
The MCLU and the ACLU do not object to using mapping technology to fight crime as long as it is not based on the ethnic makeup of a community, Michael German, ACLU’s policy counsel and a former FBI agent, said in the press release issued by the MCLU.
“The FBI’s mapping of local communities and businesses based on race and ethnicity, as well as its ability to target communities for investigation based on supposed racial and ethnic behaviors, raises serious civil liberties concerns,” he said. “Creating a profile of a neighborhood for criminal law enforcement or domestic intelli-gence purposes based on the ethnic makeup of the people who live there or the types of businesses they run is unfair, un-American and will certainly not help stop crime.”
Muslim Advocates also criticized the FBI’s tactics Tuesday.
Farhana Khera, executive director of the group, said the FBI has lowered the bar for sending undercover agents or informants into mosques and has enabled the gathering of data about Muslims’ charitable giving practices, financial transactions and jobs.
“It’s quite an invasive data collection system,” Khera said. “It’s based on generalized suspicion and fear on the part of law enforcement, not on individualized evidence of criminal activity.”
Khera said the FBI is still keeping portions of the guide out of the public domain — namely, those that deal with sending agents or informants into houses of worship and political gatherings.
The FBI has previously stated that the bureau would go into a mosque only if it had some reason to believe there was criminal activity, said Khera. If that is the standard, the FBI should have no problem actually disclosing that section of the document, Khera said.
Mueller is scheduled to make a previously scheduled appearance Wednesday before a congressional committee with oversight of the FBI.