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FBI's
Claimed Authority To Track And Map Racial And Ethnic
"Behaviors" And "Lifestyle Characteristics" Of American
Communities Invites Racial Profiling
DETROIT – The American Civil Liberties Union and the
ACLU of Michigan today sued the FBI and Department of
Justice for records related to the FBI's use of race and
ethnicity in conducting assessments and investigations
of local communities in Michigan. According to an FBI
operations guide, FBI agents have the authority to
collect information about, and create maps of, so-called
racial and ethnic behaviors, lifestyle characteristics
and cultural traditions and "ethnic-oriented" businesses
in communities with concentrated ethnic populations.
“Through this lawsuit we hope to get records that will
tell us exactly what federal law enforcement officials
are doing and whether Americans are protected,” said
Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project
staff attorney. “Law enforcement profiling based on race
and ethnicity has the potential to erode community trust
while doing nothing to solve or deter crime. It’s
important that Michigan residents know what federal law
enforcement officials are doing so that as a community
we can hold them accountable for any abuses of power.”
The
FBI's power to collect, use and map racial and ethnic
data in order to assist the FBI's "domain awareness" and
"intelligence analysis" activities is described in the
2008 FBI Domestic Intelligence and Operations Guide (DIOG).
The FBI released the DIOG in heavily redacted form in
September 2009, but a less-censored version was not made
public until January 2010. Although the DIOG has been in
effect for more than two years, very little information
is available to the public about how the FBI has
implemented this authority.
Last summer, ACLU affiliate offices across the nation
filed coordinated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests to uncover records about the FBI's collection
and use of racial and ethnicity data from their local
FBI field offices. Today’s lawsuit challenges the FBI’s
withholding of documents in Michigan. In the past year,
several other ACLU affiliates have filed similar
lawsuits.
“While the collection of some racial and ethnic data
about communities might assist in addressing
discrimination, the FBI's claimed authority to target
and map certain racial and
ethnic
communities for increased scrutiny and investigation
invites unconstitutional racial profiling,” said Nusrat
Choudhury, staff attorney with the ACLU National
Security Project. "In America, we don’t target
neighborhoods for law enforcement purposes based on the
ethnic makeup of the people who live there or the types
of businesses they run."
The
attorneys on the case, ACLU of Michigan v. FBI, are Mark
Fancher, Kary L. Moss and Michael J. Steinberg of the
ACLU of Michigan; ACLU of Michigan cooperating attorney
Stephen Borgsdorf of Dykema Gossett PLLC; and Hina
Shamsi and Nusrat Choudhury of the ACLU National
Security Project.
To
read the complaint, go to:
http://www.aclumich.org/sites/default/files/ACLUvsFBI.pdf
To
read about the FOIA request, go to:
http://www.aclumich.org/issues/racial-justice/2010-07/1458 |
