Blog of Rights
Nusrat
Choudhury

Nusrat Choudhury received her B.A. from Columbia University, and is a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Yale Law School. Prior to joining NSP, Choudhury worked as a Marvin A. Karpatkin Fellow in the ACLU's Racial Justice Program and served as a clerk for Judge Barrington D. Parker in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and for Judge Denise Cote in the Southern District of New York.

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03/25/2013
No-Fly List

The Constitution Applies When the Government Bans Americans From the Skies

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project & Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 2:58pm

The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful...

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07/30/2012
No-Fly List

Ninth Circuit Gives ACLU’s No Fly List Clients Their Day in Court

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 11:15am

Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s secretive No Fly List should go forward. This decision is a true victory for our clients and all Americans.

More than two years ago, 15 U.S. citizens and permanent residents, including four military veterans, were denied boarding on planes. None of them know why this happened. And no government authority has ever given them an explanation or a fair chance to clear their names.

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02/04/2013
Racial Mapping

Shhhh – What The FBI Doesn’t Want You to Know About its Racial Profiling Program

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 12:40pm

The FBI is using a racial and ethnic mapping program to collect intelligence on American communities...

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03/27/2012
Religious Discrimination

FBI FOIA Docs Show Use of "Mosque Outreach" for Illegal Intel Gathering

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 11:38am

This type of secret intelligence gathering is an affront to religious liberty and the right to equal protection of the law.

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11/09/2010
No-Fly List

Exiled From Home

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 5:07pm

Last summer, the ACLU and its affiliates in Oregon, Southern California, Northern California and New Mexico filed a lawsuit on behalf of 17 U.S. citizens and legal residents to challenge their placement on the U.S. government's No-Fly List and the failure of the government to give them a chance to defend themselves. Some of these people were in the United States when they found themselves suddenly and without explanation unable to board a plane. Others — including military veterans, students and people visiting family — were overseas and were effectively exiled from their own country because they couldn't board a plane to fly home.

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10/21/2011
FBI

Mapping the FBI: Documents Show Widespread Racial and Religious Profiling by Government

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 5:12pm

Yesterday, the ACLU unveiled a new initiative — Mapping the FBI — that exposes the ways in which vastly expanded FBI investigative authority has resulted in the unconstitutional investigation of American communities and individuals based on who they are and what they believe.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests in 31 states and Washington, D.C. (enforced by lawsuits in Michigan, New Jersey and California), ACLU and its affiliates uncovered and analyzed thousands of FBI documents. These documents reveal that the FBI is gathering intelligence on and mapping communities based on the association of a certain race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion with the propensity to commit various crimes.

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12/01/2011
FBI

Big Brother, Come Clean: The FBI is Misusing "Community Outreach" Programs for Intelligence Gathering

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:59pm

The FBI is secretly and deliberately collecting information about innocent Americans' First Amendment-protected activities.

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12/09/2011
FBI

The Proof is in the Practice: FBI Documents Show Misuse of Community Outreach for Intelligence Gathering and Privacy Act Violations

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 3:28pm

Last week, the ACLU released FBI documents showing that the bureau is secretly and deliberately collecting information about innocent Americans through community outreach programs and retaining information about these Americans’ speech, beliefs, and other First Amendment-protected activities in violation of the Privacy Act.  The Washington Post reported on Muslim community concerns over this practice.

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09/02/2009

ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Expulsion of Middle School Student After Illegal Cell Phone Search

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 1:08pm

On August 15, 2008, Richard Wade, a 12-year-old honor student at Southaven Middle School, made the simple mistake of taking his cell phone with him to school. He had no idea that on that day, school officials would seize his phone, search its contents and conclude without substantiation that the private photos he had saved on the cell phone — most of which simply showed him dancing at home — were "gang-related messages." Nor did Richard foresee that the DeSoto County Board of Education would expel him from school for carrying these photos on his cell phone.

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02/08/2012
NYPD

Empirical Study Confirms That American Muslims Do Not Pose a Threat of "Homegrown Terror"

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 12:49pm

Today, the N.Y. Times reported that Charles Kurzman, author of a study by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, concludes American Muslims pose "a minuscule threat to public safety." The report found that 20 American Muslims were charged in violent plots or attacks in 2011, down from 26 in 2010 and 47 in 2009. It also found that not a single murder in 2011 resulted from extremist violence by Muslims in the United States.

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