By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:34pm
Yesterday, two important news stories demonstrated how new unchecked surveillance programs we've highlighted in our Spyfiles campaign are violating the constitutional rights of innocent Americans.
The first, a New York Timesarticle revealed that from March 2009 to March 2011, the FBI opened an eye-popping 82,325 investigations called "assessments," which agents can open against individuals or groups without any evidence of wrongdoing. Not surprisingly, based on the low threshold for opening these inquiries, only 3,315 uncovered any facts to justify further investigation. No doubt far fewer actually resulted in criminal charges. But all of the information about the 79,000 innocent people investigated during this two-year period can be retained by the FBI forever, despite the fact no one engaged in wrongdoing of any kind.
This week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would invest $30 million from his own pocket to uplift the young black and Latino men who are most excluded from New York’s civic, educational and economic life. While this proposal is generous, it fails to address the fact that the Bloomberg administration has supported policies that have led to staggering racial disparities in New York’s corrections system. While funding job recruitment and education programs is indeed important, there’s a critical missing piece in this grand plan: ending NYPD’s widespread aggressive stop and frisk policies that target communities of color at skyrocketing rates and contribute markedly to the marginalization of the very same communities Bloomberg now aims to help.
June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.
