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Chronology of Islam in America (2013)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
August 2013 - Page Two
NSA violated surveillance rules thousands of times, audit finds
August 16 : The Washington Post has revealed the National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008. According to an NSA audit from May 2012 leaked by Edward Snowden, there were 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. In one case, the NSA intercepted a "large number" of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt. The audit only counted violations committed at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters and other facilities in the Washington area. The report comes out less than a week after President Obama told reporters abuses have not been committed at the NSA. [ICH]
5 companies that make money by keeping Americans terrified of terror attacks
August 17: A massive industry profits off the government-induced fear of terrorism. Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America’s television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden’s leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America. But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans. Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America’s national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack. Here are five private companies cashing in on keeping you afraid.
1. The Chertoff Group: Though it’s unclear how much in total exactly the firm makes, there are some known numbers. After the failed attempt in 2010 to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day with a bomb hidden in underwear, Chertoff pushed for better airport security procedures. One of the suggestions Chertoff made was for the Transportation Security Agency to use full-body scanners like the ones Rapiscan, one of the Chertoff Group’s clients, made. And sure enough, after the Christmas Day plot, the TSA ordered 300 Rapiscan machines. The Huffington Post reported that Rapiscan made $118 million from the government between 2009-2010.
2. Booz Allen Hamilton: This private intelligence contractor has become a household name in the wake of the NSA scandal. Edward Snowden, the man responsible for leaking secret documents that exposed the breadth of NSA surveillance, was working for Booz Allen when he downloaded the documents he handed off to media outlets. The company is also the shining symbol of the government-private security complex’s revolving door: its vice president is the former director of national intelligence, while the current director of national intelligence is a former employee of Booz Allen. Despite the Snowden security breach, Booz Allen continues to work with the government. And they’re making a lot of money from the U.S. In the last fiscal year, the company made $1.3 billion from working in U.S. intelligence. In total, Booz Allen Hamiltion made over $5 billion last fiscal year. And the cash keeps coming: in January, the company announced that it had won a contract with the Defense Department to provide intelligence services. The amount of money it could make from the deal is up to $5.6 billion.
3. Science Applications International Corporation: Sometimes referred to as “NSA West” because so many former NSA employees go on to work for the formerly California-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), this firm makes a ton of cash off government contracts. And they do so by hawking their expertise in combatting the terrorist threat. Browse through SAIC’s website and you’re constantly greeted with the words “terrorist threat” and information on how the SAIC can help the government and others battle it. SAIC developed a “Terrorism Protection Manual” for Florida law enforcement that was developed to fight “today’s national terrorist threat and implement recommended security best practices.” They boast of their “experience meeting the terrorism incident response training needs of a wide variety of customers, from training for a national Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) scenario, applicable at agency response levels, to lesser levels of incidents affecting a city, a military installation or a special facility.” SAIC is an immensely lucrative and large company. It boasts 42,000 employees—20,000 of whom hold U.S. government security clearances. It is the NSA’s largest contractor, according to CorpWatch, and is deeply involved in the NSA’s collection of intelligence. Last year it reported a net income of $525 million.
4. Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies: Based in Virginia, the center “posits radical Islam as a new global ideological menace on the order of the old communist threat from the Soviet Union,” as Political Research Associates (PRA) noted in a 2011 report on private firms doing counter-terror training. Staff members include former FBI, CIA and Defense Department personnel. Their claim to fame is providing education and training to members of the U.S. national security community—including law enforcement agencies, according to their website. They say they have trained over 67,000 people over the past decade. It’s unclear exactly how much this firm makes per year. But according to the PRA report, a five-day course for government employees on the “Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine” costs $39,280. The firm also lists the costs of individual courses on their website. For a 30-person class titled “Dying to Kill Us: Understanding the Mindset of Suicide Operations,” the cost is $7,856. For a three-day course for 30 people on “Informant Development for Law Enforcement to FighTerrorism,” the cost is $23,568.
5. Security Solutions International: Security Solutions International is yet another private firm hawking anti-Muslim training to law enforcement. This Miami-based company founded in 2004 uses its Israeli security connections to boost its standing in the market. They use Israeli security trainers in their courses and their president, Henry Morgenstern, is a dual Israeli-U.S. citizen who says he “developed excellent high level contacts with the Security Establishment [in Israel], making SSI the premiere training company for counter-terror related subjects.” The company has trained over 700 law enforcement agencies since 2004. Officials from law enforcement agencies like the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the Department of Homeland Security have participated in the conferences they put on for profit. While SSI claims that they don’t cast aspersions on the whole of Islam, an examination of their trainings, conferences and the speakers they use indicate otherwise. [Alex Kane - AlterNet]
ACLU: FBI Granted Power to Delay Citizenship for Muslims
August 21: A covert national security programme allows the FBI and US immigration authorities the power to indefinitely delay immigration benefits to Muslims and those from Muslim countries, according to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union. The previously unknown programme, which began in 2008 under George W Bush to identify those with links to terrorism, has continued under President Obama to blacklist law-abiding applicants and profile Muslims as "national security concerns", according to the ACLU. Migrants who have travelled through or lived in areas of known terrorist activity, wired money back to their families, attended a mosque of interest to the FBI or even given a voluntary interview to the agency, can be labelled "national security concerns," the report, published on August 21, 2013, says. Jennie Pasquarella, the investigation's author and an ACLU attorney, said the secret programme relies on "deeply flawed" mechanisms such as "over-broad watch-list systems" and religious, national origin and associational profiling. "It not only catches far too many harmless applicants in its net, but it has overwhelmingly affected applicants who are Muslim or perceived to be Muslim". ACLU's report said that the guidelines went beyond the criteria set up by Congress to determine eligibility for citizenship. [The Guardian]
13 things the government is trying to keep secret from you
August 24: The President, the Head of the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and the Judiciary, are intentionally keeping massive amounts of information about surveillance of US and other people secret from voters. Additionally, some are, to say it politely, not being factually accurate in what they are telling the public. These inaccurate statements are either intentional lies meant to mislead the public or they are evidence that the people who are supposed to be in charge of oversight do not know what they are supposed to be overseeing. Either way, this is a significant crisis. Here are thirteen examples of what they are doing. (1) The Government seizes and searches all internet and text communications which enter or leave the US. (2) The Government created and maintains secret backdoor access into all databases in order to search for information on US citizens. (3) The Government operates a vast database which allows it to sift through millions of records on the internet to show nearly everything a person does. (4) The Government has a special court which meets in secret to authorize access for the FBI and other investigators to millions and millions of US phone, text, email and business records. (5) The Government keeps Top Secret nearly all the decisions of the FISA court. (6) The Government is fighting to keep Top Secret a key 2011 decision of the FISA court even after the court itself said it can be made public. (7) The Government uses secret National Security Letters (NSL) issued by the FBI to seize tens of thousands of records. (8) The National Security Head was caught not telling the truth to Congress about the surveillance of millions of US citizens. (9) The Government falsely assured the US public in writing that privacy protections are significantly stronger than they actually are and Senators who knew better were not allowed to disclose the truth. (10) The chief defender of spying in the House of Representatives, the Chair of the oversight intelligence subcommittee, did not tell the truth or maybe worse did not know the truth about surveillance. (11) The House intelligence oversight committee repeatedly refused to provide basic surveillance information to elected members of the House of Representatives, Republican and Democrat. (12) The paranoia about secrecy of surveillance is so bad in the House of Representatives that an elected member of Congress was threatened for passing around copies of the Snowden disclosures which had been already printed in newspapers worldwide. (13) The Senate oversight committee refused to allow a dissenting Senator (Ron Wyden-D-OR) to publicly discuss his objections to surveillance. These attempts to keep massive surveillance secrets from the public are aggravated by the constant efforts to minimize the secrets and maximize untruths. [Bill Quigley, professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans - OpEd News]
North Carolina governor allows anti-Shariah bill to become law
August 26: North Carolina became the seventh state to prohibit its judges from considering Islamic law after Gov. Pat McCrory allowed the bill to become law without formally signing it. The state joins Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Supporters hailed the bill as an important safeguard that protects the American legal system from foreign laws that are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, while critics argued that the bill’s only purpose is to whip-up anti Muslim hatred because the Constitution already overrides foreign laws. “The intent behind this law is bigoted and it is intended to alienate the Muslim community,” said Jibril Hough, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte.The North Carolina ban is limited to family law; bans in other states are broader, applying to commercial law, contract law and other types of laws. [RNS]
According to a May 2011 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, there is no evidence to suggest Sharia law is encroaching on U.S. courts. But according to the report, legislators across the country still support legally barring Islamic law from the courts.“(The legislation is) primarily designed to stir up anti-Islamic prejudice by creating fears that Islamic Sharia law is somehow going to take over the American legal system,” Carl Ernst, a religious studies professor at UNC, said in an email. Ernst said there is a small group of anti-Sharia law extremists who have managed to infiltrate the political landscape and make Sharia law seem like a threat.“This argument is being made by a small extremist fringe, who managed to push it onto the agenda with the help of right-wing politicians in a number of states around the country,” he said.Ernst said the bill was created to address a threat that does not exist. [The Daily Tar Heel]
'USA' spray-painted across Islamic center's sign
August 28: Police in Burlington (Massachusetts) are searching for a person or persons responsible for vandalizing a sign outside the town's Islamic center. Detectives responded to the Islamic Center of Burlington ,which is located on Lexington Street, and found someone had spray-painted "USA" across the center's sign. Representative Ken Gordon, whose district includes Burlington, Bedford and precinct three in Wilmington, has called upon all residents to show their support to the congregants of the Islamic Center of Burlington, whose property was defaced with graffiti in a discovery made today.“There is absolutely no place for this type of disrespect in our community,” said Rep. Gordon. “Especially on this 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘We Have a Dream’ speech, we must stand together as a society and condemn these despicable acts.” “I find it offensive that someone has used a reference to our great country as a tool to send a message of intolerance,” Said Rep. Gordon. “Anyone who understands what “USA” really stands for would realize it is a symbol of peace, inclusion and respect for people of all faiths.” [Media reports]
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