[Surveillance-Studies-l] Fwd: MUSLIM-MAPPING

[Nils Zurawski]

Das hier interessiert vielleicht auch die LIste..

beste Grüße

nilz


>fyi
>
>http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,517598,00.html

und dazu auch:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd9nov09,0,1646403.story?coll=
la-home-center
>From the Los Angeles Times
LAPD to build data on Muslim areas
Anti-terrorism unit wants to identify sites 'at risk' for extremism.
By Richard Winton, Jean-Paul Renaud and Paul Pringle Los Angeles Times
Staff Writers

November 9, 2007

An extensive mapping program launched by the LAPD's anti-terrorism
bureau to identify Muslim enclaves across the city sparked outrage
Thursday from some Islamic groups and civil libertarians, who denounced
the effort as an exercise in racial and religious profiling.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing, who heads
the bureau, defended the undertaking as a way to help Muslim communities
avoid the influence of those who would radicalize Islamic residents and
advocate "violent, ideologically-based extremism."

"We are seeking to identify at-risk communities," Downing said in an
interview Thursday evening. "We are looking for communities and enclaves
based on risk factors that are likely to become isolated. . .
. We want to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we
can reach out to those communities."

Downing added that the Muslim Public Affairs Council has embraced the
vaguely defined program "in concept." The group's executive director,
Salam Al-Marayati, said Thursday that it wanted to know more about the
plan and had a meeting set with the LAPD next week.

"We will work with the LAPD and give them input, while at the same time
making sure that people's civil liberties are protected," said
Al-Marayati, who commended Downing for being "very forthright in his
engagement with the Muslim community."

Others condemned the project, however.

"We certainly reject this idea completely," said Shakeel Syed, executive
director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. "This
stems basically from this presumption that there is homogenized Muslim
terrorism that exists among us."

Syed said he is a member of Police Chief William J. Bratton's forum of
religious advisors, but had not been told of the community mapping
program. "This came as a jolt to me," Syed said.

Hussam Ayloush, who leads the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, said the mapping "basically turns the LAPD
officers into religious political analysts, while their role is to fight
crime and enforce the laws."

During Oct. 30 testimony before Congress, Downing described the program
broadly as an attempt to "mitigate radicalization." At that time, he
said law enforcement agencies nationwide faced "a vicious, amorphous and
unfamiliar adversary on our land."

Downing and other law enforcement officials said police agencies around
the world are dealing with radical Muslim groups that are isolated from
the larger community, making potential breeding groups for terrorism. He
cited terror cells in Europe as well as the case of some Muslim
extremists in New Jersey arrested in May for allegedly planning to bomb
Ft. Dix.

"We want to map the locations of these closed, vulnerable communities,
and in partnership with these communities . . . help [weave] these
enclaves into the fabric of the larger society," he said in his
testimony.

"To do this, we need to go into the community and get to know peoples'
names," he said. "We need to walk into homes, neighborhoods, mosques and
businesses."

To assemble the mapping data, Downing said in an interview Thursday, the
LAPD intends to enlist USC's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of
Terrorism Events, which was founded four years ago with $12 million in
federal funds.

In 2003, university officials said the center would focus on threats to
power plants, telecommunications and transportation systems.

It recently was tapped to strengthen security at Los Angeles
International Airport.

Downing said the effort would not involve spying on neighborhoods. He
said it would identify groups, not individuals.

"This has nothing to do with intelligence," he said, comparing it to
market research.

But in his congressional testimony, Downing said the LAPD hoped to
identify communities that "may be susceptible to violent,
ideologically-based extremism and then use a full-spectrum approach
guided by an intelligence-led strategy."

Downing told lawmakers the program would "take a deeper look at the
history, demographics, language, culture, ethnic breakdown,
socioeconomic status and social interactions."

He added that the project was in its very early stages, and that its
cost and full scope have not been determined.

"Physically the work has not begun," Downing said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and some community groups sent a
letter Thursday to Downing expressing "grave concerns" about the program
and asking for a meeting.

"The mapping of Muslim communities . . . seems premised on the faulty
notion that Muslims are more likely to commit violent acts than people
of other faiths," the letter states.

ACLU Executive Director Ramona Ripston compared the program to the Red
Scare of the 1950s and said: "This is nothing short of racial
profiling."

But Al-Marayati said he believed that Downing was working in good faith.

"He is well-known in the Muslim community," he said. "He's been in a
number of mosques and been very forthright in his engagement with the
Muslim community."

richard.winton at latimes.com

jp.renaud at latimes.com

paul.pringle at latimes.com

Times staff writers Francisco Vara-Orta, Andrew Blankstein and Stuart
Silverstein contributed to this report.

-- 
Dr. Nils Zurawski
Universität Hamburg
Inst. für kriminologische Sozialforschung
Allende-Platz 1
20146 Hamburg
Germany
tel. +49 (0) 40 42838 3329
fax. +49 (0) 40 42838 2328

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