One autumn morning in Buffalo, N.Y., a college student named Adeela Khan logged into her email and found a message announcing an upcoming Islamic conference in Toronto, the Associated Press reports. Khan clicked “forward,” sent it to a group of fellow Muslims at the University at Buffalo, and promptly forgot about it. But that simple act on Nov. 9, 2006, was enough to arouse the suspicion of an intelligence analyst at the New York Police Department, 300 miles away, who combed through her post and put her name in an official report. Marked “SECRET” in large red letters, the document went all the way to Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s office. The report, along with other documents obtained by The Associated Press, reveals how the NYPD’s intelligence division focused far beyond New York City as part of a surveillance program targeting Muslims…
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NYPD infiltration of colleges raises privacy fears
With its whitewashed bell tower, groomed lawns and Georgian-style buildings, Brooklyn College looks like a slice of 18th Century America dropped into modern-day New York City. But for years New York police have feared this bucolic setting might hide a sinister secret: the beginnings of a Muslim terrorist cell.
Investigators have been infiltrating Muslim student groups at Brooklyn College and other schools in the city, monitoring their internet activity and placing undercover agents in their ranks, police documents obtained by the Associated Press show. Legal experts say the operation may have broken a 19-year-old pact with the colleges and violated U.S. privacy laws, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid.
The infiltration was part of a secret NYPD intelligence-gathering effort that put entire Muslim communities under scrutiny. Police photographed restaurants and grocery stores that cater to Muslims and built databases showing where people shopped, got their hair cut and prayed. The AP reported on the secret campaign in a series of stories beginning in August.…Read More
4 of 7 public school board members spent beyond budgets
An Education News Colorado analysis of spending by Denver school board members shows that four of the seven blew their annual $5,000 budgets for the fiscal year ending June 30, including one member who spent well over twice the amount each is allocated. Board member Andrea Merida spent more than $12,000, an overspending of $7,000 in a single year, or 153 percent of her annual permitted limit. Thousands of dollars were charged to the district in restaurants and coffee shops, with her credit card statements noting their purpose as “constituent meetings.”
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