They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin said that, but judging by today’s standards, I’d say he probably wasn’t much of an American with his tolerance and eschewing of tyranny and all.
So the Muslims are up to it again. What a nefarious lot. They’ve been going to college, praying and whitewater rafting.
The nerve of those people.
How do I know all the intimate details of these strangers’ lives?
Well, thankfully the New York City Police Department has been diligently following, monitoring and keeping track of what these guys and gals are up to.
They’ve been reading their e-mails, infiltrating their collegiate associations and going on free rafting trips.
According to the Associated Press, beginning in 2007 the NYPD not only read students’ private e-mail, but also sent undercover officers to compile intelligence data on Muslims at universities across the Northeast.
They even made a list of every Muslim-owned business in the city of Newark, N.J., and canvassed mosques and Muslim neighborhoods across the region.
What was NYPD doing in New Jersey? Gov. Chris Christie has been wondering the same thing, because the last time he checked, his state wasn’t even in New York.
Connecticut and Pennsylvania are not in New York, either — a
simple oversight, I’m sure.
But their efforts didn’t stop there.
The NYPD tracked where Muslims lived and what stores and restaurants they frequented, and police were encouraged to talk to business owners and people in these communities to gauge their loyalty.
They took pictures of people, followed them home and eavesdropped on their conversations — all without any evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing.
Frankly, I like that part the best. It’s incredibly efficient. If you don’t suspect anyone of a crime, why need a warrant? By cutting out the entire “due process” part, the NYPD saved valuable time they needed for rafting at taxpayers’ expense.
And if you’re worried about how much this righteous effort costs, don’t be.
According to an internal NYPD memorandum leaked to the AP, the NYPD defrayed its expenses by misappropriating federal anti-drug trafficking funds.
This makes perfect sense because Bangladeshi cell phone stores are a much more imminent threat than international drug cartels.
I have one problem with this whole thing, though. The discriminatory nature of solely focusing on Muslim Americans has left a bad taste in my mouth. This is the home of the free, after all, and lady liberty does declare, “give us your tired, your hungry and your poor.”
To make things a little more equitable, I believe the NYPD’s jurisdiction ought to be enlarged to encompass the entire country — and their monitoring program should be extended into every community, university and house of worship, regardless of religion, color or creed.
The precedent has been set — it can’t be a whole lot harder to get this sort of thing going on in every nook and cranny of the country. Imagine the sort of jobs we could create manning a secret police force that large.
It would do wonders for the economy.
Some have taken issue with this entire initiative, though, and not just the technical details like the jurisdictional problems or the funding hiccups. Some people have called this level of prying “un-American”.
That includes the students and faculty of Yale University, who were extensively monitored beginning in 2006 and who, despite having never been charged with or even suspected of committing a crime, found their names included in all sorts of secret intelligence reports.
Of course, these reports said things along the lines of “Not much going on. Everybody’s just studying.” Because not a single person this multimillion dollar effort has followed has ever even come close to being guilty of a terrorism-related crime.
Another American who has spoken out against the actions of the NYPD is Congressman Mike Honda, a Democrat (of course). But I wouldn’t trust Rep. Honda’s opinion; he and his family were put into a Japanese-American internment camp during WWII, which makes me immediately suspicious.
We wouldn’t have locked him up without good reason, right?
Nicholas Pierce is a 22-year- old history junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on twitter
@TDR_nabdulpierce.
 
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Contact Nicholas Pierce at [email protected]