In the wake of several reports that exposed covert Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance operations in U.S. mosques, Muslim Advocates, a prominent American Muslim civil rights group, has filed a lawsuit seeking disclosure of FBI methods for collecting domestic intelligence. Filed on Sept. 16, 2009, the lawsuit seeks the “full disclosure of the standards and procedures utilized by FBI agents” for conducting surveillance operations on civic or religious organizations in connection to an ongoing criminal investigation. On Sept. 25, possibly in response to this lawsuit and a similar one filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in June 2009, the FBI released a redacted version of the guidelines. Many critics say the release leads to more “troubling” questions than answers.
The “standards and procedures” the lawsuit seeks to make public are the Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines (DIOG). The DIOG were controversial even before they went into effect on Dec. 1, 2008. In November 2008, several civil liberty and privacy advocates, including Muslim Advocates, were shown a complete draft version of the DIOG at a meeting held by the FBI. However, they were asked to return the document before the session ended. According to Politico, in the months following the meeting, Muslim Advocates filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the Guidelines. They were rebuffed by the FBI, which claimed the DIOG “were under review for disclosure but they have never been made public.”
The edited version of the DIOG made public on Sept. 25 left many analysts puzzled and concerned about the missing information. David Sobel, Senior Counsel at EFF, said he found some of the deletions to be “very troubling,” including a section that authorizes “assessments,” which he noted can be “undertaken with ‘no particular factual predication.” “Americans have the right to know the basic surveillance policies used by federal investigators and how their privacy is or is not being protected” he added.
Other key deleted sections that Muslim Advocates and EFF identified, include:
“These policies have been in effect for more than six months and could have great impact on ordinary Americans’ lives,” said Sobel. “The FBI must follow the law and release these guidelines to the public.”
In early 2009, American Muslims in California filed a suit claiming the FBI had used a spy to infiltrate their mosque, collect personal information and threaten a parishioner with immigration problems if he did not cooperate with the investigation. Similar incidents also occurred in St. Louis and Michigan. Echoing the apprehension of many American Muslims across the country, Farhana Khera, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates , said, “[T]he American Muslim community…has been under tremendous scrutiny since 9/11.”
American Muslims are not the only group being infiltrated by government officials. Anti-war activists in Washington state claim an employee of a local area fusion center had covertly spied on their meetings and collected personal data. And several activists were preemptively arrested in Minnesota before the Republican National Convention in 2008 based on information collected by covert surveillance. In all of these examples, the government’s evidence gathering techniques drew criticism from civil rights advocates.