Documents show NYPD’s spy unit pushing officers to eavesdrop in minority communities

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, August 31, 5:52 AM

NEW YORK — Working with the CIA, the New York Police Department maintained a list of “ancestries of interest” and dispatched undercover officers to monitor Muslim businesses and social groups, according to new documents that offer a rare glimpse inside an intelligence program the NYPD insists doesn’t exist.

The documents add new details to an Associated Press investigation that explained how undercover NYPD officers singled out Muslim communities for surveillance and infiltration.

The Demographics Unit, a squad of 16 officers fluent in a total of at least five languages, was told to map ethnic communities in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and identify where people socialize, shop and pray.

Once that analysis was complete, according to documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD would “deploy officers in civilian clothes throughout the ethnic communities.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/documents-show-nypds-spy-unit-pushing-officers-to-eavesdrop-in-minority-communities/2011/08/31/gIQAvkVOrJ_print.html

NYPD Demographics Unit:

http://wid.ap.org/documents/nypd-demo.pdf

http://wid.ap.org/documents/nypd-memo.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance

Surveillance ( /sərˈveɪ.əns/ or /sərˈveɪləns/)<1> is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner. It most usually refers to observation of individuals or groups by government organizations, but disease surveillance, for example, is monitoring the progress of a disease in a community.

The word surveillance is the French word for "watching over".

The word surveillance may be applied to observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment (such as CCTV cameras), or interception of electronically transmitted information (such as Internet traffic or phone calls). It may also refer to simple, relatively no- or low-technology methods such as human intelligence agents and postal interception.

Surveillance is very useful to governments and law enforcement to maintain social control, recognize and monitor threats, and prevent/investigate criminal activity. With the advent of programs such as the Total Information Awareness program and ADVISE, technologies such as high speed surveillance computers and biometrics software, and laws such as the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, governments now possess an unprecedented ability to monitor the activities of their subjects.<2>