AP today has published a lengthy investigative story detailing operations by the New York Police Department's intelligence unit in attempting to prevent Islamic terrorism. NYPD has received extensive cooperation from the CIA, operates beyond the boundaries of New York City and extensively monitors ethnic neighborhoods. At least in the past, part of the NYPD's activities have included monitoring of sermons at mosques:
For years, detectives used informants known as mosque crawlers to monitor weekly sermons and report what was said.... If FBI agents were to do that, they would be in violation of the Privacy Act, which prohibits the federal government from collecting intelligence on purely First Amendment activities.
The FBI has generated its own share of controversy for putting informants inside mosques, but unlike the program described to the AP, the FBI requires evidence of a crime before an informant can be used inside a mosque.....
"If you're sending an informant into a mosque when there is no evidence of wrongdoing, that's a very high-risk thing to do," [FBI general counsel, Valerie] Caproni said. "You're running right up against core constitutional rights. You're talking about freedom of religion."
That's why senior FBI officials in New York ordered their own agents not to accept any reports from the NYPD's mosque crawlers, two retired agents said.
It's unclear whether the police department still uses mosque crawlers. Officials said that, as Muslims figured out what was going on, the mosque crawlers became cafe crawlers, fanning out into the city's ethnic hangouts.
"Someone has a great imagination," Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said. "There is no such thing as mosque crawlers."
