Posted on 12/23/2005 7:07:18 PM PST by FairOpinion
WASHINGTON - A classified radiation monitoring program, conducted without warrants, has targeted private U.S. property in an effort to prevent an al-Qaida attack, federal law enforcement officials confirmed Friday.
While declining to provide details including the number of cities and sites monitored, the officials said the air monitoring took place since the Sept. 11 attacks and from publicly accessible areas — which they said made warrants and court orders unnecessary.
U.S. News and World Report first reported the program on Friday. The magazine said the monitoring was conducted at more than 100 Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area — including Maryland and Virginia suburbs — and at least five other cities when threat levels had risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York and Seattle.
The magazine said that at its peak, three vehicles in Washington monitored 120 sites a day, nearly all of them Muslim targets identified by the FBI. Targets included mosques, homes and businesses, the magazine said.
The revelation of the surveillance program came just days after The New York Times disclosed that the Bush administration spied on suspected terrorist targets in the United States without court orders. President Bush has said he approved the program to protect Americans from attack.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights group, said Friday the program "comes as a complete shock to us and everyone in the Muslim community."
"This creates the appearance that Muslims are targeted simply for being Muslims. I don't think this is the message the government wants to send at this time," he said.
Hooper said his organization has serious concerns about the constitutionality of monitoring on private property without a court order.
Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Friday that the administration "is very concerned with a growing body of sensitive reporting that continues to show al-Qaida has a clear intention to obtain and ultimately use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear" weapons or high energy explosives.
To meet that threat, the government "monitors the air for imminent threats to health and safety," but acts only on specific information about a potential attack without targeting any individual or group, he said.
"FBI agents do not intrude across any constitutionally protected areas without the proper legal authority," the spokesman said.
In a 2001 decision, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that police must get warrants before using devices that search through walls for criminal activity. That decision struck down the use without a warrant of a heat-sensing device that led to marijuana charges against an Oregon man.
Roehrkasse said the Justice Department believes that case does not apply to air monitoring in publicly accessible areas.
Two federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program is classified, said the monitoring did not occur only at Muslim-related sites.
Douglas Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, said the location of the surveillance matters when determining if a court order is needed.
"The greatest expectation of privacy is in the home," said Kmiec, a Justice Department official under former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. "As you move away from the home to a parking lot or a place of public accommodation or an office, there are a set of factors that are a balancing test for the court," he said.
Despite federal promises to inform state and local officials of security concerns, that never formally happened with the radiation monitoring program, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The official said that after discussions with attorneys, some state and local authorities decided the surveillance was legal, equating it to air quality monitors set up around Washington that regularly sniff for suspicious materials.
"They weren't targeting specific people, they were just doing it by random, driving around (commercial) storage sheds and parking lots," the official said.
Asked about the program's status, the official said, "I'd understood it had been stopped or significantly rolled back" as early as eight months ago.
Such information-sharing with state and local officials is the responsibility of the Homeland Security Department, which spokesman Brian Doyle said was not involved in the program.
___
Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this story.
Right!
It would also be the legal thing to do. Don't tell anyone, but islam has been illegal in the U.S. since 1892 (1893?).
Excellent post!
The EPA doesn`t need a warrant to shove a probe up the tailpipe of my car.
I find it curious that simply monitoring the air somehow requires a warrant now.
I guess I will ask for one the next time the emission inspection on my car is due.
What sounds good to me about this is the leaks are stopped at the source.The media end is cut out of the loop and the whole thing is cleaned up with hopefully less publicity.
Until the above actually happens and Martial Law is declared, I don't agree that the US proper is part of the "battlefield!" It will be the battlefield of last resort, thanks to a most intelligent prosecution of the WOT so far by THIS administration.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, those of us out here in the west have seen enough clumsy heavy handed action by federal agents in the recent past of the Clinton maladministration that we're more than happy to wait for the real necessity of ANY declaration of "Martial Law!" Believe you me!!!
Many of us out here in the west are not so quick to seek security at the cost of our liberty. Maybe we can remember the wild, wild west better than those huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the eastern seaboard, who knows?
Not the entire country. It's just the democrats looking for any way they can find to stop Bush's poll numbers from rising, by attacking our country and hoping that hurting us will hurt our leader.
The cable company can drive around looking for illegal hookups by monitoring electromagnetic waves from the street.
I expect my goverment to be doing monitoring of the air for biological, chemical, and nuclear agents.
If they have a limited resource to do this, targetting places where they suspect they might find such activity is not only OK, it is the smart thing to do.
The constitution exists to prevent a slippery slope. I'm tired of arguing that we shouldn't do legal things because there's a chance they could turn illegal.
Especially while REALLY intrusive stuff like airport searches are carried out every day, costing us millions of hours and billions of dollars, and nobody seems to be fighting to stop THAT.
Physically searching me against my will as a condition for travel? That's a problem. Listening to my phone calls to Bin Laden, or noticing the glowing lights in my attic (hey, that's just electromagnetic radiation detected with sophisticated monitoring devices (eyes), or the high levels of radiation on someone's clothes, that's all fine with me.
I don't have a right to commit illegal activities simply by keeping them "private". the 4th amendment is to protect me from being harrassed by the government, not keeping the government from investigating and prosecuting ILLEGAL activity.
You have no right to break the law, any law, no matter how much you think the law is stupid.
BTW, using dogs to sniff people would, in my opinion, cross the line because being sniffed by a dog WOULD annoy me. But being watched by a TV camera on a public street? OK by me.
From the sound of it, the program doesn't much different from prowl cars patrolling the streets in suspicious neighborhoods.
Last I heard, no warrant was necessary.
Prowl cars in high crime neighborhoods don't need a warrant to patrol the streets.
These "sniffer" vans shouldn't either.
The MSM is the 5th column in this country...as is the DNC
It is frustrating
we were talking in detail on the other thread about this - I am not surprised to see the link in this article to that SCOTUS decision.
So I can have plutonium in my house and it's a violation of my fourth amendment rights for the feds to monitor it? I'm not sure I'm happy with that much privacy.
CAIR and the media tools have simply misread the relevant court rulings and confused the American right to privacy with the traditional Islamic right to piracy.
I hope this is just disinformation.
First, as a Northern Virginia citizen, I am personally comforted that the feds are monitoring the arms depots and recruiting stations (aka "mosques") of the Islamist demons.
The Dar al Hijra mosque in Falls Church is hopefully a prime surveillance target, since one of OBL's brothers was on the board and it is also the place where several 9/11 hijackers made the connections to get phony Virginia IDs. The recent report on Saudi Islamist literature ("Jews are pigs") included Dar al Hijra in its survey list.
Let's also pay close attention to the Skyline condos and apartments exactly one mile from Dar al Hijra at Bailey's Crossroads, which is stuffed to the rafters with Islamists and other terrorist sympathizers (see Paul Sperry's "Infiltration" for more). Immediately after 9/11, the FBI found numerous "recently vacated" apartments and condos at Skyline, and thne previous occupants weren't Euros, they were clearly of Arabic lineage.
Much more, but that should make anyone thankful for nuke monitoring.
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