Portland – The ACLU of Maine joined the Rhode Island ACLU today to appeal the FBI’s refusal to release virtually any information about a controversial federal program that allows for ethnic and racial “mapping” of local communities.
“As our nation's leading law enforcement agency, the FBI should be tracking true threats, not wasting resources by inappropriately mapping our communities on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion,” said ACLU of Maine Executive Director Shenna Bellows. “Law enforcement programs based on evidence and facts are more effective than a system based on racial stereotypes and mass suspicion.”
ACLU affiliates across the country filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI almost two years ago to investigate the nature and extent of racial and ethnic “mapping” by the FBI across the country. In response, the FBI has released 320 pages of material, most of which are blacked out entirely, to the ACLU of Maine. The Rhode Island ACLU received 46 almost-completely blank pages from the FBI. Among the materials redacted appears to be an ordinary census map of New England.
“The release of hundreds of blacked out pages makes a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act and of the public’s right to monitor and understand the workings of government,” said ACLU of Maine Legal Director Zachary Heiden in a letter of appeal to the agency today. “Mapping of local businesses and communities based on race and ethnicity by the FBI raises significant civil rights and civil liberties concerns because of the possibility that these maps would be used for illegal and unconstitutional racial profiling.”
According to a 2008 FBI operations guide, FBI agents have the authority to collect information about and map so-called “ethnic-oriented” businesses, behaviors, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations in order to assist the FBI’s “domain awareness” and “intelligence analysis” activities. The operations guide raised concern for civil libertarians and civil rights advocates concerned that the program would lead to crude stereotyping and racial profiling. The FOIA request was designed to find out how this mapping was taking place across the country. However, the FBI’s refusal to disclose sufficient information to the ACLU raises more questions than answers.
For instance, one partially released document shows the FBI is using 2000 census data to track “foreign born” and “mixed ancestry” populations of some type in the state. It raises concerns that the FBI is profiling immigrant communities, but the FBI failed to provide any more information or indicate which populations it is tracking or why. Without this information, it is impossible to know whether the FBI is using its authority appropriately and constitutionally.
This concern is not merely speculative. FBI documents obtained from other ACLU affiliates strongly suggest that the FBI is, in fact, profiling communities for suspicionless investigations on the basis of crude stereotypes. For example, a 2009 memorandum shows that the Detroit FBI sought to collect information about Middle-Eastern and Muslim communities in Michigan without any evidence of wrongdoing. And after noting that San Francisco “is home to … one of the largest ethnic Chinese populations outside mainland China,” two FBI memoranda from that city justified the opening of an investigation involving racial and national origin mapping because “[w]ithin this community there has been organized crime for generations.”
“It is essential to learn how, and to what extent, the FBI has been using this troubling authority here in Rhode Island,” said Rhode Island ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown. “The FBI should be tracking true threats, not targeting entire communities based on race or ethnicity. If the businesses or lifestyles of Muslim or other local communities in the state are being racially profiled, at a minimum they have a right to know about it. Unfortunately, we know as little now as we did two years ago when we filed this request. This denial of the public’s right to know is completely unacceptable.”
The hundreds of pages of completely redacted documents are available here and here on ACLU of Maine’s website. The Rhode Island and Maine ACLU affiliates are filing administrative appeals to the agency today, challenging the FBI’s response and the redaction of so much information about the program’s implementation in the state. The ACLU of Maine appeal to the FBI is located here.
Today’s efforts are part of a nationwide ACLU initiative called “Mapping the FBI” to expose the ways in which vastly expanded FBI investigative authority has resulted in the unconstitutional investigation of American communities and individuals based on who they are and what they believe. The ACLU has filed lawsuits in Northern California, New Jersey and Michigan to compel the FBI to disclose more information and have called on Attorney General Eric Holder to order an end to the racial mapping program. More information about the nationwide effort is available at www.aclu.org/mappingthefbi.
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