ACLU faults 'suspicious activity' reporting by law enforcement

By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES | Thu Sep 19, 2013 10:05pm EDT

(Reuters) - A newly disclosed trove of "suspicious activity reports" filed by police under a federal domestic intelligence network shows a program rife with ethnic profiling and useless tips that subject innocent Americans to counterterrorism scrutiny, a civil liberties group said on Thursday.

The suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and the dozens of state and regional surveillance-collection hubs, called fusion centers, where those reports are submitted and analyzed, was established by Congress in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

The idea was to foster greater vigilance, cooperation and sharing of information among all levels of law enforcement to guard against future attacks. Even the public was encouraged to help with such slogans as "If you see something, say something."

But hundreds of report summaries obtained under a public records request from two fusion centers in California reveal rampant privacy violations based on racial and religious bias, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

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