Internet Security: A Student's Perspective
Ana Ahmed, an American-Muslim of Iranian heritage was studying at New York University this fall when her email account was accessed by the state of New York in what the Associated Press revealed is one of the nation's largest spying campaigns targeting US-born citizens of the Islamic faith.
On an October afternoon, about a week after joining the University's Muslim Student Association, Ana received a notification from Gmail, informing that her email account had been accessed by the state of New York, breaching her security.
"I was applaud," said the third year NYU student from Huntington NY. "The state of New York hacked into my email. Isn't hacking a crime with legal consequences?"
The Associate Press investigation revealed that the NYPD spied on numerous Muslim students and their campus organizations; "police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast."
The dossiers noted the names of Muslim student leaders and even stored emails sent and received by some of them. "No mention of any wrongdoing by any students," an AP reporter notes.
The investigation showed that the NYPD had built one of the largest domestic spying agencies in the county. The AP investigation documented how the NYPD "assigned 'rakers' and 'mosque' crawlers to ethnic neighborhoods, infiltrating everything from booksellers to cafes and Muslim places of worship."
In response to the NYPD's domestic spying campaign, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project Hina Shamsi writes, "[p]utting a class of Americans under surveillance based on their religion is a clear violation of our Constitution's guarantees of equality and religious freedom. The NYPD's surveillance program has stigmatized Muslims as suspect and has deeply negative effects on their free speech, association and religious practice."
Ana deleted her hacked email account out of fear of being 'watched' even though she had done nothing wrong. "I felt like a suspected criminal for a crime I knew nothing about." In this case the crime--'being Muslim.' According to the ACLU, the profiling of Americans of the Islamic faith has led to the unlawful arrest and wrongful conviction of innocent American Muslims all over the country.
Ana now communicates with family, friends and University professors using her University email.
"Making adjustments out of fear, is not a life of normalcy. My University email account has less storage capacity and I lost tons of family photos and research for my senior thesis next year. Least of which, none of this guarantees my innocence or safety. It's a grueling position to be in, especially as an American," said Ana.
"In America, law enforcement should never turn anyone's first amendment-protected religious beliefs into cause for suspicion, and yet evidence shows that's exactly what the New York Police Department is doing to Muslim New Yorkers," said the Reverend C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and a pastor at the Baptist Northminister Church in Monroe, La. "The fact that people of faith might have to fear going to their houses of worship or freely practicing their religion is about as un-American as un-American gets."
On an October afternoon, about a week after joining the University's Muslim Student Association, Ana received a notification from Gmail, informing that her email account had been accessed by the state of New York, breaching her security.
"I was applaud," said the third year NYU student from Huntington NY. "The state of New York hacked into my email. Isn't hacking a crime with legal consequences?"
The Associate Press investigation revealed that the NYPD spied on numerous Muslim students and their campus organizations; "police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast."
The dossiers noted the names of Muslim student leaders and even stored emails sent and received by some of them. "No mention of any wrongdoing by any students," an AP reporter notes.
The investigation showed that the NYPD had built one of the largest domestic spying agencies in the county. The AP investigation documented how the NYPD "assigned 'rakers' and 'mosque' crawlers to ethnic neighborhoods, infiltrating everything from booksellers to cafes and Muslim places of worship."
In response to the NYPD's domestic spying campaign, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project Hina Shamsi writes, "[p]utting a class of Americans under surveillance based on their religion is a clear violation of our Constitution's guarantees of equality and religious freedom. The NYPD's surveillance program has stigmatized Muslims as suspect and has deeply negative effects on their free speech, association and religious practice."
Ana deleted her hacked email account out of fear of being 'watched' even though she had done nothing wrong. "I felt like a suspected criminal for a crime I knew nothing about." In this case the crime--'being Muslim.' According to the ACLU, the profiling of Americans of the Islamic faith has led to the unlawful arrest and wrongful conviction of innocent American Muslims all over the country.
Ana now communicates with family, friends and University professors using her University email.
"Making adjustments out of fear, is not a life of normalcy. My University email account has less storage capacity and I lost tons of family photos and research for my senior thesis next year. Least of which, none of this guarantees my innocence or safety. It's a grueling position to be in, especially as an American," said Ana.
"In America, law enforcement should never turn anyone's first amendment-protected religious beliefs into cause for suspicion, and yet evidence shows that's exactly what the New York Police Department is doing to Muslim New Yorkers," said the Reverend C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and a pastor at the Baptist Northminister Church in Monroe, La. "The fact that people of faith might have to fear going to their houses of worship or freely practicing their religion is about as un-American as un-American gets."