The United States government has moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of five US citizens who say they were victims of a domestic surveillance program, which involves the collection of “suspicious activity reports” on individuals. According to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], a National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) “encourages state and local law enforcement agencies as well as private actors to collect and report information that has a potential nexus to terrorism in the form of so-called ‘suspicious activity reports [SARs].’” The ACLU argues any individual who is flagged as having a “potential nexus to terrorism” will automatically be subject to “law enforcement scrutiny, which may include intrusive questioning by local or federal law enforcement agents.” Plus, “Even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes that the person did not have any nexus to terrorism, a SAR can haunt that individual for decades, as SARs remain in federal databases for up to 30 years.”
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:07:57 +0000
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