Will NYPD terrorism report lead to profiling?

Via WNYC.org

NYPD Report Looks at Domestic Terror Threat

by Bob Hennelly

NEW YORK, NY August 16, 2007 —A new intelligence assessment from the NYPD finds the threat from "homegrown" terrorists is growing rapidly. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has more.

REPORTER: The NYPD analysis is based in a detailed review of several high profile terrorist attacks and plots that originated from self styled jihadist cells in places like the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. While the US conspiracies did not actualize, in London and Madrid they had catastrophic consequences.

The report says unifying factors in people drawn to the movement are young male Muslims, most likely middle class and alienated from their parents and looking for a purpose in life. The NYPD says the Internet is a virtual terrorist support network and is providing the same kind of affirmation would be terrorists might get in the middle east.

The report is being roundly criticized by Civil Liberties and Arab American Rights groups as a potential tool for profiling.
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On NPR today one of the guests on the Brian Lehrer show--Jack Riley, Associate Director of RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment, and Acting Director of RAND Center on Quality Policing, and Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counter Terrorism--helped explain the details. And denied that the report as such would lead law enforcement to profiling individuals as terrorists.

The 90-page document in online for you to read at NYPD report: Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat

The Brian Lehrer show on the topic can be listened to here.

theteach

JFK Terrorist Plot Foiled

We caught them Mr. Bush. They were plotting to blow up Kennedy airport in New York City and we stopped them. Well, not exactly we, I didn't do anything, but the NYPD and the FBI, they stopped them.

These guys, a retiree from JFK itself and two others from Guyana had extensive plans and maps and aerial photographs. They had recruited a Trinidadian Muslim group to carry out the bombings of fuel tanks, terminal buildings and fuel lines. They said it would be bigger than 9/11.

So coordinated effort between the FBI and NYPD brought them down. A few more foiled plots and your scaring us about terrorist plots here will fall on deaf ears.

Mr. Bush we are fighting them here...we don't have to fight them there (in Iraq). We are fighting them here and winning.