Excerpt:
Should a police department identify and engage those citizens most likely to be involved with terrorism? Should police understand the historic and current ties of certain communities to militant groups that export violent extremism? The current debate over the New York Police Department's counterterrorism surveillance reflects fundamental disagreements over such issues.
Start with a given: The threat of terrorism is no excuse to run roughshod over civil liberties. The leeway given New York's police in combating terrorism is spelled out in the "Handschu Guidelines," federal court-sanctioned rules in force since 1985 and amended in 2002.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly says he has followed these guidelines to the letter, but since last summer a series of Associated Press articles has accused the NYPD of "wholesale surveillance of places where Muslims eat, shop, work and pray"—spying that ostensibly violates their civil rights. Now U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has asked the Justice Department to review the NYPD program.