Excerpt:
A year and a half after the Associated Press exposed the New York Police Department's sprawling surveillance program targeting Muslims, three civil liberties groups have detailed the corrosive impact the program had on the students, families and worshippers who were watched.
The report, "Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims," documents a pervasive sense of anxiety and self-censorship in New York area Muslim communities. The 57 students, business owners, educators and community leaders quoted in the report also expressed a fear of police and city officials that permeated nearly every aspect of their daily lives.
"We've been talking about [NYPD spying] as a civil rights issue and as a constitutional issue without understanding that this is [also] about human beings, their religious institutions, and about students chilled on their campuses," Linda Sarsour, the coordinator of the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition, told Colorlines.com yesterday after a press conference at One Police Plaza.