Excerpt:
The American Civil Liberties Union asked the Justice Department on Thursday to investigate efforts by the New York City Police Department to conduct surveillance in Muslim communities.
In a letter signed by 125 state and national organizations, the ACLU and the other groups urged the Justice Department's civil rights division to open a probe of the "unlawful religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance of Muslims in New York City and beyond."
"Putting a class of Americans under surveillance based on their religion is a clear violation of our Constitution's guarantees of equality and religious freedom," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The NYPD's surveillance program has stigmatized Muslims as suspect and had deeply negative effects on their free speech, association and religious practice."