Wednesday, July 28, 2010

ACLU Requests FBI Racial and Ethnic Data

ACLU affiliate offices in 30 states, including Pennsylvania, have filed coordinated Freedom of Information Act requests seeking information from the FBI about its mapping of ethnic and racial communities.
The Domestic Intelligence and Operations Guide (DIOG) is a policy from 2008 which indicates that the FBI intends to map racial and ethnic demographics, behaviors, lifestyle characteristics and other community characteristics in order to use it in intelligence analysis activity.
Staff Attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania Valerie Durch says the ACLU has asked to review the information gathered by the FBI, along with an explanation of how it is being used....
"Someone should be watching the FBI and we want to make sure they are valuing people's civil liberties, and not creating databases that suggest people of different racial and ethnic groups should be watched closer than others. If that's taking place, we're concerned."

Burch says that if the information is handed over, the ACLU will analyze it and release it to the public.

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