After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division created a surveillance program targeting Muslim communities, with support from the CIA. From 2001 until its exposure in 2011, NYPD informants known as “mosque crawlers” or “rakers” infiltrated dozens of mosques, photographed congregants’ license plates, mapped worshippers’ ethnic backgrounds, and monitored restaurants, shops, schools, and student organizations. The operation extended beyond New York into New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The NYPD designated entire mosques as “terror groups” despite the absence of evidence of wrongdoing, allowing investigators to monitor people based on attendance and religious identity.
The Associated Press exposed the program in a series of 2011 reports that won a Pulitzer Prize. The disclosures prompted federal lawsuits, including a 2013 action by the American Civil Liberties Union. Settlements reached in 2016 required the city not to conduct surveillance solely on the basis of race, religion, or ethnicity and required evidence of wrongdoing before initiating monitoring. The NYPD disbanded its Demographics Unit in 2014, although collected data could still be used, leaving a lasting privacy and civil-liberties controversy.
