Federal appeals court rules FBI can withhold racial surveillance information

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is collecting racial and ethnic information and “mapping” American communities around the country based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes. Nationwide, the FBI is gathering reports on innocent Americans' so-called “suspicious activity” and sharing it with unknown numbers of federal, state and local government agencies. [MORE] and [MORE] In photo, FBI director James Comey. 

From [HERE] The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday ruled [opinion, PDF] that the FBI is not required to disclose documents regarding its use of ethnic and racial information. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the disclosure of those documents, but the district court held that the information sought was exempt from the disclosure requirement. The Third Circuit noted that FBI investigations vary greatly in sensitivity based on location and circumstances. Moreover, the court agreed that disclosure of information would adversely affect current FBI investigations by notifying and alerting targets: "It is hard to imagine how the FBI could provide a more detailed justification for withholding information under this exemption without compromising the very information it sought to protect." The ACLU had asked FBI to disclose the information at issue in 2008 and FBI had released 312 of 782 pages while withholding 284 pages as exempt from disclosure.

In September the ACLU had released a report claiming that the FBI powers have expanded rapidly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks [JURIST backgrounder]. The report states that the FBI's excessive secrecy has limited oversight and stated that "it took unauthorized leaks by a whistleblower to finally reveal the government's secret interpretation of these laws and the Orwellian scope of its domestic surveillance programs." The revelations surrounding US surveillance programs have sparked worldwide debate and controversy.