Law enforcement

FBI's Creepy Intiative to Turn Imams Into Informants

Protecting civil liberties has never been the FBI's strong suit. But its new Shared Responsibility Committees which it is quietly beta testing now, is downright Orwellian.

The FBI bills this program as a collaborative effort with Muslim communities to rescue individuals on the road to radicalization. In reality, it is just another questionable informant program that will further alienate Muslim communities and hurt counter-terrorism efforts.

America's Muslim communities are already under massive surveillance. There is, for example, the FBI's informant program, which has grown 10-fold, from 1,500 before the 9/11 attacks to 15,000 informants now. And that's only its official, listed informants. The feds also have a network of unofficial and largely unaccountable spies that is three times bigger.