ACLU Says FBI Gathered Info on Legal Activities of Muslims

By Allan Lengel

The ACLU says FBI documents show that the San Francisco FBI gathered intelligence on American Muslim religious organizations on their “constitutionally protected beliefs and activities, without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

The ACLU said in a story posted on its website that the FBI gathered the info from 2004 through at least 2008 through its “mosque outreach” program.
The FBI documents “also show that the FBI categorized information about American Muslims’ First Amendment-protected and other entirely innocuous activities, as well as mosque locations, as ‘positive intelligence’ and disseminated it to agencies outside the FBI.”

The ACLU said the result was that the FBI cast a cloud of suspicion over innocent groups and individuals.

TODAY: Supreme Court Hears Westboro Baptist Church Free Speech Case

The Westboro Baptist Church picketed the White House yesterday in advance of their appearance before the Supreme Court today where the father of a slain U.S. Marine is asking that his $5M judgment against the Phelps family be reinstated.

Albert Snyder, of York, Pa., took legal action after church members picketed the funeral of his son. "My son and the hundreds of thousands of other men and women who have died for this country worked too hard to preserve our freedom of speech than to have it mocked and cowardly stood behind like this church does," Snyder said. The church members claim America's acceptance of homosexuality and abortion are some of the reasons for all of its problems. In 2006, church members demonstrated at Matthew Snyder's funeral. His father sued and in 2007, a jury ordered the church to pay $11 million US. That penalty was later reduced to $5 million. The verdict and penalty were later overturned on appeal.

Westboro is being represented by the ACLU. If you can bear it, Megan Phelps is live-tweeting the proceedings.

UPDATE: JMG reader Meredith sends us the below live-shot from outside the court.