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The plaintiffs say the NYPD's program to monitor Muslims on the basis of their religion is a constitutional violation. The NYPD says it's a necessary safeguard against future terrorism. 
  
 Syed Farhaj Hassan (r.) is joined by Glenn Katon, legal director of Muslim Advocates, as he speaks to reporters during a news conference, Wednesday, June 6, in New York. Hassan is one of eight Muslims who filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in New Jersey to force the New York Police Department to end its surveillance and other intelligence-gathering practices targeting Muslims. 
  
 After the Associated Press revealed that the NYPD was conducting surveillance of Muslims on the basis of their religion, legal scholars immediately began to debate whether the NYPD's program was a violation of the First Amendment. Now, the issue is set to be heard in a federal courtroom in New Jersey. 
  
 A group of New Jersey residents, mosques, and organizations on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New York, accusing the NYPD of violating their constitutional rights by targeting them for surveillance outside of mosques, in Muslim student group meetings, and at religious schools on the basis of their religion. The lawsuit could help define how far investigators can go in the name of national security. 
  
 “The facts are just so compelling, what the NYPD is doing is egregious. It may be going on in other law enforcement agencies, but the AP reports are a smoking gun that they are targeting people based on religion,” says Glenn Katon, legal director of Muslim Advocates, a California-based nonprofit that is representing the plaintiffs. 
  
 So far, the NYPD's tactics have included sending an officer on a student whitewater rafting trip to note how frequently participants stopped for prayer, taking down the license plate numbers of cars parked at mosques, and noting patrons and employees in shops catering to observant Muslims. 
  
 Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that police need to do this type of work in a post-9/11 world. In a statement, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne referred to New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa’s determination that the surveillance efforts were legal. Mr. Browne added that “NYPD activities in New Jersey were lawful, appropriate, and in keeping with efforts there, in New York, and around the world to prevent terrorists from returning here to kill more New Yorkers.” 
  
 The plaintiffs, who are suing to end the surveillance and to expunge the police files, think a jury will disagree. They say that the police have deterred their free exercise of religious belief and hurt Muslim businesses. 
  
 Those suing the City of New York include Syed Farhaj Hassan, a decorated veteran from the war in Iraq. Mr. Hassan says the surveillance has deterred him from attending religious services because he does not want his military intelligence career harmed by an association with mosques being monitored. 
  
 Among other plaintiffs are a college student who says she doesn’t feel free discussing matters of religion at Muslim student meetings for fear that she may be watched by undercover cops, and businesses who say they’ve lost customers after the revelation that they were under surveillance. 
  
 “We thought that these things were left behind during the McCarthy era, targeting people based on race and religion alone, vilifying an entire community,” says Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “We need some accountability. If we allow the NYPD to do this we are throwing our right to privacy away.” 
  
 Though this is the first lawsuit to challenge the NYPD tactics, Mr. Ayoub thinks it won’t be the last. “This is probably only the beginning of the challenges that are going to come forward, both on the legal and the policy level.” 
  
 For a jury to determine that the surveillance tactics are illegal, the plaintiffs will have to show that the police program impermissibly harmed the free exercise of religion. 
  
 Mr. Katon says that some people defend the surveillance by saying that it only happens in public places. 
  
 But, he says, “Anything that targets people based on religion or race poses a serious problem in our society. If you said we’re only going to watch Catholics; or we’re only going to watch Kosher delis but not German or Italian delis, that should offend everybody.” ||||| A report released Friday suggests that, despite claims to the contrary, the NYPD singled out Muslims for surveillance and sometimes even crossed state lines. Critics want a federal probe. 
  
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 Paul Fishman, US attorney for the District of New Jersey (c.), speaks to the media as Mohamed El Filali (l.) of the Islamic Center of Passaic County and Nadia Kahf of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations stand nearby in Trenton, N.J., earlier this month. The meeting was about allegations that New York Police Department had surveillance operations in the state. 
  
 A new report has brought the New York Police Department under increasing scrutiny for a terrorism-surveillance program that critics say illegally profiles Muslims and has even extended its operations into other states. 
  
 The secret report, obtained by the Associated Press and released Friday, adds to longstanding concerns about the NYPD’s Demographics Unit. It shows that the unit collected huge amounts of information on the region’s Muslim-American community – ranging from conversations in Muslim-owned shops to the license-plate numbers of those attending mosque – even if there was no link to criminal activity. 
  
 Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly have attributed the absence of terror attacks since 2001 to the program’s success. The commissioner has also argued that the intelligence gathering is no different than what the NYPD would do for other groups. 
  
 But the scope of the intelligence gathering chronicled in the report is leading to renewed calls for a federal investigation. 
  
 “It is no longer a question that the NYPD is engaged in widespread racial profiling,” says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “NYPD documents state that they are spying on Muslims solely because they are Muslims.” 
  
 An AP review of the report states that plainclothes police officers assigned to investigate the city’s Syrian community “photographed businesses and eavesdropped at lunch counters and inside grocery stores and pastry shops,” even though many of the targets were second- and third-generation US citizens and there was no threat being investigated. 
  
 The report also states that no Jews were monitored, despite the fact the area under surveillance was heavily Jewish. Coptic Christians, also prevalent in the area, were similarly excluded. 
  
 “We are deeply concerned about the broad campaign of surveillance of everything Muslim that seems to be the policy of the NYPD,” says Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). “It’s crass religious profiling and bad policing because it squanders resources and alienates communities.” [Editor's note: The original version misstated Ms. Lieberman's name.] 
  
 In the past, Commissioner Kelly has said that the department’s surveillance of Muslims was nothing out of the ordinary. “In fact, the police department uses many of the same methods to find and stop terrorists that we use to arrest drug dealers, human traffickers, and gang leaders,” he said during a speech at Fordham University Law School on March 3. “We develop detailed information about the nature of the crime and the people involved. We form partnerships with other government agencies, find sources, and make use of undercover officers.” 
  
 But aspects of the program have caught the attention of US Attorney General Eric Holder. 
  
 The AP has previously reported that in 2007 the NYPD obtained information about Muslims in Newark, N.J. Both Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have said that they were not aware of the operation. 
  
 In congressional testimony Thursday, Attorney General Holder expressed concern about the reports. 
  
 "We are in the process of reviewing the letters that have come in expressing concerns about those matters," said Holder. "At least what I've read publicly, and again, just what I've read in the newspapers, is disturbing.” 
  
 The NYCLU argues that the surveillance of Muslims violates the Handschu Decree, a set of federal guidelines that put restrictions on police surveillance. The debate centers on whether the NYPD was allowed to collect data. 
  
 The NYCLU suggests that, although the police are allowed to go anywhere where the public goes, they are not allowed to maintain dossiers. 
  
 In the Fordham speech, Kelly countered that the NYPD is “authorized to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public” and “to conduct online search activity and to access online sites and forums on the same terms … as members of the public” and “prepare general reports and assessments … for purposes of strategic or operational planning.” 
  
 In August, Mayor Bloomberg said that the NYPD did not do surveillance based on religion. 
  
 "If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement, and I think they follow the law," Bloomberg said at an Aug. 25 news conference. "We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there." 
  
 But Muslim groups dispute this. 
  
 “We joke that every other person at a mosque is an informant,” says Mr. Hooper of CAIR. “The basic assumption is that there will be informants and agent provocateurs at mosques and Muslims events.” 
  
 Noting complaints from all over the country, Hooper says: “New York is just the tip of the iceberg.” |||||
Output:
A group of New Jersey Muslims and organizations are suing the New York City Police Department over its discriminatory and "unconstitutional" practice of monitoring law-abiding Muslims, they're charging in a federal lawsuit. “The facts are just so compelling, what the NYPD is doing is egregious," said Glenn Katon, legal director of Muslim Advocates, which is representing the plaintiffs. The Associated Press earlier this year revealed a secret operation in which New York police were monitoring Muslims outside mosques and religious schools, and at student meetings in New York and New Jersey. Investigators have taken down license plate numbers of cars parked at mosques, and noted patrons in shops that cater to Muslims. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have defended the program as necessary for security—and legal. “NYPD activities in New Jersey were lawful, appropriate, and in keeping with efforts there, in New York, and around the world to prevent terrorists from returning here to kill more New Yorkers," said Kelly's deputy commissioner. The plaintiffs are suing to end the surveillance and to expunge collected information, reports the Christian Science Monitor. “We thought that these things were left behind during the McCarthy era, targeting people based on race and religion alone, vilifying an entire community,” said the legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “We need some accountability."