today on r t is it legal or just racist the n.y.p.d. has been secretly monitoring muslim communities in new york for years that much we know but it may violate the constitution and a group of muslims is now suing the state to prove that point i'll tell you all about it. and stopping and in its tracks a group of lawyers activists and authors are suing president obama over the national defense authorization act and now they've got a u.s. district judge on their side so is the end to the controversial legislation the last one man has been following the case since the beginning. and it looks like the occupy movement might be losing its momentum many expected a spring resurgence but it seems these protesters are at

a crossroads tell you why the banners may be fading but the occupier message remains resilient as ever. it's thursday june seventh five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . all spying on people based on their religion may not be legal after all a group of muslims now suing the n.y.p.d. for singling out and surveilling them simply based on their religion this after reports came out that the n.y.p.d. spied on muslim businesses mosques and students in new jersey and built up secret files of them the complaint filed in federal court in newark asks a judge to deem the spying unconstitutional and stop targeting people of a single religion top government and police officials maintain that these surveillance program is legal so what does this all mean for the muslim community

i'm joined now by the harveys associate professor at texas was lee and university school of law welcome so hard so the n.y.p.d. is now being sued over this surveillance program do you think that they violated any laws. well i think that the plaintiffs have quite a good case they're alleging two primary claims one is a violation of the fourteenth amendment equal protection clause and the second is a lie aleisha of the first amendment. that anti savage mclaws and free exercise clause and i think that they're going to have a decent shot at showing that the n.y.p.d. in tension only discriminating or intentionally targeted muslims based on their religion because the key fact that they have to prove is an intent to violate the equal protection clause and the n.y.p.d. will probably respond and say we had no intention of violating anyone's religious freedom we didn't stop them from going to the mosque we stopped them from crying we

didn't stop them from being gauging in their in their businesses any muslim business or surveil rather we were just engaging in neutral national security project based on intelligence so they're going to claim that there was actually there was no ill intent no malice in what they were doing in fact it was very rational and control national security activity however the plaintiffs i think do have quite a lot on their side in showing that for example when they surveil the egyptian community they did not reveal the coptic when they surveilled the syrian iraq you communities in monsur failed the christians in the jewish syrians in iraq so clearly they were focused only on muslims and they had conflated islam with terrorism and that seems to be very evident in the report that the police came up with they had no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior according to the a.p. that broke this story and i think we can pull up that that exact guidebook you can

see that there is a bunch of maps profiling these helling where muslims live in the community there's photographs there's profiles of the individuals within the community and i you know . a bunch of notes a lot of them seem rather harmless here's an example of one of them. owned and operated by pakistanis it's a large discount store that sells houseware electronics gift items toys and clothing location is in close proximity to islamic cultural center located at twenty branford so so far what do you make of this kind of information that they're gathering these very mundine details about people's lives and what they have to say about this surveillance program. well it certainly shows as far as the n.y.p.d. concern is concerned they think only muslims are capable of terrorism which is a highly flawed and false premise as we've seen with white supremacist groups and

other groups that are not muslim i mean terrorism is not monopolized but any by any particular religion or faith or racial group but it does send a chilling message to the public saying that we the n.y.p.d. who have the authority of law behind us we don't trust these muslims and that stigmatizes muslims and he in fact is proliferates into their private life such as in their work environment in their school environment in public accommodation and so one of the theories of liability that the plaintiffs are asserting is a sickness is a nation effect in other words what harm was because then why people say we didn't harm you again we didn't stop you from engaging in religious practices but the harm is the stigmatisation effect which has pervasive consequences in all areas of their lives and in fact it's really in peak their ability to succeed impede their

ability to climb the social mobility lanner then the american dream that if you work hard and you pay your fair share you'll succeed in this country so these n.y.p.d. strategies and these tactics that target them impede their ability to do so which is essentially what the equal protection clause is all about which is that the government cannot pick on a particular group and discretely adversely. treat them based on their religion race national origin or gender or someday mutable characteristics by thinking and y.p. these actions are shown that they are violated but again it's going to come down to whether the court is going to accept that they had no intent to to harness had no malice and that in fact whatever they depend plaintiffs or. alleging is harm is not caused by the n.y.p.d. legitimate national security. practices but i think one thing that's going to be really fascinating to see how the court weighs in because at this point n.y.p.d.

has failed to do anything the justice department refuses to file on to initiate an investigation to just determine whether or not n.y.p.d. surveillance is the needle the n.y.p.d. and new york city city council refuses to hire or. create inspector general so that at least there's some independent oversight and as you saw last week the attorney general of new jersey proclaimed what the n.y.p.d. do was doing didn't violate any new jersey laws so at this point every avenue has been closed for and who's seeking legal recourse to be highly problematic to be so essentially the course of the last resort and i think it would be really interesting to see how this comes out as you had mentioned you know top government officials are you know the new york city police commissioner mayor bloomberg the attorney general they are all standing behind this program and they are saying that this is all in the name of safety keeping the community safe and taking

preventative measures how do you feel about that. well i think that is a false sense of security i don't think that targeting one particular group makes american safe i think it wastes a lot of resources because as you saw in some of the papers that you just showed it in the plane is a complaint and in many documents online there's nothing in there intelligence reports show illegal activity yet they continue to spy they continue to invest exorbitant resources on spying on innocent people those resources could be used one investigating and deterring people engage in illegal activity so for one they're wasting resources making everybody let's say but i'm not sure i think ultimately it's a political issue where at this point in has become a political you get political gain by stigmatizing and and. terming all muslims as terrorists and so it's really unfortunate that it has come

to this point where politicians feel that it is who to clean acceptable to specially tar and feather muslims. notwithstanding that they claim they believe in equal protection they claim they believe in equality they claim they believe in religious freedom but clearly there is a major disconnect in contradiction when it comes to muslims and i think that that's a very bad precedent for all minorities in the united states because again it always starts with one group and then it spread and usually it's actually the most vulnerable group and at this point is rebuilding america so i think the jews and mormons and latino and asian americans and many other groups who are numerically the minority and they're for also politically not as strong as the majority have a keen interest in this issue and they need to be sure that it doesn't continue because it will spread all right into the lack of same a right the heart will be keeping

a very close eye on this case and how it plays out thanks so much for coming on the show that was a harvey's associate professor at texas wesleyan university school of law. well time to check in with our web team to see what they're working on our team lead producer andrew blakers in the newsroom that's how that's what he's got kuchen and what he working on over there i got a story for you let's hear it all right these two guys one's name to pakistan and the other we're going to call america all right and they've been friends for like a really long time but america is kind of the too cool for pakistan like america always borrows dad's cool car and like always lights off illegal fireworks on the fourth of july pakistan though pakistan and whatever texas parents go to town texan has a really really sweet ranger ok here's the thing though america is getting kind of sick of pakistan and texas little sick of america too but i've been friends for so long. things might finally be a little falling out between the two of them because america's. the america's let's

like football jock friend his name is leo connecticut's secretary defense he said today that pakistan. is losing patience with them they're trying to not on board with a lot of things i don't know if you remember the whole bin ladin thing that says things about it all sense and so go to our two dot com slash usa today but i would argue dot com slash usa today and gerri give us that and it's a different story there is the same story you'll figure it out this was medicine i said that with that i love how you broke it down there may have made it an understandable for everybody and that's what makes a lot of things and it's not fair they've got it all out if you're going to have to go on the web site to read to read more of what angela has been working on and you think that i was everywhere producer and you like with every view of what's trending today on our web site was. another victory today for critics of the controversial indefinite detention law a federal judge has ruled that the government cannot use that law to hold people

and build military prisons indefinitely the ruling comes after a group of journalists and activists sued the government over the provision they say it's. institutional and fair they could be indefinitely detained under the law because their jobs sometimes or choir them to interact with terrorists while the government interpreted an injunction put in place by a judge a couple of weeks ago to apply only to a handful of plaintiffs in the lawsuit but now the judge is saying no this is to be applied broadly to all americans to discuss what this all means for your rights one of those plaintiffs joins me now in this case. he's not a plaintiff he's actually been following the case though david segal executive director of demand progress joins me now live from rhode island hi david as much better just want to get your reaction to the judge's ruling. we're thrilled but just as we were thrilled by your first ruling a few weeks ago so in may judge forrest determined it definite detention is

unconstitutional the obama administration moved for reconsideration of that ruling and to the extent to which he reconsidered anything she decided even more strongly in favor of the plaintiffs made it clear that religious ruling applies not just to the seven play disequilibrium but it was brought to the civilians across america and i believe we do have a quote from that ruling let's bring it up there it states quote the supreme court has made it clear they want to plains of claims that a law spatially vague and violates his or her constitutional right to due process that party seek to vindicate not only his or her own right but those of others who may also be adversely impacted by the statute in question so they would want to talk a little bit more about the implications of that. that the plaintiffs are i would assume that they didn't want this to just apply to guess them that they that they

were wanted to bring into question the constitutionality of this in regards to all american citizens but it exactly and their argument i mean there are so. well but the thrust of it is that the law is so big and captures potentially essentially anybody who's seen to be an associate of any and the state actor anybody is accused of being a terrorist and this could affect whole swath of people including activists and journalists who will travel abroad and interview people who might explicitly be members of the taliban or a monster other groups that our government has deemed to be terrorist organizations and that they by that association could be deemed worthy of indefinite detention. and so there let's talk a little bit more about the greater implications of the da and why american should be concerned about being controversial provisions in the law what danger does it pose it has our government have to getting its its

obligation to engage in essential due process it means that civilians can be detained indefinitely by the military without ever being charged with without ever being. i'm sorry there was a script i understood there and so so here. we were talking about the the contra pope controversial provisions of the law that americans could be you can be detained indefinitely civilians by the military without being charged with any crime without being tried without having access to their essential due process rights that were one of the foundations upon which our country was founded and upon which the constitution was written and we are slowly seeing all sorts of civil liberties slip away as your viewers around out of the aware in the name of defending us against terrorists and this is one of the more grievous examples of

that we've seen today and david i do want to bring attention to something that happened just yesterday and colorado police reportedly responded to a bank robbery by arresting dozens of people all reports suggest that cops trot cops trapped as many as forty cars and handcuffed at least nineteen people most of them presumably innocent this was at gunpoint take a look at some of the coverage on what happened yesterday. police spin in this group of cars drivers are ordered to get their hands up and they got on and she also had the enforcer shotguns out there with the taser guns others and we don't know what the heck was going on we didn't know if we're in the line of fire one by one drivers are pulled out at gunpoint and handcuffed they're told not to ask their cars or sir. so some of those detained say they were held without charges for hours i mean this is different from the n.b.a. you know it's not a military. prison but is this an example of what can happen under the n.b.a.

and the dangers posed in that and that law i have only seen a bit of coverage about that specific incident obviously it strikes me as a group just from what i've seen and it's the sort of thing we're concerned about just an increasing. it increasing police state in us that's taking hold in this country and militarization of that police state i think it was chris hedges a speaking to recently put it really well there's not much of a difference now in the form of a raid in fallujah as opposed to a raid on a house sheltering occupy wall street protesters in oakland or miami dark of the night machine guns. flak jackets and we were seeing. an arms race within police departments across the land and decreased concern about rights to due process. so we are saying this is a victory for critics of the n.d.a.

what do you what's next in this fight and making sure that these this controversial law is not implemented so we demand progress or asking people to act on two fronts the first is to urge obama sees his crusade against civil liberties and not appeal this ruling to a higher court chill have to decide whether or not to do in the coming weeks then so he might seek a higher court ruling reversing judge first the city. and we're putting pressure on him to not do so and we're also asking the senate as it takes up this year's n.d.a. to support amendments to reverse the indefinite detention provisions and we expect that will get the floor of the senate sometime later this month there was an effort in the house to do the same and failed by a relatively narrow margin a coalition of libertarian libertarian leaning republicans and progressive sikkim to go to fight indefinite detention and it lost by on the order of thirty or forty votes we hope that we have a better chance in the senate because amendments to do just that to reverse

indefinite detention can relatively close to passing when the idea was taken up in december all right david thank you very much for coming on the show that was david segal executive director of demand progress thanks very much for having me. occupy activists around the nation have continued their efforts months after their encampments were broken and while conservatives have tried to demonize the movement other groups seem to be benefiting from occupy his message are things are mungle endo shows us the effect occupy is having on this us political landscape and why efforts to co-opt the movement may backfire. occupy wall street's mass demonstrations are not visible public however their message of wealth inequality continues to ring in mainstream politics i'm saying you're bringing in a million bucks or more a year then what the rule says is you should pay the same percentage of your income

in taxes as middle class families do president obama and other democratic leaders have pushed to each of these taxes on the rich while the curious by the message that some activists believe all to hold and we dislike which does not match their true efforts. have we seen a millionaire tax you know we haven't seen a millionaire tax cut we've seen the bailing out of main street now we've seen the bailing out of wall street over and over and over again since its beginnings conservatives have tried to link occupy to the president picture i think the whole occupy wall street movement was orchestrated to provide president obama with a major campaign theme well liked by groups have rallied in solidarity with other liberal out of the kids the movement has questioned the entire like total system and man actually lead to a lower good turnout for the democrats a lot of people would have voted for the lesser of two evils. where

democrats were completely system now not i will never vote for obama again as far as i'm concerned president obama has sold us out of pocket but has also encourages unions and community groups to become more militant in their acts of civil disobedience that unions in los angeles commonly protests against the one percent oh concept which was made popular by occupy wall street the power of the unions has also helped them mobilize thousands of people to take to the streets this is the message to both parties that are best to one party or the other party to mr mubarak to leave more to the unions have bullshitters street demonstrations but concerning occupy remains that leverage to keep the french in mainstream politics to us that's co-optation you cannot both be part of occupy and supporting president obama or mitt romney romney large marches on banks making news but members of occupy still

feel more radical action is needed a certain thing to change the way things work but now it doesn't at the end of the day it doesn't can seem power it doesn't ask for permission to be in the streets as occupy progress is there is still debate over how we. clues that the ninety nine percent movement should be if we're going to set their core selves the ninety nine percent doesn't make sense to exclude about sixty million obama voters have organized in his ations like move on dot org are using our language that means we're winning that's good the fear of the movement and its message being taken over or diluted persist they're designed to be co-opted and they have a role in the role they've chosen for themselves which i respect is to push the issues to do spew their own experimentation with direct democracy occupy starting gauging issue based rights activists believe their message will we know just by the huge corporate power structures they feel are in their way.

in los angeles problem galindo argy. for more on the future of occupy justin bryan he's an occupy oakland activist joins us now live hi justin. how do you think they occupy movement has shaped the political discussion or has it . well you know one thing that i don't think anyone want to know is that the occupy wall street movement has drawn attention to income disparity that legislation at the national level in the us and other come countries has been influenced somewhat by that but i i don't think that that short term when it is what's really the goal of the movement because people you know we're talking about really rethinking economic systems and rethinking. you know the fundamentals of how

our society is built and how some of the flaws in that are great and different things and some moving the slider a little bit on the taxes and trying to talk a lot and give a lot of lip service to trying to cut out loopholes is not really substantial progress i don't think but people are paying attention and that's good because then people will see you know what comes next in the message you know where we don't know saying that there has been these small wins what is the me when for your well what when what instance will you say that the occupy movement has succeeded. you know that's an interesting question i don't think you know people talk a lot about the concept of a revolution and the basis of that is this concept of a circle or like a wheel and so there is a portion of that revolution of the wheel that people pay more attention to but it's also it's happening and so i think you know we're just trying to drive.

rethinking of society which should always be happening you know there's no in it will people are just saying you know capitalism is broken you know i've had a lot of people i worked with coworkers in poland who would say you know you guys shouldn't be going over communism i don't think that's happening i think that over time both of those systems were thought of in the past and are broken they were better than the before them in ways and we need new systems and we're always going to need new systems and and we're always periodically going to need to completely rethink things. just as we saw in the ramones report there there is this concern that groups are now co-opting the movement for political gain that concern you. you know there's a variety of things in that area there definitely have been some incidents that i'm concerned about especially large actions where occupy movement organizers work with

union organizers we saw a lot of frustration in last moment on the maid first general strike and in the bay area when the golden gate bridge workers union decided that they did not want to shut down the bridge and a lot of people felt that we were being used as a threat as a as a weapon of sorts because now we want you know we wanted to join hands and sort of show that where they have concerns you know it ties into the greater concerns that everyone has a people were excited you know of talked about this great spectacle shutting down this international sort of icon you have these other things where you know occupy wall street did their street in spring training and then this sort of ninety nine percent branded spring training nationally that was sponsored by move on that or it happened and so you know i don't think anyone's not welcome in the movement but people are really concerned when political parties and organizers and. sort of the parts of the existing control structure start trying to get involved because it

becomes a little bit less populist in some people so i think some people are a little too concerned about co-opting because we should want some people involved in the existing power structure to come out and agree with us and so on a local politician shows up i don't necessarily think that's co-opting because they're risking the just as much as is there may get some kind of a and if they're willing to say that they're more interested in the votes of the loud outspoken and strong feeling individuals and people who pay less attention and believe whatever the that average headline is that i would applaud that even if we're not going to solve all the problems through a lot of torah politics hiree descend on the protests they did die down a bit in the winter but they'd be valid to come back in full force once the weather warmed up but we haven't really seen bad why not. well you know i hear that a lot and i'm i'm not sure that i agree because what you've got is

a large network of people working together towards common goals including organizing actions but also things like foreclosure auction and more strategic roles and so when you don't see ten times the number of people in the streets on a mass day of protests in may or june that you saw in september or october of last year it doesn't necessarily mean that the movement's not grown you know i wasn't involved in the first day and so there are people who need rides to need to get back to work to what they're doing and couldn't put as much time in but there are new people coming out and those people are still involved and they're providing us with strategic support and driving the idea of the movement and i think that cycle will continue to happen in that over time you're going to see a great deal more growth we certainly haven't gone anywhere ok we don't have very much time left but i do want to ask you because the big news right now is what's happening over there in wisconsin is there are you in any way what's happening and

that's the occupy movement. well you know it's an interesting it's an interesting thing look at because in wisconsin you have this huge uprising it's considered to have been stronger and more successful than anything we've seen so far and driven by the occupy movement and it's sort of something people aspired to but then you see were repulsed lection actually led to an increase in a number of votes for the recall politician and i think the lesson to take from that is is that while it's great for us to force the conversation that a lot of torah politics has to participate in that we can't just go out and striking create a big news story and then expect for the election to change things because that election day is business as usual. and that extract is i don't mean to cut you off there but we are all out of time thank you so much for coming on the show that was occupy oakland acts.